Spectacular, massive, and novel

  • March 28, 2018
Here are a few thoughts on the social movements that have sprung to the surface on the heels of Trump’s election and retrograde policies. First is their large spontaneous character. Overnight these movements have erupted in spectacular, massive, and novel ways. Another interesting feature is their organizational orbits are outside of the traditional organizational forms of the center, progressive, and left. Also standing out is the extraordinary role of new social protagonists that compose these movements at the leadership and mass level. High school students, suburban women, and women generally have jumped on the social-political stage as leaders and activists in these eruptions of social action.
 
What is striking as well is their tactical sophistication when it come to electoral politics. They don’t, neither automatically nor viscerally, turn up their noses at the notion of participating in two party politics and electing Democrats, including moderate ones, this fall. In fact, they see electoral politics as essential to their particular struggle and the general struggle against Trump and Trumpism. Nor are they trapped strategically or tactically in the language of neoliberalisim — a language that glosses over the real differences between Democrats and Republicans, especially at this moment when the danger of authoritarian rule is palpable.
 
Finally, each of these movements approach politics in a way that interconnects what is roiling them with what is roiling others. The walls of separation that kept one movement or struggle apart from other movements and struggles are less visible today in the thinking and actions of these activists, and actually activists generally.

 

A dangerous turn, the mass media, and famine

  • March 23, 2018

1. The danger of the trio of Trump, Pompeo, and Bolton is threefold. First, they have the main levers of power — including nuclear — in their hands. Second, they believe that there are no limits to U.S power in the global theater. Third, they have few hesitations about projecting that power — especially military — to effect regime change. Reckless unilateralism is in their bloodstream.

While people understandably worry about the danger of war with North Korea, it is safe to expect sabre rattling against Iran to ramp up in the coming days and weeks. No one in this rogue’s gallery likes — actually they loathe — the nuclear agreement with Iran and its government.

2. In my view most of the major media constitute an essential — and in some ways irreplaceable — part of the opposition to Trump’s authoritarian war on democratic institutions, norms, and rights.

They do sometimes dwell on the trivial and traffic in sensationalized gossip. But there is much else in their coverage and analysis as well. I know that because I regularly read major newspapers and watch news/cable TV.

They don’t present a radical perspective, but why would anyone — except Fox — think they would. What they do, however, is challenge many of the anti-democratic words and actions of the Trump administration, not to mention the enabling role of the GOP. And their investigative role, including into Trump collusion with the Putin government in the last election, because of their resources and vast network of contacts is indispensable.

And, I’m sure they will find ways to be on the right side in the coming elections, which are the main instrument that millions have to strike a body blow against Trump and the Republican controlled Congress.

Not everyone is of this mind for sure, but as I see it, we have to avoid a narrow framing of the struggle against authoritarian rule — a struggle that the events of this week make much more perilous.

We should always bear in mind that only an expansive, multi-class, heterogeneous democratic coalition has the capacity to defeat Trump and Trumpism.

3. Just completed Anne Applebausm’s “Red Famine.” The book makes a compelling argument that the famine that killed roughly 4 million people, mainly peasants, was the intentional handiwork of Stalin. Here’s a review by a Soviet scholar Sheila Fitzpatrick that I found insightful.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/aug/25/red-famine-stalins-war-on-ukraine-anne-applebaum-review#img-2

W.PA. election, Bernie, and unity

  • March 17, 2018

1. Seems to me what we saw in the W.PA. election was broad people’s unity and action, stretching from dissatisfied Republicans to former Trump supporters to labor to anti-Trump activists and organizations to women, and to some, if not all, of the left. In such a politically sprawling coalition not everyone, it is fair to say, was on the same political page. But whatever the differences were, they obviously didn’t rise to the point where they eclipsed the urgency of electing Conor Lamb and repudiating Trump.

Isn’t a similar, that is, expansive and flexible, approach in order this fall, if Democrats are to become the majority party in Washington and in state governments across the country? I would think so.

