Gramsci says: vote Gore!

[Doug Henwood]

VOTING FOR PRESIDENT:
BEYOND THE "LESSER OF TWO EVILS" DILEMMA
30 October 2000
John Brown Childs
Professor, Sociology
University of California, Santa Cruz, 95064
jbchilds at cats.ucsc.edu (Affiliation for identification only)
Voting for Gore, the Democratic Party candidate,can make a difference,
but in a way that is more complex in its possibilities than simply going
for "the lesser of two evils." In suggesting this I am drawing on the
work of Antonio Gramsci.
Antonio Gramsci, the Italian social justice activist, died as a result
of his illegal imprisonment by the fascists in the 1930's, but his
thinking on social action remains valid today. Gramsci advised that
there is a difference between two wings of most national power elites,
and that this difference has real consequences for grassroots political
action, despite the fact that those wings are both aimed at supporting
the status quo. Gramsci's analysis has direct relevance to the debate
among progressives about supporting or not supporting the Nader/La
Duke/Green Party candidacy.
This debate pivots around the question of whether the Republican and
Democratic party organizations are really just one party, so a vote for
the "liberal" Gore is essentially a meaningless choice, and a vote for
Nader an important statement based on real difference.
I believe that Gramsci would say that, to the contrary, a vote for Gore
is a meaningful choice. Gramsci observed that although power elites work
to maintain the status quo, they also tend to fracture along a major
fault line. On one side is the emphasis on maintaining the status quo by
granting some concessions (compromises) to diverse groups in order to
include them in society and blunt their opposition. The other side of
the fault line emphasizes a repressive response to public pressure, one
which involves withdrawals of any previous concessions, and the
implementation of increasingly tight top-down controls to "maintain
order." For Gramsci, each of these two tendencies produced very
different environments within which social justice action could occur.
The compromise oriented wing we can call "Concessionary." The
conservative/repressive wing of thought we can call
"Anti-Concessionary." In the United States, since the Presidency of
Franklin Deleano Roosevelt, the Concessionary wing generally appears
under the label of "Democratic Party," and the Anti-Concessionary wing
generally appears under the label of "Republican Party."
For the Concessionary wing, the tactic of compromising with social
movements that push on it from outside, requires that such concessions
have real meaning for those to whom they are given. The Concessionary
wing operates on the assumption that such steps, because they are
tangible, not just symbolic, will give (some) people a sense of real
inclusion, and this will in turn reduce the pressure on the status quo.
In this approach the slogan is, in effect, "give them an inch and they
will be satisfied." The New Deal response of Roosevelt to Depression era
social crisis is a classic example of such Concessionary compromise. By
contrast, the Anti-Concessionary wing usually views such concessions as
really dangerous. It fears that those "given an inch will demand,
and maybe take a mile." Consequently, very real and bitter disputes
erupt between these wings. Roosevelt, although he was a millionaire
member of the upper class, was viewed as a dangerous, socialistic
traitor by the anti-New Deal conservatives of his day. This view is
directly related to the different responses of these two wings to broad
grassroots political/social pressures.
This split over whether to emphasize concessions or repression in power
elite thought and action has direct consequences for the type of social
struggle that can be waged from the grassrooots. In a Concessionary
environment, social movements have some important maneuvering room.
They can potentially take the concessions that are meant to muffle their
aims, and use them instead to further societal transformation.
In this sense, the conservatives are right to be fearful of concessions.
Such concessions can lead to more demands, and more social action, which
in turn can start to reconfigure the society at large. By contrast, a
more repressive Anti-Concessionary environment will restrict maneuvering
room. In that setting, people find themselves forced to simply defend and
survive against continuous batterings. In that context, the social
justice activists are hard pressed to hold onto gains from previous
struggles and are less able to push forward with proactive expansively
transformative strategies.
If Bush and other Anti-Concessionary politicians win big, then we will
be more likely to face this type of negatively hard-edged environment in
which a range of diverse issues from Indigenous sovereignty, through
worker's rights, environmental justice, women's health,
anti-discrimination projects, and multiculturalism (to name but some)
will be under ferocious asasult from the White House, the Congress, and
the courts, including the Supreme Court.
