On 2010-09-20, at 12:17 PM, Doug Henwood wrote:
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> On Sep 20, 2010, at 10:11 AM, Marv Gandall wrote:
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>> But the discussion has been about whether medicare for all is within the "realm of possibility" under the existing system.
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> Well it's a lot more likely than my being able to walk on water, for sure. But for it to happen, the labor movement would have to get behind it in a major way (among several other things). If SEIU showed anything like the support for single-payer that it routinely shows for campaigning for Democrats - as I recall, they flooded Pennsylvania alone with 15,000 campaign workers in 2008 - then the balance of forces would change considerably. But, really, can you see anything like that happening in the next several years? They're about to put everything into campaigning for a bunch of suckass Democrats in 2010. Then, they'll pause a bit, and start campaigning for suckass Dems in 2012.
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If there is to be universal public coverage in the US, I don't see any other way it can come about other than through a Democratic government. So it's understandable the trade unions are devoting resources to electing Democrats rather than Republicans. The list I posted earlier indicates the SEIU and other unions have also been campaigning for single payer outside the electoral arena, but at the end of the day they and allied organizations are still faced with the need to steer those they convince as well as their own members to the voting booth. I don't think you can counterpose these activities to each other; reform movements need both mass pressure and legislation to realize their objectives.
I share your pessimism about the possibilities, but not for the reasons you suggest. Like others, you appear to locate the causes of the present malaise in the trade union and Democratic leaderships. I believe he failure of the unions to engage in strikes, demonstrations, rallies and other militant forms of mass action in order to generate the necessary pressure on the political system, as they once did, is more a reflection of the current low level of class and political consciousness which exists at all levels of the movement. If anything, this lack of consciousness and combativity is more pronounced at the bottom than the top, a heretical notion to my old comrades and perhaps to yourself, but one derived from my own observation. We're not dealing with a so-called "crisis of leadership", whereby if we only got rid of the Andy Sterns and Richard Trumkas and all the other male and female "labour fakirs", the working class would move forward. It's a crisis of what remains of the entire battered and shrinking Western trade union movement, which no longer has the same power and confidence to improve its conditions as it did under more favourable conditions of economic growth and demand for labour in key industries. I don't think the political situation today would change if Lenin, Trotsky, and Luxemburg shared a brownstone in your Brooklyn neighbourhood.
This helps provide some context for the lack of progress under Obama and recent Democratic administrations. The DP has always mediated between the liberal bourgeoisie and its working class base, but the balance has shifted strongly to the former, which transmits pressures from Wall Street now only weakly countered by counter-pressure from the unions and the other popular organizations linked to the party. With the sense of crisis having lifted, and much grumbling but little pressure from the Democratic base below, the dominant Wall Street wing of the party which has Obama's ear has little incentive to change.
The other contributing factor, which I don't think we've sufficiently explored, if at all, in this discussion, is racism. I don't think anyone anticipated the depth of the residual racism which exists within the white working class. Obama's election excited hope that its power had receded, but his tenure has proved otherwise, bringing to the surface latent racist undercurrents. The tea party movement, which is their political expression, is propelled by whites resentful of having to pay higher taxes for the black and brown working poor and fearful that their country is being taken away from them by alien races. This racist reawakening has emboldened the Republicans and further cowed the Democratic leadership, providing the latter with additional incentive to back away from meaningful action on healthcare, unemployment, mortgage relief, and other core issues of importance to its base.
So those are the problems as I see them. Damned if I know what's the solution - there are no longer socialist political homes of any consequence for people like us - but I still think that for those who want to remain active in this period, it is likely to be more politically rewarding to align with those forces inside and around the Democratic party who are becoming increasingly disaffected with the Obama administration, than to forage in the political wilderness with some marginalized vanguard or left liberal party, or to try to recruit scattered individual "cadre" in university towns in preparation for the next upheaval. If you have a better alternative, I'm sure we'd all like to hear of it.