``...The task for the left is to look past the frequently disheartening news to the underlying advances of a basically progressive outlook and take the lead in formulating political strategies that give it a coherent expression...'' Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema.
I sure won't disagree with this part.
But while a generally centerless cultural and social movement has slowly migrated closer to what I consider normal and healthy, the laws and institutions of the society have either not moved much in that direction, or have become more restrictive or have become positively repressive.
All this established institutional resistance has been systematically generated by the relentless rightwing assault on public institutions through various policies and legal maneuvers. I mean they do control the government, remember.
So, while I could look over my son's high school graduation ('90, Berkeley) and enjoy the open and loud comic ridicule directed against various hated district administrators and pompous bureaucrats (white, vaguely liberal) who spoke, and clap loudly for the community leaders (black, hispanic, asian, progressive) who also spoke, I knew this generation would not have such an easy time carrying out this general mood later on--when they had to confront the really ugly establishment bastards of this country.
In any event, this was in stark contrast to my own HS graduation ceremony in the LA suburbs almost exactly thirty years before (`61). So, I think that a limited cultural and social progress is real enough.
Which brings me to this:
``..The question is attitudes towards authority. Parental authority may be weaker, but the concept of a democratic, tolerant, competent means of collective action is in pretty bad shape. You have fear and loathing of the idea of government -- not just the practice -- by militia types and minorities. There is cynicism as to the potential of collective action; there is the atomization of the public sphere implied by growth in decentralization.This all makes for conservative culture where it counts -- in public policy...'' Max Sawicky
We just have to remember who is in public office, and who populates the bureaucratic apparatus---the damned rightwing and a few weak liberals. The problem is that many people have never seen or lived under a piece of government that was even vaguely progressive. So naturally they associate government per se as the oppressive and hostile ogre that it is at the moment.
I have seen and lived under a piece of government that was not what it is now---admittedly very briefly and under very limited conditions. While Nixon was busy defending himself and trying to take back control of various pieces of the federal bureaucracy, there were a whole collection of progressive civil rights movement types on the fed payroll working their asses off in the old HEW, particularly in OE. The kind of discussion here on LBO would have been common place in the cafeteria during breaks or in workshops---and from people all over the country, white, black, hispanic, disabled, northeast, west, midwest, south. Marx wouldn't have been mentioned, but there was certainly a broadly critical view of corporations and small business---seen as a hostile economic world that had to be dealt with.
I was extremely lucky to have seen just a glimpse of it. It gave me a kind of unerasable view of how government should work. But it seems to be completely uncommunicable. In other words, nobody I've tried to seriously describe these events to ever believed them. It was like I was talking about Mars. Of course it was a tiny view, completely limited to a marginal program office, but it instantly become my ideal and concrete example of how to do government by and for the people.
It was the first and only time, I ever worked with people who were teaching me about how to implement general concepts like civil rights, government, and institutional administration that is supportive rather than punitive. Of course this scene was utterly erased and paved over to such an extent that the entire continuum, the administrative culture of how to implement progressive social policy was destroyed.
I can't remember who on LBO said it, but the gist of it was that even if we had a progressive controlled government, nothing would change. That is quite wrong.
The reason it might seem plausible is because just getting control of the elected offices and passing laws isn't enough. It takes a long time to systematically alter the culture of governmental administration, down through its various tiers, right into the field offices and programmatic level. After Nixon, it took until maybe the middle of the Reagan administration, more than ten years to really kill off all traces of the kind of government I saw once.
The idea that Capital is some how immune to political controls is a piece of neoliberal propaganda to mask its own thorough going governmental manufacture of precisely the sort of economic world we live under. There is probably not one single form of exchange, transaction, or economic formality that isn't the direct product of government regulation and design. I mean who makes the money, CitiCorp? No, the government makes the damned money. And there is not one single piece of manufacturing, production, distribution, transportation, or even a local retail shelf that isn't completely saturated with some form of government policy, regulation, and control. There isn't a single part of social and cultural life that isn't equally saturated with the same sort of policy and regulation---which is why most of us are technically criminals a lot of the time---since whole sections of our social and cultural life has been criminalized (sex, drugs, arts, etc). So, from my perspective its always and already about government.
While I can sympathize with Max's dream of finding some authentic political core within the history of Populism, I ultimately don't share that as a source of an ideal set of principles.
My ideals are found in some combination of bourgeois enlightenment (law), strongly tempered by a century worth of marxist elaborations (economics), and combined with a much more comprehensive development of the civil rights and self-determination movements (public participation/determination). That's what I want to see populating every nook and cranny of government.
Chuck Grimes