For example, Doug George-Kanentiio, Akwasasnee Mohawk columnist for NEWS
FROM INDIAN COUNTRY recently warned that of "the two presidential
candidates, Texas Governor George W. Bush draws the most apprehension
from Native People." George-Kanentiio points out that the famous
Iroquois Confederacy, the Haudenausanunee "People of the Long House,"
have not forgotten Bush's "1999 remarks challenging aboriginal
status....Bush said that it was his opinion that Native Affairs should
be primarily an individual state matter rather than one of US federal
concern." For many Iroquois, and other Native Americans, says
George-Kanentiio, such a policy "may well mean the abrogation of all
treaties, and the withdrawal of Federal assistance as mandated by
current custom and laws leaving Native nations at the mercy of
unsympathetic governors and malicious state legislators." (10/17/2000,
American Indian Cultural Support)
By implication, Native American activism under a Bush administration
will be forced to defend itself against systematic attacks on
sovereignty, and will be unable to attend to other vital
social/economic/legal/cultural issues of importance to Indigenous
communities.
Similarly, but in a very different zone of struggle, Kate Michelman,
President of the National Abortion and Reproduction Rights Action
League, points to the probability that George W. Bush will roll back
reproductive health gains that have been achieved through many years of
dedicated activism. Gloria Feldt, of the Planned Parenthood Action
Fund, says that a Bush victory, "will be devastating to reproductive
rights and health as we have come to know it in this country." (Robin
Toner, "Different Sides on the Abortion Issue See Stark Contrast in
Candidates," THE NEW YORK TIMES, 27 October 2000). An Anti-Concessionary
victory by Bush will require rear-guard defensive action, that drains
energies away from on-going work on behalf of women's health and
well-being.
In Congress itself, the positive results of years of social movement
activism can be seen in such groups as the Congressional Black Caucus,
the Congressional Women's Caucus, and the Congressional Hispanic
Caucus. Such groups, and their individual members, can and do often act
as allies to grassroots community activists. For example, we know about
the courageous action of Representative Maxine Waters, who challenged
the CIA regarding importation of drugs into the barrios/ghettos of the
U.S. An Anti-Concessionary victory will leave such inside allies even
more stranded than they now are as a result of previous conservative
advances.
So, despite the fact that the Democratic and Republican parties as a
whole, do have a fundamental status quo commonality, their quite
distinct, even contradictory, Concessionary and Anti-Concessionary
stances can have importantly different consequences for grass roots
social justice action. The Nader/La Duke/Green Party campaign is raising
vital issues that are being surpressed and ignored in mainstream
politics and media. And to their great credit, the raising of these
issues is taking place despite being unjustly excluded from the
locked-box Gore/Bush debates. The Nader/La Duke Green campaign is part
of a global grassroots democratizing resurgence from Chiapas to the
Niger Delta; from the recent election victory of Marta Suplicy of the
Brazilian Workers Party in the important city of Sao Paulo to the
inspiring organizing in Seattle; and from the Southwest Network for
Economic and Environmental Justice in the U.S. to the activism of the
Cree First Nations people in Canada. In this decade we will need
increasing mutually respectful coordination of these and the thousands
of other distinctive organizing efforts developing around the world.
Ironically however, a vote for Nader/LaDuke in states where the
presidential contest is extremely close, could result in a Bush
victory. Such a victory would make virtually impossible any kind of
broadly effective multi-dimensional proactive strategy drawing upon the
valuable Green Party positions, as well as those that include Native
Americans, Women's groups, labor, civil rights activists, and
environmentalists. Instead, we will have to scramble to defend against
repressive conservative measures aimed at obliterating gains achieved in
the past.
We are not faced with a "lesser of two evils," "tweedledee/tweedledum"
homogeneity in the Bush/Gore "contest." Rather, we are confronted by a
fundamental social-battlefield difference between "Anti-Concessionary"
and "Concessionary approaches." Consequently, the real choice in this
election is between a social-political environment including government
hostility to previous social gains, expanding repression in which we
have our backs to the wall; and an environment in which we can
strategically maneuver toward the making of a society of the people, by
the people, and for the people.