Bear in mind two things. First, the outcome of the elections won’t be decided in cities like Berkeley or Cambridge or San Francisco or Los Angeles or New York, were liberal-progressive politics are ascendant and Democratic seats are secure. But elsewhere in suburban and small town-rural districts from one end of the country to the other where the politics tend to be more moderate, but fluid and trending in a Democratic, anti-Trump direction. I live in one of those districts. The biggest city is just over 20,000, includes smaller towns and rural communities, and is currently represented by a very beatable Republican.

Second, a Democratic Party victory would be a body blow against a threat that is historically unprecedented and politically palpable — the authoritarian mindset and practices of the Trump White House and its Republican enablers.

In these circumstances, can the accent be on any thing other than unity across the democratic movement and within the Democratic Party this fall? You know what I think. Struggle over differences doesn’t disappear, but in present conditions, it shouldn’t be the maim thing.

2. In an oped in the Guardian, Bernie Sanders writes that the mass media has been reluctant to address the exploding inequality and the rising oligarchic capitalist class that increasingly structures day to day life and closes off opportunities for hundreds of millions across the globe.

No quarrel here. But when he adds in his critique of the mass media this observation, we part company,

“Instead, day after day, 24/7, we’re inundated (from the mass media) with the relentless dramas of the Trump White House, Stormy Daniels, and the latest piece of political gossip.”

That Bernie would reduce what the media is doing to shed light on the authoritarian, undemocratic, and indecent nature of the Trump administration to “relentless dramas” — and I have to guess in his mind of little import to the American people — astounds me. What’s the purpose of this framing? Why, in effect, counterpose one to the other? After all, as I read it anyway, the authoritarian threat to our country’s democracy is growing at this moment, not receding, deserving more coverage, not less. Witness Trump’s tweets over the weekend against Andrew McCabe and Robert Mueller.

And yet as astounding to me as Bernie’s take is, it doesn’t really surprise me. I have thought for some time that in Bernie’s world, class and class struggle, albeit, and unfortunately, narrowly constructed, back bench, sometimes take out of the field of vision entirely, the struggle for democratic and constitutional norms, rights, and boundaries.

And that is the case here.

3. I don’t know about you, but my March Madness bracket is in anemic health at this point.  Maddening!

Trade, power grab, racism, and other loose ends

  • March 13, 2018

1. Dan Rodrick, Harvard professor, has been studying the global economy and its unfairness for some time. Most of his academic life, in fact. In this analysis he comments on Trump’s protectionist measures, announced last week. He doesn’t suggest that the sky is going to fall in as these measures wend their way through the global economy, but he does argue that they are no way to address the undeniable inequities in the current global trade regime. If anything, they will, he avers, make that urgent task more, not less, difficult.

At about the same time, I read an interview of Leo Gerard, the president of the United Steel Workers Union. What bothered me wasn’t Gerard’s defense of Trump’s tariffs. I expected that. What I found bothersome is that he had nothing — not a word — to say about the potential negative impacts on other sections of the working class here and elsewhere, resulting from Trump’s actions.

Nor did he offer a comment on the peculiar situation of the union’s alignment with a president that is authoritarian and backward in every way. We should expect more from a leader of the labor movement in these difficult times.

2. What we saw last week is the usurpation of power and decision making by a lone individual in the White House. Worse still, this individual is narcissistic and impulsive to the extreme, authoritarian to the core, and singularly bereft of any humanity. Meanwhile, the Republican majority in Congress act as enablers of this rogue president. This danger, unprecedented in my experience, is the ground floor of authoritarian rule. This would be discouraging to any sane person if it were not for a whole array of state institutions, social constituencies, and the media that are resisting Trump’s power grab. Still, it’s fair to ask: are we doing enough?

