> Julio: "I'll say more: Talking about "peeling
> people away from the DP" is not the right way
> of framing this. The real goal is not only to
> take working people out of the DP, but also --
> and much more importantly -- to take the DP
> out of the consciousness (i.e. political
> behavior) of working people. Because, if today
> the whole structure of the DP were to implode,
> I bet 100 to 1 that -- by action and omission
> -- U.S. workers would simply rebuild it (or
> allow it to be rebuilt) under another name.
> (Witness the partial rebirth of the PRI in
> Mexico.)"
>
> [WS:] There is probably some truth in this
> assessment, but I do not think that popular
> support is the main source of the DP strength.
My reply to Doug was intended for another list. It is a bit out of context here. But I'll comment on Wojtek's point, and add a few other thoughts.
The robustness of the DP is not due to *active* popular support, although they do have some, especially around the elections. I think we agree that the DP is -- in essence -- a party of the capitalists, by the capitalists, and for the capitalists. The role of workers in the party is essential, but instrumental. Without workers, the DP would not be what it is. It would not play the role it plays in the U.S. political system. Now, being an instrument of the DP doesn't mean that workers get nothing out of their participation and acquiescence. It just means that, in the long term, the gains they obtain from the deal prove to be superficial (and increasingly puny), and they pay dearly for them with their overall submission to capital.
The DP does not need much *active* popular support to be robust. In fact, active mass involvement is contrary to the stability of the DP, because it risks spilling over the structure, going after its own goals. That's why the tendency of the DP apparatchik (a mentality Obama represents perfectly) is to keep people's participation strictly bounded. It's a contradictory thing. In an election, candidates want a lot of involvement, but they want to leave it at that. Thus, we see phenomena that prefigure the potential of actual mass involvement with political independence from capital -- e.g. Obama's campaign excitement, grassroots support, etc. Yet, once Obama gets into the White House, he must refuse to marshal his supporters to push for serious health care reform, etc., which will weaken him politically, which then will makes him hint with speeches that he may go "populist," which then he them amends with another speech showing how responsible a politician he is, etc. Gore exhibited a very similar instinct after he was robbed the 2000 election.
Mihail Gorbachov, in his Perestroika, wrote something like this (I cite by memory): "Capitalism does not have to be built according to conscious design; but, socialism must be built consciously." I can similarly say that the stability of the DP does not have to be the product of a deliberate design, while a party of the workers, by the workers, and for the workers must necessarily be the conscious product of the workers themselves in the face of formidable obstacles.
By its nature, this is a Sisyphean task, which -- unfortunately -- often leads to making virtue out of necessity or coming up with fatalistic and nihilistic rationalizations, like those Carrol often regales us on this list.
Getting to move in concert, consciously, around political goals is extremely hard for most working people. Almost every thing about work and life makes it very hard for a worker to consciously and systematically cooperate with other workers outside of the workplace, especially if it is for political goals -- i.e. goals that are by nature not immediate, highly mediated, therefore with outcomes more susceptible to alienation from them.
I don't mean to be exhaustive, but one only needs to consider a few things: Markets, private ownership, etc. encourage individual competition, also among workers. At the workplace, the fruits of workers' cooperation are appropriated by capital and turned against the workers. As Marx noted, the more the workers cooperate with one another in the workplace, the heavier their shackles. I'll add here that by goofing off, individual workers may harm the profits of an individual capital, but capital as a system remains intact. In fact, it gets reinforced, because goofing off at work backfires on the workers themselves, both on the slacker (who looses mental capacities, and character traits that are indispensable to the struggle) and on his coworkers, who must pick up the slack. That's why we should not encourage this kind of individual reaction to exploitation. (Concerted slowdowns, strikes, etc. are something else, of course.) Now, this -- life at the workplace -- is the central locus of the workers' experience in social interaction. It doesn't leave them feeling very cheerful about social interaction in general.
It is a very heavy chain to drag, especially in a country where more family members must work outside of the household, and then work longer hours. Capital's voracity continuously robs family and community life of the time of its members. This sacrifice feels necessary to U.S. workers, because of the general economic insecurity, frayed safety net, and in the last few decades, stagnating real wages.
Thus, working people tend to be stressed out and materially poor (living below the moving level of consumption that society at a given point in time considers the moral norm), with all the stuff material poverty and permanent insecurity entails. All this is then replicated and transferred from generation to generation. And I'm not referring here to the extreme social pathologies, just to the normal life of working people. No wonder a thick crust of passivity and despondency tends dominates the life of working people in the U.S.
And that's not all. During the little "free" time people may have, time that could potentially be used to engage in meaningful social interaction in families, communities, class organizations, etc., say, time for political involvement, their level of energy will tend to be very low, which will make it easier for them to reproduce instrumental, hierarchical relations in their families and communities, and fall for what Rudolf Bahro called the satisfaction of "compensatory needs" (ideologies, scapegoating, consumerism, pop culture, addictions, etc.), behavior that doesn't require the level of sustained conscious effort that an organized challenge to the existing conditions demands.
