Finally reading “At Canaan’s Edge,” the last volume of Taylor Branch’s history of Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement. In his extraordinary telling, MLK is somehow able to navigate waters in which he is simultaneously pressured to go slow by some and proceed at breakneck speed by others. I’m no expert, but I believe he — with others — did it well in circumstances that were fraught with tensions, filled with competing pulls, and resistant to formulaic answers. In reading this monumental history, I’m reminded that determining the proper pace (and scale) of reform in conditions in which the political fabric has ruptured and the boundaries of the politically possible have expanded, is a reoccurring dilemma and first class challenge for leaders and movements that entertain transformational hopes. In studying King’s life and work we can find some clues as to how to do that as we attempt to navigate another turbulent period in our country’s life. In my later years in the Communist Party I would sometimes say that we might learn more from studying King’s United States (and Allende’s Chile) than Lenin’s Russia. It would raise an eyebrow or two.
The only good thing about Trump’s State of the Union is that its shelf life will be short. Larger political realities will take center stage — the shutdown, the border wall, a probable declaration of a national emergency, congressional investigations, the Mueller report, etc. — and very quickly eclipse in the public mind his SOTU speech.
I’m not surprised that some of the polling registers a positive response to the speech. Lots of people figure it could have been a lot worse. For these people any sign, no matter how small a break from Trumpian chaos and recklessness, is welcomed, albeit with fingers crossed and a nagging feeling that it won’t last even one or two news cycles. It shouldn’t be taken to mean that millions suddenly executed an about face in their attitude toward Trump last night.
Indeed, many watching surely found Trump’s racist, xenophobic, and misogynist lies, divisive demagogy, swipes at Democrats and the resistance movement, hyper nationalist rhetoric, credit taking for a recovering economy, and belligerent posture toward Venezuela and Iran distressing, even if not unexpected.
Notably absent in the speech was any mention of the shutdown or gun control. Climate change and the humanitarian crisis of immigrant children and their families at the border found no space in the speech. Health care and voting rights measures never appeared either. Steps to guarantee racial and gender equity were a no show. It was laughable when Trump claimed to be a strong advocate of gender equality.
What I found immediately worrying were two things. First the likelihood that he will declare a national crisis at the border and claim emergency powers. It’s wrong on its face, authoritarian in fact, and built on a dense tissue of lies and racist demagogy. What is more, this constitutional usurpation of power would set a precedent that a besieged Trump could easily invoke in other circumstances to fend off growing and immediate challenges to his presidency.
The other worrisome thing is the danger that Trump and his bellicose team will declare war on Venezuela and Iran to rally the country around him and then to use the leverage gained for much same purpose as a declaration of emergency powers at the border, that is, to silence his critics and shutdown the ongoing investigations of him and his administration. Even though Trump insisted last night that we don’t need wars or investigations, he actually may believe that war against Venezuela and Iran could, among other things, serve him well at this juncture in his efforts to torpedo the cascading and imminent investigations that could end in his impeachment, indictment, and complete loss of legitimacy. ,
If the night had some saving grace, it was Democratic women — many just elected — dressed in white in the House chamber and then the speech of Stacey Abrams that came later. Speaking for the Democratic Party and from personal experience, she lifted people up, appealed to their best angels, and addressed the most pressing problems facing the country, while mincing no words when it came to Trump and his shutdown. I’m sure we will hear much more from her as well as the other women who are transforming the Democratic Party and the country in a progressive, egalitarian direction.
1. Trump, it appears, will declare a national emergency and order the building of a wall along the southwestern border. This is dangerous, undemocratic, and authoritarian on its face. It rests on pure invention. There is no border crisis. If there is a crisis, it is a crisis of a crumbling presidency, increasingly besieged on all sides. And herein lies the other danger of his declaration of emergency powers. It could easily become a precedent that Trump would unhesitatingly employ as other walls close in on him. It goes without saying that this declaration should be vigorously contested from every side — Congress, the streets, the courts, the media.
2. A sober minded radicalism and a reality grounded marxism would give Nancy Pelosi and her Democratic colleagues their rightful due for their role in the Trump engineered government shutdown. There were other players in this drama for sure, including government workers and working people generally. And they had a significant hand in bringing an end to this sorry episode, which should also be said. Still the role of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Congressional Democrats was crucial every step of the way. To accord them no role or damn them with faint praise is analytically wrong and politically counterproductive. It feeds the notion that both parties are to blame for our present predicament, not to mention takes any complexity and novelty out of the process of social change in favor of a simplified “from the bottom up” scheme. In doing so, it fits facts to ideological predispositions. Never a good idea, and at this moment it stinks.
