> The political power in this country resides entirely with big
> corporations. Politics is, as Dewey aptly observed, only a shadow of
> that corporate power, and the attenuation of that shadow will not
> change
> the substance. If you take the big corporations out, there will be not
> much left of the United States, but that what will be left is plainly
> scary: Jim Crow cum fascist theocracy sprinkled with tiny liberal oases
> on the coasts.
I hear where you're coming from, Woj (as the quaint American expression says). There are days when it looks that way to me, too. But if what you say is literally true, we may as well close down this list and go fishing. In fact, Doug may as well close down the LBO mag and website, stop writing his illuminating books, and get a job crunching numbers with the biggest corporation he can find (or go fishing with us).
It's very hard to find good, hard, empirical evidence of it these days, but I subscribe to the belief that the class struggle will not cease as long as capitalism exists. The workers' side of the struggle is extremely badly organized at this point, and consequently is hardly visible. Tiny glimpses of it surface from time to time, like blades of grass through the cracks in the concrete paving. The whole situation reminds me of nothing more than the famous words of Dos Passos' "Camera Eye 50" in _The Big_Money_, expressing the dejection of the left in the '20s after the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti:
" they have clubbed us off the streets they are stronger they are rich they hire and fire the politicians the newspapereditors the old judges the small men with reputations the collegepresidents the wardheelers (listen businessmen collegepresidents judges America will not forget her betrayers) they hire the men with guns the uniforms the policecars the patrolwagons
all right you have won you will kill the brave men our friends tonight
there is nothing left to do we are beaten we the beaten crowd together in these old dingy schoolrooms on Salem Street shuffle up and down the gritty creaking stairs sit hunched with bowed heads on benches and hear the old words of the haters of oppression
made new in sweat and agony tonight
our work is over the scribbled phrases the nights typing releases the smell of the printshop the sharp reek of newprinted leaflets the rush for Western Union stringing words into wires the search for stinging words to make you feel who are your oppressors America
America our nation has been beaten by strangers who have turned our language inside out who have taken the clean words our fathers spoke and made them slimy and foul
their hired men sit on the judge's bench they sit back with their feet on the tables under the dome of the State House they are ignorant of our beliefs they have the dollars the guns the armed forces the powerplants
they have built the electricchair and hired the executioner to throw the switch
America our nation has been beaten by strangers who have bought the laws and fenced off the meadows and cut down the woods for pulp and turned our pleasant cities into slums and sweated the wealth out of our people and when they want to they hire the executioner to throw the switch
but do they know that the old words of the immigrants are being renewed in blood and agony tonight do they know that the old American speech of the haters of oppression is new tonight in the mouth of an old woman from Pittsburgh of a husky boilermaker from Frisco who hopped freights clear from the Coast to come here in the mouth of a Back Bay socialworker in the mouth of an Italian printer of a hobo from Arkansas
the language of the beaten nation is not forgotten in our ears tonight
the men in the deathhouse made the old words new before they died
If it had not been for these things, I might have lived out my life talking at streetcorners to scorning men. I might have died unknown, unmarked, a failure. This is our career and our triumph. Never in our full life can we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man's understanding of man as now we do by an accident
now their work is over the immigrants haters of oppression lie quiet in black suits in the little undertaking parlor in the North End
the city is quiet the men of the conquering nation are not to be seen on the streets
they have won why are they scared to be seen on the streets? on the streets you see only the downcast faces of the beaten the streets belong to the beaten nation all the way to the cemetery where the bodies of the immigrants are to be burned we line the curbs in the drizzling rain we crowd the wet sidewalks elbow to elbow silent pale looking with scared eyes at the coffins
we stand defeated America"
Unfortunately, in 2004, even the old woman from Pittsburgh, the husky boilermaker, the social worker, the Italian printer, and the hobo from Arkansas have disappeared, it seems.
Nevertheless, the class struggle cannot disappear. What it needs is to be rediscovered, reanimated, reorganized, and (to the extent possible) evened up. The owner class knows there is a struggle; the workers, at this point, have been told over and over that there isn't until they believe it, so it's no wonder they are practically powerless. Since no one likes to feel powerless, they convince themselves that the owners are really looking out for their interests -- or Jesus is, or somebody. Or they just shrug their shoulders and keep on stoically working 2 or 3 jobs to get by, because they just can't think of anything else to do.
> Anyone who seriously think of changes that go beyond the usual
> attenuation of the shadow and easing the corporate yoke (which already
> makes a big difference) should think about breaking the backbone of the
> corporate governance system, which: (i) takes much, much more than
> making goofy noise in the streets and voting for nice guys, (ii) will
> most likely result in the breakup of the United States, since there is
> not much left in the US besides its corporations, and (iii) they
> results
> of that breakup will likely to be very, very ugly, not a "velvet
> revolution" to be sure. Not an easy feat to accomplish, indeed. I am
> certainly not holding my breath to see it coming any time soon.
Neither am I, but I think it's high time to really get serious about discussing how to do it. Folks like Carrol are so sure that building a third party is the way, the one and only way ("I am the Way, the Truth, and the Light") that they refuse even to debate the point. I'm frankly skeptical of every view that claims it is the only true view. I prefer to call myself a "socialist realist" -- socialism (in some sense or other) is the direction to go, but we have to be brutally realistic about where we are now and what it would take to get from here to there. But we have to start here and now, because that's where we are. Isn't that obvious?
I would like to figure out how we should take the first steps from here and now. Perhaps the third party route is the way to go; perhaps not. But almost everyone I see around me on the left seems to be emotionally and single-mindedly committed to what they already think is the truth, and refuses to take part in a rational inquiry. Maybe everyone's forgotten how to do a rational inquiry; all anyone knows how to do is rant and rave, it seems. I don't see anyone who is open-minded and skeptical, as I try to be. Perhaps it's about time for me to hang it all up and go fishing.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ A gentleman haranguing on the perfection of our law, and that it was equally open to the poor and the rich, was answered by another, 'So is the London Tavern.' -- "Tom Paine's Jests..." (1794); also attr. to John Horne Tooke (1736-1812) by Hazlitt