I’m for vaccination and workplace mandates. When the exercise of someone’s “personal freedom” – refusing vaccination and mask wearing – endangers the health (possibly lives) of others, disrupts the workplace and social life generally, and cripples the economy, I find it hard to defend that “freedom.” In nearly every direction we turn, we can find examples where government mandates (or laws) restricting personal behavior (or freedom) for the greater social good. We aren’t “free” to run stop signs or drive drunk or enter schools unannounced for obvious reasons that no one contests. I’m well aware that a tension can exist between personal rights and freedoms and collective/social rights and freedoms, but in this case, the tension isn’t so apparent to me. To claim a “right or freedom to infect and disrupt” the lives of others just doesn’t register in my world.
It is undeniable that the great social movements of the last half of the 20th century changed the terrain on which millions live and how they understand the world in profound and enduring ways. And yet their transformative capacity, that is their ability to move to a new, higher stage of struggle and possibility, was circumscribed by the limited participation of the main sections of the labor movement. Few articulated this better than MLK in the 1960s. What was true in the last century is no less true in this century.
It was a colossal mistake, but not surprising decision that US forces entered Afghanistan with “guns ablazing” and in the language of fighting “international terrorism” nearly two decades ago, after years earlier destabilizing a secular democratic-progressive, anti-imperialist government and country. (I met Babrak Kamal, that government’s first Prime Minister in Moscow in 1981 ) But does anyone think that a slower drawn down and exit from Afghanistan now would result in something much different from what we seeing? The only alternative to what is happening is endless occupation. And that we know after nearly 20 years is no alternative
Political agitation aimed at the Biden administration that ignores the narrow advantage of 1 that Democrats hold in the Senate and the resistance of a handful of Senate Democrats to the more far reaching proposals of the administration – not to mention the vagaries of the socio-economic environment, shifting public opinion, and the main lines of attack of the whole right wing apparatus – is problematic at best. At worst, it fails to appreciate the complicated nature and tactical challenges of this moment if we hope to move the legislative needle in a progressive direction and increase Democratic Congressional majorities in next year’s election.
A problem in social justice and left circles is a hesitancy, even a silence, in expressing a positive attitude to the Biden administration. I realize that on some issues – especially internationally – the administration’s posture is more than problematic, but on many other issues, it is breaking with neoliberalism and challenging white nationalist authoritarianism. It success in doing so will in large measure determine the outcome of the midterm elections, not to mention the day to day living circumstances of tens of millions.
Thus to take a standoffish or relentlessly critical position toward the Biden administration isn’t principled politics. It is, instead, a failure to understand the dynamics of left center unity and what is will take to successfully surmount the existential dangers of this conjuncture.
In the 1930s, the Communist Party, which evolved into the largest organization on the left at the time, didn’t make these mistakes. It made mistakes for sure, but not along these lines.
