Some observations on the Ohio vote last week:

To begin, the vote in Ohio on Issue 1, repudiating the Republican Party’s transparent attempt to deny voters the opportunity to either support or oppose abortion rights this coming November is a big deal — in Ohio and far beyond. It gives a lift and momentum to activists there and across the country which can make all the difference in the world in the year ahead. Victories beget popular energy, confidence and more victories. 

Meanwhile, the defeat of Issue 1 in Ohio, and the size of the defeat, roughly 57% to 43%, is arguably a landslide and cannot but give pause and worry to the MAGA movement there and elsewhere. To some degree their confidence has to be shaken, leaving them wondering if what happened in Ohio is a headwind that will carry over into next year. 

Second, the mobilizing power of Dobbs is striking, if not surprising. It’s a court ruling that won’t go away, that won’t be buried, even by our fast moving news cycle. Its announcement generated anger, awakened a movement, and fueled the rise of new oppositional constituencies, cutting across party, popular, and partisan lines. It is fair to say that the “judicial assassination” of abortion rights, courtesy of the MAGA majority on the Supreme Court a year ago, didn’t settle anything, anymore than the “Great Compromises,” in the 19th Century settled the “slave question.”

I’m not an historian, but, I suspect, a case can be made by someone who is that the Roberts Court finds no rival in the 20th century that matches its reactionary, anti-democratic character, nature, and actions. If the analytical reach, however, is widened into the 19th century, the Taney Court might, I would think, provide a worthy competitor for that infamous distinction.

Third, in turning abortion into a crime, Dobbs has turned the vote into a powerful weapon to contest, delegitimize, and rebuke this horrendous ruling. Isn’t this what we saw in Ohio last week? Voters – in city, suburb, and, to a lesser degree, in small towns and rural communities – went in droves to vote in order to give themselves the opportunity to inscribe abortion rights into their state constitution in November, to make abortion legal, safe, and available. 

Fourth, what secured the victory in Ohio was not only the energy and righteousness of the coalition opposing referendum 1, but also the breadth and reach of that coalition. One without the other would be like a bird attempting to fly with only one wing. A similar pairing of energy and breadth will be required going forward into the next year if we hope to build upon this extraordinary victory in Ohio of our side.

Fifth, the rejection of this transparently anti-democratic maneuver is a reminder, if we needed one, that the Kansas vote, protecting women’s right to control their bodily autonomy, wasn’t an outlier. Barely a year later it looks as if it was but the first gale wind in a gathering storm across the country. It is also a cautionary tale against premature celebrations and wishful thinking that our opponents were guilty of when Dobbs was announced. It is fair to say that movement in an anti-democratic direction doesn’t automatically bring about a counter movement in a democratic one. But, in this case, it did.  

Sixth, figuring also into any explanation of the election results is that Ohio voters are increasingly onto the Ohio Republican Party. They have watched its evolution into a party of right wing authoritarianism, dominated by Trump and his acolytes — Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan, for one, comes to mind. By means of gerrymandering, voter repression, and legislative skullduggery, voters across the state have been disenfranchised. That it has been done in the language and images of racism, misogyny, homophobia and transphobia, hostility toward immigrants from the Global South, and a counterfeit and ugly nationalism should come as no surprise. It’s the bread and butter of today’s Republican Party and the MAGA movement! Last week the tables started to turn.

What is more, up until last week, this method of anti-democratic governance appeared on the surface to “work.” But in rebuffing Issue 1, one has to think and hope that a new day is dawning in the Buckeye state. 

Finally, in deciding in favor of Dobbs, the Supreme Court overturned a right that was considered deeply, many of us thought permanently, embedded in the legal and democratic fabric of our country. In so doing, the court impressed on tens of millions, including Ohio voters, the frightening fact that no rights are safe, as long as this court remains in place. This court isn’t a protector of rights, but a bulldozer of them. Much of what the MAGA movement can’t do politically and legislatively is off-loaded to the Roberts court which is only too happy to assist. For some time, it has been, according to the Linda Greenhouse, a brilliant analyst of the Supreme Court over many years, a wrecking ball, single-mindedly and methodically upending our constitutional and democratic order. But with the addition of three new justices of unassailable right wing authoritarian temperament and credentials, the Roberts court gives little weight to judicial restraint and legal precedent (stare decisis), even majority sentiment. If there are divisions and inhibitions among them, they are tactical in nature, involving the pace and timing of their judicial activism and onslaught on democratic rights and our democracy, not their disposition and aims. Is it any wonder that a conversation has begun of ways to restructure and reform the highest court in the land?

