My guess is that Nancy Pelosi will soon move to open up an impeachment inquiry of Trump in the wake of his mobster like attempt to use the Ukrainian government to attack and undermine Joe Biden. His latest and frighteningly dangerous breach of constitutional and democratic norms, I would think in her calculus, creates the basis to unite her up to now divided caucus as well as convince a skeptical public of the existential necessity of impeaching Trump. I hear lots of criticism of Pelosi’s foot dragging on impeachment, but in my mind she is an astute strategist and tactician who knows that in politics it isn’t enough to be right or righteous.
The conversations around the alleged attack of Iranian rockets on Saudi Arabia have revealed some of the contradictions within the broad, heterogeneous coalition opposing Trump — not to mention the price that we pay for the absence of a sizable peace movement that can influence public opinion and elected representatives on matters such as this. It’s painful to hear Trump sound more restrained with respect to punitive action against Iran than some on our side of the main divide in U.S. politics. I’m still waiting to see what the Democratic contenders for the party’s nomination have to say as well as the Democratic Party leadership.
Let’s hope they accent diplomacy, negotiation, and make clear to the American people what were the events that led up to this crisis, not least Trump’s central role in the destabalization of the Middle East. Had he not pulled out of the nuclear weapons deal with Iran, given a green light to the Saudis to rain terror on Yemen, and interfere in other states in the region and teamed up with Netanyahu for the purpose of crushing any hope of a Palestinian state, we wouldn’t be on the precipice of another war in this part of the world.
If it turns out that Iran did launch the rockets that struck Saudi oil fields, it should be understood as an act of retaliation, not as Secretary of State MIke Pompeo claims, an “act of war.” After all, Iran is the object of a fierce sanctions regime imposed by the Trump administration and the Saudis are mercilessly bombing Yemen, resulting in thousands of death and casualties.
The radicalization of workers isn’t a steadily and inexorably upward process. It ebbs and flows for any number of reasons. Class understanding is made and unmake. And to understand each of these moments of making or unmaking requires a concrete analysis of that moment. In his analysis of the current GM strike, veteran labor reporter Steven Greenhouse unearths the background and larger canvas that prompted GM workers to go on strike after a long hiatus during which the strike weapon was put on the back burner. Of no small significance here were the recent strike actions by teachers and other groups of workers.
Jeremy Corbyn’s recent speech to the Trade Union Congress is impressive. It is an unmistakable and uncompromising challenge to class power, privileges, and prerogatives, But I was also surprised by what it didn’t say, that is, the absence of any mention of other dimensions of the larger democratic struggle. Or the necessity of a policy of alliances in current and upcoming struggles with key social constituencies besides labor. Or the spike in xenophobia and racism in the wake of Brexit. If this isn’t an example, albeit an unfortunate one, of what the left in the UK calls “labourism,'” I’m not sure what is. But I’m not sure if the left there sees matters this way.
Defenders of Corbyn’s speech, of course, might say that he was talking to a trade union audience, but, actually, that is all the more reason to mention what went unsaid. The requisites of defeating the right and constructing a just society there as well as here and across the globe require concepts of analysis and struggle — class and otherwise — that are broadly constructed and elastic.
More to the point, they require an appreciation that class and democratic struggles aren’t separate, occupying different lanes at the analytical and practical level, Instead, they are organically joined by multiple threads and on many levels.
A narrow class approach, even when dressed in militant and substantive clothing as Corbyn’s speech to the Trade Union Congress was, ends up missing these interconnections, and thus doesn’t meet the political, strategic, and tactical test of this moment.
Indeed, if persisted in, it can easily demobilize necessary allies of labor, yield ground to the racist, xenophobic, and anti-labor right in Britisih politics, and shortchange the ideological understanding of a substantial section of the British working class that has been left behind by economic and technological change and neoliberal policies. A wider lens would serve labor and the UK well.
