> For all their fatheadedness and 'reactionary
> sympathies', on most issues, Americans are far to the
> left of the major political parties. They support
> single-payer national health insurance, distrust large
> corporations, oppose free trade, are fine with
> abortion under certain circumstances, and affirmative
> action. Large minorities support gay marriage. The
> majority would swap money for liesure time. A number
> of them in cities small and large have taken stands
> against the Patriot Act's encroachment on civil
> liberties. They go to war very reluctantly, which is
> why this administration has to lie them so
> relentlessly into it. When you consider the 24-7
> propoganda they get to the contrary on almost all of
> this, and the crap education most of us get, it's
> pretty fucking amazing. Admittedly most of them have
> no taste for assessing, say, the rights of cats vs.
> the rights of rocks, or which country's buslines smell
> better, but they're busy. Give 'em a break.
>
> I suppose the insufferably vain misanthropy of
> establishment liberals and leftists wouldn't be so
> irritating, if it weren't in the end so reactionary.
> Why do anything, when all those people out there are
> just too stupid and reactionary to embrace it? Our
> time will come if the little dumbasses don't let Bush
> blow them all up in the meantime. Let's have a protest
> and see what happens.
Hold your horses, comrade, The use of ad hominems and generalizations either obscures what you have to say or perhaps reveals that all what you have to say is to reiterate the old battle cries and shibboleths that basically lost their substance (if they had any.)
I am pressed for time because the powers that write my pay checks have the temerity of expecting me to produce something from time to time :), so I limit myself to a few immediate reactions.
1. Painting with broad brush strokes assigning people to broadly defined classes might have worked in the past but today is quite counterproductive for a very simple reason - inconsistency with that pesky thing knows as reality. To make a long story short, we should make some finer distinctions identifying potential friends and foes across the entire social-political-economic spectrum. There are potential friends in the hitherto broadly defined class of foes (i.e. business and government elites) and enemies in the hitherto defined class of friends (i.e. the lumpenproletariat). Some though decisions are in order, saying bye bye to former fellow travelers hitherto broadly referred to as "da people" and making new friends among the former foes hitherto broadly labeled as "the oligarchy."
2. Consider objective changes in the global organization of the economy and society. The past protectionist policies of the developed countries that created "welfare states" (those poster boys to thwart the "threat" of communism) are now falling apart because the mechanisms that used to protect them no longer work. The Left have diagnosed the problem (cf. the 1970s essay by Jurgen Habermas _The Legitimation Crisis_) while the Right was largely clueless, but now it is the Right that writes its poisonous prescriptions for solving it, while the Left insists of maintaining the status quo. The bottom line is that changes are objective and inevitable - the only choice is between whose prescription are to be implemented. Thus far, only the Right came with any, whereas the Left stuck its head into its ass.
3. Realize that what worked in the time of change and crisis was proposing brand new solution while preaching time honored values, rather than sticking to the status quo while preaching new values. Again the Left diagnosed it (cf. Akrl Marx _The eighteenth brumaire of Louis Bonaparte_ ) but it is the Right that puts that in practice (Hitler, Thatcher, Reagan, Bush and now that rising star of the German right Angela Merkel) - while the Left again stuck its head into its ass defending the welfare state status quo. What is the Left's position on globalization and competition that drives the cost of labor (including public services and benefits) down? A condemnation in the strongest possible terms. They may as well condemn earthquakes and hurricanes.
It is not that the Left cannot formulate a coherent program of an alternative globalization - there is a lot of talk about socially responsible businesses out there - but that is often dismissed by leftie fundies as a compromise, reformism and selling out. The last coherent "left" position acknowledging that corporations are here to stay so we may as well use them as force for social good rather than social bad was that of John Kenneth Galbraith in the 1970s - now almost totally drowned by knee-jerk anti-globalization and anti-corporate rants. Perhaps I am a bit too harsh here, there are Hardt and Negri out there, but they cannot write comprehensibly. And there is our own list meister Doug The Wall Street Henwood who can write.
The bottom line is that the Left must develop a clear cut philosophy (not to be confused with a shopping list of solutions to "social problems") that will:
1. Offer a positive vision of globalization and coexistence/competition among nations with diverging interests on more or less equitable terms
2. Offer a positive role for the de facto power brokers (transnational corporations) turning them into forces for social good instead of castigating them as forces of evil
3. Identify the inevitable sacrifices - or austerity measures that need to be made as a result of globalization, make sure that these are really necessary (rather than power grabbing pretexts) and distributed as equitably as possible, and provide a convincing explanation of these austerity measures.
4. Concentrate on issues and interests that are winnable, and cut loose the deadwood - institutions and positions that cannot be defended (without making heroic sacrifices) and groups of people that cannot be helped. Indeed that old leftie assumption about the human nature - being tabula rasa and infinitely malleable and perfectable - is inconsistent with science anymore, so the sooner it goes, the better. Cut the losses, save what can be saved, and move on.
5. Provide a "secular eschatology," a coherent philosophy and vision for the future that is enabling and positive rather than full of negative rants and complaints, setting the old scores etc. Something that would let people honestly think "let's bygones be bygones and concentrate on something that makes sense, is just, and has a future, so let's go and do it or move out of the way." So far the neo-liberal market-self-regulating-schmarket ideology and the old religious mantras are the only games of that sort in town, at least in theory if not in empirical practice. The Left simply has not offered an alternative - just a bunch of rants and complaints that the world as we know it is changing or has never been fair.
So gentlemen, and ladies, start your computers.
Wojtek