3. Trump’s said a lot of ugly things in his speech at a rally in W.PA. over the weekend, but the ugliest, but not necessarily the one receiving the most coverage, was his dismissal of Representative Maxine Waters, Democrat of California, as a “low-I.Q. individual.” Bear in mind that this was delivered in a predominantly white region, where such racist rhetorical volleys resonate among a considerable section of white voters. No one should think that Trump’s base is strictly animated by its economic discontent. Trump, obviously, doesn’t believe so. And yet, the notion persists that it is enough for Democrats to present an economic alternative that addresses wage and income inequality to turn the tables in November.

4. Any analysis that occludes the rise of right wing extremism in the mid-1970s and its persistence into this century doesn’t help us understand either the past or the present, including the Trump phenomenon. Moreover, it leaves its proponents (and those they influence) flatfooted strategically and tactically. And yet, this blind spot continues to inform the thinking of some progressives and radicals.

5. I hope Mueller does his job – and it appears that he is — and the rest of us do ours in the voting booth in November. Both are necessary to escape this extraordinarily poisonous, perilous, and unprecedented situation in which we — and the world’s people — find ourselves in. If we had any doubts about this, Trump’s behavior and the newest revelations over the past two weeks should have dissipated them.

6. I just finished watching, “7 Seconds,” on Netflix. What a compelling story and performance! The production and its actors deserve an award of some kind.

Tariffs, spontaneous surges, and socialism

  • March 6, 2018

i1. The quick embrace of Trump’s protectionist proposals by the steelworkers union strikes me as a bad idea. Among other things, allying yourself to Trump, especially when he seems to be unraveling and opposition to him is growing, is shortsighted.

Moreover, these proposals if enacted could easily divide the union. Canadian workers, who will be adversely affected by them, won’t be happy. Nor will steelworkers in other countries.

And who knows how serious this proposal is, It could easily be the impulsive and momentary ravings of a president who is melting down on the one hand and on the other hand is anxious to activate his base this fall and in 2020 when voters go to the polls. Remember Trump’s support for Dreamers and comprehensive gun controls? There one day; gone the next!

Finally, anyone who is a partisan of the working class, has to account for the larger impact of such proposals on the entire class of wage and salary workers. Retaliatory steps by other countries can be expected if the proposals are implemented, which, in turn, will likely come back to bite U.S. workers and cause divisions among working people here and globally.

When I was in the Communist Party, we weren’t against the regulation of trade or investment, but protectionism was never part of that conversation. Working class unity and interests, writ large, were. Not sure what the position is now, although I was surprised to read an article on the website of People’s World that had not even a hint that Trump’s proposals and the union’s endorsement of them might be problematic in some ways.

2. I just heard that West Virginia teachers and other public sector workers won a 5 per cent wage increase. And they did it in a right to work state and in the face of a mean spirited, right wing Republican legislature and governor. Against this backdrop — not to mention the decades old uphill struggle of the labor movement — it’s a stunning victory and will surely give hope and inspiration to working people elsewhere. No doubt lessons will be culled from this experience.

Others who are more familiar with the details of this strike will do that, but I would make one observation: It strikes me that the strike and its success is an inseparable part of the powerful surge of spontaneous protest actions coming on the immediate heels of Trump’s election. Led largely by women who are newcomers to activist politics and operating at a distance from the traditional labor-liberal-left organizational infrastructures and networks, these actions are reshaping the political terrain in red and blue states alike. What was considered improbably has become doable, what was considered unreachable is now within reach. Needless to say, this augers well for the future — not least the elections this fall.

3. Watching the consolidation and centralization of power by Chinese president and Communist Party leader Xi Jinping makes me appreciate once again the warning of the great Marxist historian, E.P. Thompson decades ago:

“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)

4. Below is an article on Vietnam, written by C.J. Atkins. While I found it very informative, I came away with two concerns. First, does it make sense to say that a “socialist oriented market economy’ is an oxymoron? Second, can any take on Vietnam after 50 years avoid the subject of the depth and extent of Vietnam’s democratic culture and practices?

Vietnam: 50 years after the Tet offensive

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