> WS: There is not much one can do about it when Americans are treated en
> masse. But if you divide up the federal entity into several more or
> less independent states, the chances of implementing some progressive
> reforms in some of those states are much more within the realm of
> possibilities.
As Michael said,
> Well, Wojtek, the Founding Fathers intentionally set the system up to
> shunt
> away challenges to private power. And their system works.
>
> Trying to carve into even more pieces, as you propose, would only
> deepen the
> problem. Corporations, for instance, would love to be regulated only
> by the
> states, without federal involvement.
In any case, this ain't gonna happen, and I prefer to waste my time contemplating possible courses of action that are at least within the outer bounds of possibility, however unlikely they may be.
Any student of the Federalist Papers knows that the U.S. political system was set up in the first place to moderate conflicts, take the steam out of them, and promote compromises, which generally means watering down any radical impulses that may crop up. This forces movements that want to make strong progressive steps to work all the harder outside the electoral process, on the streets.
> While it is true that the US is not "totalitarian" in the same way as
> some Third World countries (e.g. North Korea) are - it should be
> underscored that it developed a unique way of marginalizing opposition
> without recourse to brute force.
Why unique? It seems to me that it is basically the same in all the advanced capitalist countries (and more and more so, little by little, in countries that aren't exactly advanced, but definitely capitalist, like the fSU and China). As you describe it:
> Little grouplets of dissidents, like
> this one, are not particularly threatening to the hegemony of the
> corporate rulers and their agents in Washington DC - so suppressing
> them
> is not necessary. Their existence can even be useful for orchestrating
> dog-and-pony shows how great the US so-called "democracy" is. Even if
> these grouplets get a bit out of hand and start attracting wider
> support, they cannot penetrate the barriers of entry to political
> institutions.
Right -- so they have to go around those barriers.
What I would like the left to do is go back to the '60s, which was the high-water mark of radical activity in recent U.S. history, and figure out where we took a wrong turn and how we could take up where we left off and go in a more productive direction this time. My tentative proposal for this (I don't have a perfectly knock-down argument for it, so I can't prove I'm right) is that we need to revive the kind of direct action campaigns typified by the Freedom Rides and the whole Southern civil rights movement, as well as by the draft resistance sector of the anti-Vietnam-war movement.
In both cases, folks didn't sit around fretting that the man in the White House wasn't sympathetic to them, or the leaders of the Donkey or Elephant Parties were not securely on their side, or wishing that there was a proportional-vote electoral system, or whatever. They saw the whole representative political system as something that would follow *their* lead if they developed powerful enough movements -- political "leaders" are actually *followers.*
Civil rights legislation got passed soon enough when it became clear to the political "leaders" that events in the streets required it to be passed. Selective Service wasn't ended, and the troops weren't pulled out of Vietnam, because the "right people" were elected to Congress and the White House, or because a lovely third party was carefully crafted by skilled political operatives -- the people who were elected, whatever party they nominally belonged to, were compelled to take these actions by what was happening out in the country, by direct actions which made end runs around the political games. Dangerously non-democratic -- capable of being used by fascistic tendencies -- yes. But they got the job done.
The contemporary anti-"globalization" movement has been trying to revive this approach, and with some success. But this is perhaps not the most powerful issue for direct action right now (in the sense that not enough people understand yet why it is important, in the way that blacks and potential draftees or the already drafted guys understood in their guts what had to be done 40 years ago). Whether there are such issues now, I don't know. Perhaps they will develop in the next few years. But until they become evident (which depends to a large extent on the way events go, rather than on the actions of the left, I'm afraid), I think the left will be stuck in the stasis it is in now.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ A sympathetic Scot summed it all up very neatly in the remark, 'You should make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and folk-dancing.' -- Sir Arnold Bax