> On Behalf Of Seth Ackerman
> There's a limit, Nathan. In Europe, where they are literally facing
> the choice of whether or not institutional investments should be
> allowed or not, CALPERS is viewed by the labor movement as a mortal threat
to the
> social model.
And in Europe, a very different set of circumstances may make them less admirable -- a point I noted in a different context of why the Swedish worker funds might have had a less progressive effect than expected. Sorry to be US-centric, but in a debate that started about Social Security, I'm not making too many apologies for noting that in the context of fiduciary rules that generally make any interests other than the stockholders nonexistent on corporate boards, CALPERS has introduced a number of social concerns that would never have even been discussed without them.
And having made a general statement about the evil of CALPERS without evidence, you continue to do so now. I am sure there is evidence to muster on your argument, but the lack of it makes your criticism sort of airy and not particularly constructive to discussing the pros and cons of worker-controlled investment funds.
> Sometimes it seems like your political strategy is to identify
> whichever center-left individual/organization has sold out the most, and
> then comb through their history to find some arguably progressive action
> that can be used to justify the rest of their awful career. Basically,
> you're just for whoever's "on our side."
Actually in these discussions, I am more of a contrarian, since in my political work I sound more like your average lefty denouncer of Clinton and the capitalist establishment - we recruited great satiric puppets of Clinton and Pete Wilson in the welfare rights marches I organized in California with speeches denouncing Clinton's hateful betrayal of the poor.
But I combine the strategic organizing against the center-left with a consciousness that they are not "the" enemey, but only the opportunist forces that we need to keep pressure on and who can be pulled towards our interests if we create enough political threat to make their opportunism make them go with our strength. The real enemy - which some people seem to forget - are those whose self-interest means that no amount of political pressure will lead them to support us, since their interests are completely and permanently opposite to those of progressive forces.
I also don't think the average person is a stupid idiot who continually acts against their interests, which leftists who denounce Clinton, Gore or Bradley as the enemies of blacks, workers or women must assume, since workers, blacks and women keep voting for people like this in disproportionate, sometimes overwhelming numbers.
When you and Doug argue that CALPERS or union leadership don't reflect real worker interests, you seem to make the case of the rightwing that democratic structures never deliver on peoples' preferences and desires. A lot of conservatives argue for the market because elected leaders always betray the interests of their voters. Your analysis seems in line with that argument when every existing worker-controlled institution seems to perversely betray the workers who seek to control them.
My analysis is different-- I am much more interested in the social constraints that make good people allied politcally with working class interests unable to fully act on those interests. To the extent that we can do more than organize like hell to push through those restraints, we do, but it is also worth looking at the inbetween rules reforms that would enhance the ability of those institutions to deliver. In the electoral realm, the two-party "first-past-the-post" system encourages competition only in the center of the political spectrum and punishes third party efforts, so I am a big supporter of proportional representation and instant runoff reforms. On investment funds, I am very interested in the legal restraints on such funds that force them to act on capitalist rules and shareholder (as opposed to worker or social) interests on threat of legal sanction by the state. My current research project is on those legal constraints in the context of union corporate campaigns to explore where we could push for reforms to free organs like CALPERS or other union funds to act more directly for worker interests. Etc.
What I don't find particularly useful is the personal demonization of people who, however erratically, have served worker and progressive interests well enough to garner broad support from progressive forces. There is a strategy that argues that if you personally destroy all the liberal leaders, the workers will suddenly drop their self-deluding false consciousness and flock to the true leadership of leftwing messiahs and, more importantly for this list, leftwing intellectual guidance. So don't engage in reasoned debate that respects why it may be rational for people to engage in lesser-evil choices and make a case for a better alternative. No, just denounce those lesser-evil choices as the embodiment of evil and vicious hidden anti-worker threat, implying of course that anyone who votes for them is deluded and any intellectual who supports that reasoned vote is a political hack looking for a paycheck from the establishment. Or that any worker-controlled investment fund like CALPERS is not constrained by social and legal restraints, but is an anti-worker steamroller in its essence.
As for Bradley, I was never making a big pitch for him per se (his and Gore's politics are close to indistinguishable) but arguing that it is stupid strategy on the Left to denounce the most ambitious health care plan on the political table. It's part of the strategy I noted above of demonizing liberals plans in the vain hope that people will suddenly turn to leftwing plans instead; unfortunately, they often just turn to more conservative options.
My real strategy is organize, organize, organize. Build unions that give workers power independent of the state, build progressive political organizations independent of capitalist-funded parties, build community organizations independent of elite interests or local government, then look at the political and social landscape and fight for the best deal possible at that point in time. If it's not enough, organize some more, gain more power independent of elite interests, then fight for a better deal. And when the elite suffers sharp divisions or economic chaos that undermines its legitimacy, create a strong enduring alliance of left forces that can coordinate a full-out assault for sweeping social changes that are possible at such moments.
But neither the day-to-day organizing, the normal fight for reforms, or the building of enduring alliances to fight more comprehensively is served well by the poisonous personal attacks, defamation of allies or general search for enemies that seems chronic in parts of the Left. While I am not in every fight for whoever is "on our side", I also don't make the mistake of permanently excommunicating anyone who differs on that fight from ever being on that side. "Our side" should encompass vast majorities of the population, so when people start drawing the line of being "on our side" somewhere around the left-most 2% of the population, I am skeptical that folks are engaging in anything other than wanting to define the pond small enough to let them be the top dog in that tiny pond.
Sweeney is an avowed socialist and the (somewhat) democraticly elected head of a union federation representing over 16 million workers. Whatever the flaws in his leadership, if you define him outside "our side", I am skeptical that your definition leaves you with anything other than a loud debating society. If your definition of the Left leaves you with a set of forces with so little power than no one can conceivably see them contesting for power, you are engaging in exactly the kind of utopian socialism that Marx saw as so detrimental to real social change.
Whatever left forces exist within the labor movement mobilized as hard as they could to help Sweeney win a contested leadership contest for the federation head position. If you argue that their goal of moving the union movement leftward failed, then it seems like a good argument for packing the whole left enterprise up and retiring, since that contested leadership contest -- the only one this century -- has to be defined as one of those key strategic moments, and if we failed then, I really wonder what your scenarios are for actually winning power for the left in the union movement, much less society and government at large?
-- Nathan Newman