> Perhaps, but the question why the US Left is so tiny is rarely addressed
> adequately. Even when the Marxist Left was globally ascendent, the US Left
> wasn't a significant force. Now that the Marxist Left is in decline globally, what
> are the prospects for the US Left?
Here's an interesting article (by a friend of mine) on the topic of the U.S. Left. I'm going to reproduce just the first few paragraphs here, and give you the URL if you want more:
=======================
http://www.livejournal.com/users/springheel_jack/746821.html
So what's up with politics in America, anyway? On third parties, the progressive Left, and the Constitution by Me, all rights asserted. hee hee!
I've been thinking about the Nader Question and its broader implications. There's a whole set of assumptions about politics that go along with third-party voting and with a large portion of the progressive movement generally that I think are naive. One day I will write a book about this. But right now I'm going to blather in a kind of disorganized way.
(First, full disclosure: my own politics. In the "if I had my druthers" sense, I'm a democratic socialist. My philosophical orientation is toward the radical democratic theorists. I vote Democrat; I intend to vote for John Kerry in November. Okay, there.)
The first falsehood of the progressive left: the American people are fundamentally ill-served by the two major parties, in the sense that there is a huge untapped reservoir of lefty, progressive, liberal sentiment out there that is not represented by the centrist neoliberal Republicrat consensus.
This isn't really true. It's only true if what you think is ill-represented by the major parties is the objective class interests of most people. That's undeniable. But in terms of what people consciously (whether false-consciousness or otherwise) believe, this progressive mass movement that waits only upon a call to arms is a big fat myth. I'm not just talking about the voting population, either. The untapped progressive majority is thought to be embodied by the mass of nonvoters, who are said "not to feel that either party represents them." The leap is then made that, since so many feel that neither party is really their proper home, and that both parties are basically center-right, it must mean that what is missing is a true-blue liberal, a real progressive, to champion their cause. Not seeing one, they stay home.
This is a nice theory, but empirically it's false. After all, it's not as if you can't go up to people who don't vote and ask them what they really want in a party or a candidate. And what they want, most of them, is not a liberal firebrand or a true-blue progressive or some big lefty. The large majority of the American people simply do not believe in the basic economic and social theories that underlie progressivism. Americans believe in self-reliance, small government, religiosity, low taxes, entitlement programs, and the enshrinement of private property. What we might call "class consciousness" is simply nonexistent. In poll after poll, working-class Americans think of themselves not as working class but as middle class people who are about to be upper class. They invariably overestimate - to a huge extent - their own place on the socioeconomic ladder and the likelihood that they will be upwardly mobile. Only a small minority of Americans believe in anything like the social democratic project that has marked European politics. When given an opportunity to vote for decisive change, Americans do not take it; in those rare instances in American history when truly progressive candidates have appeared in national party politics, Americans vote against them. When offered policies that substantially rein in the abuses of capitalist accumulation, Americans of all classes reject those policies. (The only exception to this rule is in times of genuinely dire, universal economic calamity - like the Great Depression. Everyone reverts to type once these episodes are over.)
The progressive movement is therefore in the difficult position of believing itself to be a majority when it really isn't. Progressives are highly critical of the major parties for failing in their democratic responsibility to represent the expressed will of the people - but for all their good intentions, most progressives are less representative of most people's thinking than the center-right.
In a way, George W. Bush obscures the issue. He is not a part of the center-right consensus I'm talking about. He is immensely worse than that. He represents a fracture within the ruling class itself - his ambitions are no more class conscious than are the political opinions of the American poor. He is a dynastic plutocrat, a cronyist despot, and a religious fanatic; he is quite happy to work against the long term interests of global neoliberal capitalism (which is why arch neoliberal billionaire George Soros and the rest of the Gnomes of Davos hate Bush) if it serves the ideological mania and pecuniary aggrandizement of his clique. The risk is less that Bush will continue to prop up the unjust ruling-class consensus, than that he will plunge the world into some apocalyptic general disaster, like a new global war, a universal financial collapse, or a worldwide environmental catastrophe. It's the difference between, say, the injustices of the European Concert System and the Black Death.
A better comparison is Reagan and Clinton. They have a great deal in common, clearly. It's really a question of degree: how far will we go in repealing the New Deal and the Great Society? Very far, to an extent dictated by a blind, utopian-capitalist agenda - or just enough to placate the pressure groups? Who will we appoint to the executive agencies - middle-of-the-roaders who espouse corporate-government regulatory "cooperation", or implacable ideological foes of any regulation whatsoever? Judges who favor a limited, precendent-bound style of decision making, or outright pawns of radical antidemocratic judicial ideology?
We are conditioned to dismiss "mere differences of degree," but differences of degree are still real differences, and these differences matter to real people's lives. One is worse than the other; one does more damage than the other; one makes people suffer more than the other. Morally, a clear choice.
Of course, for the moral argument to hold this duality must be exhaustive. And it is - it's all we get in American national politics: the neoliberal Democrats, along with a few (mostly marginal) fellow travelers with an interest in social justice.... vs. the ultra-ultra-neoliberal Republicans with their (not at all marginal) fascist and religionist fellow travelers. It's one or the other.
Which brings me to the next issue: why is this choice exhaustive? Why not, in other words, a third party? After all, just because I've said that the progressives are an eternal American minority does not mean they do not exist, and it really is the case that they cannot fully vest their principles in either major party. So why not someone for them? Or several someones - Greens for the Green, Reds for the Red, and so on? (In my own case I wouldn't vote Green even if it were politically sane to do so - it's not the party that represents my untrammeled conscience. That'd be one of the flavors of socialism.)
...
[What follows is a discussion of the a priori necessity of a two-party, and only a two-party system, given the form of the U.S. constitution; I clip it for reasons of length. If you're not convinced we're doomed to a duopoly (or monopoly) on power, you might find the argument interesting.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/springheel_jack/746821.html]
...
The fundamental political tension in America, I think, is between those who see the will of the people best expressed through a mediating system of firm institutions that outlast particular changes in popular will, and revolutionary change, popular sovereignty wielded in the most direct way possible, even if that means political violence. And it will. So, here is what I say to the progressive left: you really ought to be revolutionaries. This third-party bullshit is just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Admit it - you want something much more fundamental than a seat at the table. You want, need, a radical departure - and that will require the complete overthrow of the current political system. You're raising the wrong banner - it shouldn't be the Green flag, or the social-democratic rose, but rather the pure Red banner of proletarian revolution, or perhaps even the Black flag of anarchy. All this polite marching and letter-writing and efforts to get that counterrevolutionary stooge Nader on the ballot in more states: it's an idiot's errand.
Either that or vote for Kerry and try to get something worthwhile done within the system that we have.
=======================
By the way, he's got a great little store with some nice leftist paraphernalia, as well: http://www.cafepress.com/agitshop
Order your Patriotic Pretzel T-Shirts now, and wear them to the Republican convention!
-- John S Costello joxn.costello at gmail.com "Every other vice hath some pleasure annexed to it, or will admit of some excuse, but envy wants both." -- Robert Burton