3. Of the candidates likely to run only a few fit into the New Democrat mold, if we judge them by their present political positions, which we largely should. A mature and engaged movement not only allows people to change without a lot of bellyaching, but also understands that changing circumstances change the minds of politicians and people generally. Lincoln, Roosevelt and Johnson are examples of this dialectic..
I doubt if any Democrat aspiring for the nomination will run as a Bill Clinton Democrat. Why would they? The party (and millions across the country), after all, are tacking in a progressive direction. Democracy, equality, economic fairness, humane immigration reform, planetary sustainability, and thumping Trump next year will frame the conversation of Democrats, not austerity, unregulated markets, and triangulation.
The New Democratic wing of the Democratic Party hasn’t entirely disappeared for sure. But its ideological and practical dominance of the party is over for now. It was badly weakened by its inability to adequately respond to powerful political, economic, and ideological currents and counter currents of the last decade — some of which it had a hand in creating — in the U.S. and globally.
4. One question that can’t be definitively answered at this point is: is the Republican Party by its stubborn support of Trump, if not sounding its immediate death knell, relegating itself to a minority status in the longer term? Sure, it can utilize undemocratic means to prevent such an outcome, as it has, but it will be more difficult if Democrats score big in next year’s election. Such an outcome would position tens of millions of engaged people, an array of social movements, and the Democratic Party to democratize the laws, rules, and some of the structures of the existing political system. This would make a GOP comeback a much steeper climb.
5. The criticism of Kamala Harris coming fast and furious in the wake of her announcement to run for president once again reminds me that, among other things, some on the left dislike nothing more than liberals. This is wrongheaded at any time, but it is sure not smart in this moment when Trump sits in the White House and a crucial election is around the corner.
The ascendancy of Trump has imposed strategic and tactical coherence on the left, but it remains partial, incomplete, and reversible. And I’m afraid that may become more evident as we get deeper into the Democratic presidential primary. Political maximalism, ideological purity, and the politics of “class” could weaken, if not dissolve, the imperative for unity against right wing authoritarianism.
6. I learned years ago that an answer to the question “what is to be done?” depends in large measure on the balance of power in and across society at any given moment. In other words, the prospects of change in a progressive or retrogressive direction turns on the distribution of power among competing class and social constituencies on the macro level of politics.
The balance of power, however, shouldn’t be understood statically. It changes over time and sometimes abruptly in one direction or another. Still ascertaining the balance of power at any given moment is crucial if we hope to figure out what is to be done — strategically, tactically, and politically.
Lenin, the leader of the Russian Revolution and unappreciated these days, said time and time again that a strictly sober, objective, and concrete appraisal of the balance of power among all the contending classes and groups in society should be the starting point of left politics. Strikes me as timely advice.
7. I have no problem acknowledging the importance of the shift of a section of white workers who voted for Trump two years ago to the Democratic Party column in the recent elections. But it shouldn’t obscure or in any way minimize the unprecedented political role of women in resisting and organizing the resistance to Trump and Trumpism — in cities as well as suburbs, in the working class and other democratic movements, in the Democratic Party, and in the many other coalitions that sprung up in reaction to Trump’s election. From Inauguration Day to the Blue Wave last November — a wave that badly weakened Trump who up to now had no or little institutional opposition to his policies and authoritarian power grabs — it was women in their diversity who were the engine and glue of this resistance.
And while we are at it, let’s set aside any notion this extraordinary intervention of women in politics doesn’t have a class dimension.
1. The Wall is more than a clump of cement or steel; more than a poor use of taxpayer dollars; more than Trump’s vanity project. It’s become a symbol of everything that is wrong with the Trump presidency – beginning with its vile racism and xenophobia. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is exactly right when she said that Trump’s wall is immoral; its not who we are as a people or country.
To spend even a penny on this wall to break the impasse over the government shutdown is not a compromise that we should consider for even a moment. It might open up the government, but it also would scar our heart, our soul, and our future.
I find it helpful at moments like this to ask myself: What would Martin Luther King do? And I have to think he would say that our sacred duty is to bridges of understanding, equality, kindness, and solidarity at the border and everywhere else in our society, not walls of hate or division. It is, he would likely add, the only road to a “Beloved Community,” to a society that is fully just, decent, and non-violent.
2. A declaration of a national emergency may end the government shutdown, but in doing so it sets a dangerous precedent at a moment when Trump, reckless and authoritarian by nature, finds himself more and more inextricably entangled in legal and political challenges that threaten his presidency and could land him in jail.