When I think about all this, any form of civic engagement by working people, a phenomenon I often observe at PTAs, union meetings, demonstrations, etc. appears to me as absolutely heroic.
In this environment, it doesn't take a lot of popular support for the DP and the political system in general to remain robust.
That's why, in the particular context of the U.S., seeking ways to promote and give support to social struggles as they are, plain working people fighting in whichever way they can, with whichever means they have at hand, with whichever political formations they find of use (including the DP structures), should take most of the left's mental resources. I mean this as opposed to obsessing about the "correct" way of fighting. With some real action taking place, getting the economies of political struggle right can then become a higher priority. But at this point, we seem to get large emotional rewards from arguing endlessly about things that, politically speaking, give us a very small bang for the buck.
In spite of all, we can't accept the fatalistic conclusion. The chicken-and-egg loop between structure and agency can be broken. The calcified conditions under which workers work and lead their lives, that constrain their self-liberating potential, can be transformed, both incrementally and qualitatively. Change comes from fighting, from working and living in ways that resist and push back against the status quo, that promote freedom, reduce inequality, advance democracy from below, encourage people to take concerted action, etc. And by change I don't mean merely the benefits that may flow from occasional victories, but the transformation of working people themselves from passive targets of misery to fighters, to agents of their own history.
> That source is the US party system in which its
> two seemingly contradicting parts, the DP and
> GOP, reinforce each other like yin and yang. DP
> is strong only because GOP is strong and vice
> versa. That is, any meaningful opposition to one
> party's agenda must be channeled through the
> other party's agenda or be reduced to
> insignificance. Dismantle one element, and the
> other one will collapse under its own weight.
To paraphrase Hegel, antagonism unfolds from contradiction, contradiction from difference, and difference from identity. Yes, the two party system is a unity. But it's not a homogeneous, formless unity. It's a unity in the difference. The *difference* between the parties matters.
Even in "normal" times, there's no perfect balance and symmetry in the two-party system. It's one sided to think that the parties only support each other in an endless loop. On the contrary, theirs is an uneasy equilibrium. A more combative, organized, united working class can upset this balance. Please refer again to my notes on Obama and Gore above. They know. They fear the masses irrupting into the political stage, pursuing their own goals, yet their political needs create opportunities for this to happen. The balance between the parties, the electoral kabuki of every other year only makes sense against a backdrop of mass passivity, of a fragmented working people.
We should not dismiss the differences between the parties. There's an objective, material basis underlying their differences. True, should a serious threat against capital appear, the capitalists will try and gang up against the threat. True, the RP and the DP are both capitalist parties. But it is also true that capital exists as many capitals clashing with one another. The differences between Reps and Dems, as minute as they may seem to us, are the embryo of any possible political and hence social revolution of the U.S.
The business of the left is the unity of the working class *and* the division and disintegration of the ruling class. That starts by exacerbating the differences between the ideologies, parties, and organizations of capital, pulling them apart up to the breaking point.
There's no other way to win. Their partisan conflict is good for us, the more intense, the better. That's why their pundits whine about the supposed "partisanship today in Washington." Having said that, there's tactical ingenuity (for the wrong goals) in Obama's call for "bipartisanship." This relates to my call to dispute the public interest, to assert our needs as identical to the public interest.
I'm talking about debating, framing things. The interest of working people *is* the public interest. That can be argued on plain utilitarian terms. It can be argued in liberal terms as well, and it is classical liberalism that constitutes the ideological bedrock of this society. If one individual life is as good as any other, then -- just because working people and their dependants are the majority of the population -- our interest *is* the public interest. The criterion to decide whether the actions of individuals, groups, and institutions concord with the public interest is whether they concord with the broader, longer term needs of working people.
Because, if the best things in this society -- the cultural, technological and scientific high watermarks of this civilization, which do exist -- are to be preserved and enhanced, if a nuclear or environmental catastrophe is to be avoided, if etc... then the capitalists *ought* to get the hell out of the way and do so immediately, preferably on their own volition, but else kindly evicted by revolutionary force, to give way to the democratic association of the direct producers.
And the working people that now exist, as they exist, blemishes and all, *insofar as they set out to fight* in the face of all obstacles, are the true claimants of the public interest, because in their struggle they embody the prototype of this association that will keep the human race from sinking into decay and self-destruction. So, we also call for bi-, tri-, and multipartisanship... as long as it is around the cause of the working people! All parties, everybody (including the capitalists): unite, do not be "ideological," be "pragmatic," just unite... around our interest, the interest of the working people of the world!
So, we're not the divisive and violent ones. We are the only force in the world that can give everyone's grandchildren a chance to lead a decent, socially productive life, we are the preservers of the very best conquests of human civilization and culture. They are the violent, divisive, the partisan ones, because they do not yield graciously, because they foster division and wage horrendous wars to keep us divided, etc. Theirs are the special interests. Ours is the general public interest.
Too long, but cannot edit.