3. The resistance to the Trump administration as well as the experience of 20th century socialism reminds me once again that that the defense of the misnamed “bourgeois” democratic rights, liberties, protections, and institutions — not to mention an independent media — isn’t a negative task that we reluctantly embrace at this moment nor is it something we can dispense with once we arrive at the “emancipatory” gates of socialism. To the contrary, it is a crucial terrain of struggle that should be defended, expanded, and deepened now as well as in any socialist society that is worthy of that name.
In reflecting on the experience of the past, not least 20th century socialism, the great historian E.P. Thompson wrote:
“I am told that, just beyond the horizon, new forms of working class power are about to arise which, being founded upon egalitarian productive relations, will require no inhibition and can dispense with the negative restrictions of bourgeois legalism. A historian is unqualified to pronounce on such utopian projections. All that he knows is that he can bring in support of them no evidence whatsoever. His advice might be: watch this new power for a century or two before you cut down your hedges.” Whigs and Hunters: The Origins of the Black Act
Wise words.
4. It’s hard not to like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. She’s a fresh, new, democratic socialist voice in the political universe. Her star, already bright in the sky of U.S. politics, could easily grow brighter in the years to come. Let’s hope so.
But what I don’t like are the efforts of some on the left who would like to turn her celebrity, political outspokenness, and political pedigree into their ax to grind against her Democratic Party colleagues — many of whom have a long record of engagement, represent powerful social constituencies, and possess progressive politics — and the Democratic Party, which, by and large, is tacking in a progressive direction. Moreover, its role is vital in the struggle against Trump and right wing, white nationalist authoritarian rule.
5. Trump’s shutdown of the federal government is the political equivalent of a corporate lockout, albeit with some differences. One being its scale — 800,000 plus uncounted workers employed by federal contractors. Another its solution is in the hands of Congress. Still another is the boss has no economic skin in the game, while his stockholders in the Republican controlled Senate obediently bend to his manias and outbursts for now, no matter how irrational on their face.
What then to do in these circumstances? Wait it out, while worrying about the next bill? Find another job to tide yourself over? Appeal to family members for help in these difficult times? Visit food pantries? Go to your local pawn shops?
But with no obvious end in sight and day to day life becoming more dire for locked out government workers and their families, is it time for TSA workers and the entire federal government workforce to consider a job action? This question was posed and answered affirmatively in an oped in the NYT earlier this week.
Neither author is in the top circles of the labor movement, but, I believe, it is a fair question to ask and one that deserves discussion in the labor movement in the first place. After all, this is the longest government shutdown in history and, even more to the point, appears to have no quick ending.
No doubt it would be a perilous choice to make. And maybe it is impractical for all sorts of reasons. But that determination should be made after careful consideration by labor and its allies in the community and congress to begin with, not assumed beforehand.
It is hard to imagine that striking government workers in present circumstances wouldn’t receive the sympathy and solidarity of the majority of people across the country. This isn’t a PATCO Moment. Most people don’t like the Bully in the White House, and even more believe that the Bully is behind the shuttered government.
No harm in discussing it.
6. The late Raymond Williams begins his famous essay, “The Future of Marxism,” this way:
“There are two dimensions of politics. There is the dimension in which, because of living pressures, men try to understand their world and improve it. This dimension is persistently human. But beside it, always, is that parading robot of polemic, which resembles human thinking in everything but its capacity for experience.”
Insightful for sure. But not so easy to assimilate when our own “parading robots of polemic” provide ready made answers to a complex and changing world, even if they disappoint and come back to bite us in the long run. I know that from my own experience.
7. Back in the day I used the phrase, “A labor led people’s movement.” Thinking more about it, and notwithstanding labor’s long arc of struggle against right wing extremism and its necessary role in any long step down freedom road, I can’t help but think that this phrase was a case of wishful thinking, unexamined ideological commitments, and an abstract and rigid understanding of marxism obscuring the actual dynamics of struggle at the time.
Or. said differently, my “parading polemic” ignored experience.
8. When Marx writes that every revolution has to rid itself of the “muck of ages (German Ideology) he leaves unanswered what should be answered: What is muck and what isn’t? No less importantly, how quickly does the muck have to be removed? And who has to be assembled to do it? 20th century revolutionaries had their answers to these questions and many were badly off the mark.
Trump didn’t declare a national emergency last night and the powers that go along with it, but the logic of what he said and the particularities of the government shutdown make such a declaration very possible. Not only is this wrong on its face; there is no crisis on the border, except for the mistreatment of immigrant families and children.
What is more, it would set a dangerous precedent for Trump to exploit going forward as he gets more and more entangled in legal and political challenges to his presidency.
Don’t buy the idea that because it would end the government shutdown, it’s not the worse thing. It may do that, but in doing so it would open up a very dangerous cans of worms at the border immediately and elsewhere in the not too distant future as well as deeply scar our movement.