What strikes me about Sinead O’Connor’s interpretation of “Danny Boy” is the controlled beauty of her voice. I’ve always felt a kinship with her in that we both rebelled against the carefully constructed and imposed morality cages of the Catholic Church – cages that the Church itself never employed to govern its own (im)morality and predatory behavior. I’m so glad that I shedded that institution decades ago, although that is the easy thing to do. Shedding its morality cages, which are internal, is something altogether different, but it can be done! For me it took a bit of a FU attitude and a love at a young age of rock and roll.

(I want to thank Max Elbaum for allowing me to post a note I sent to him in response to his recent analysis of the MAGA danger.)

Hi Max,

You probably saw this, but in case you haven’t, I’m sending it along. I’ve also been meaning to send you a brief note in response to your recent article/analysis of the MAGA threat. To begin, I thought it was excellent – the kind of analysis I don’t find in many other places – and was glad to hear that it appeared on various media sites and was well received. 

I do have a few thoughts upon reading it.

1. If Trump fades as a result of his indictments and legal problems, it does change things in some ways. As unlikely as that is at this moment, if he is forced to withdraw as a presidential candidate, it’s not simply a case of the next guy up, as they say in sports, and full speed ahead. No one else, I would say, in the GOP’s galaxy of “stars” has demonstrated the same ability to mobilize and incite a mass base on a national level quite like Trump does. Nor has anyone else so single mindedly and brazenly – DeSantis comes close – declared his intention to lay waste to constitutional structures and rights, vitiate governing, juridical, and regulatory bodies, and arrogate to himself the sole right to declare war. Finally, no other candidate in the field has expressed the same overweening desire – again DeSantis isn’t far behind – to transform the state in general and the federal government in particular into a personal sinecure to enrich himself and his capitalist cronies, not to mention lock up his enemies and silence his critics in the media. In short, Trump’s form of personalized, dictatoral rule is a unique and nasty blend of fascistic and feudal elements, marinating in the sauce of racism, xenophobia, homo and transphobia, misogyny, and christian nationalism. Now I’m not suggesting that “no Trump no existential danger to democracy” or “no Trump,no MAGA. That would not only be foolhardy, but worse still disarming, at least to the few people that might take my opinion seriously. I would, though, expect the political dynamics and political terrain would shift, albeit in ways that are beyond my pay grade, if Trump is forced out of the race. 
2. As breathtakingly reactionary as the Robert’s court is, Roberts does worry to a degree about the court’s legitimacy in the public mind. Sometimes to the point that he accedes to a degree to mass sentiment. Unlike some of his allies on the court, he possesses a tactical mind that can make him, at once, more dangerous as well as more susceptible to pressure from our side. 
3. I wonder if your analysis would have been strengthened if you had drawn into the picture in a positive, dynamic, and fuller way the Biden administration, the Democratic Party, and the labor movement. If each brings their “A game” or something close to it to the elections next year, we will fight the good fight on much higher ground. If they don’t, the climb for all of us will be exceedingly steep. Thus, it seems to me, social justice, left, and progressive activists and organizations should engage these crucial political constituencies in a more robust way. Just as their success will surely hinge on what the progressive and social justice community bring to the table, the reverse is also true, but even more so.
4. We spend, it seems to me, an inordinate amount of time talking and writing about the 1st Reconstruction and the necessity of the 3rd. But we give too little attention to studying and drawing lessons from the 2nd Reconstruction – an era of struggle that was complex, many sided, many layered, and rich in strategic and tactical shifts and innovations. There is little doubt in my mind anyway that such a study would serve us well at this exceedingly dangerous political conjuncture. And who better to write it than yourself.

That’s enough! Being Sunday morning, I hope it doesn’t sound preachy. I also hope you and your family are well. I’ll be, and happily so, on the Maine coast later this week where the temperature and humidity hover in the 70’s. Relief is in sight! Sam

I’m writing an addendum to an earlier post, “Not even a whisper of concern.” While it’s brief, I believe, it fills an omission in that post. 

What went unmentioned was the nearly unqualified support of Gus Hall, the Communist Party’s General Secretary for 40 years for the foreign policy of the Soviet Union. Granted it is hard to quarrel with the Soviet Union’s assistance to countries fighting – Vietnam, Cuba, South Africa to name a few – for their independence from colonial rule or its insistence on the relaxation of tensions between our two countries or its readiness to enter into arms negotiations or its economic assistance to countries in the Global South or its support for the Palestinian people and an independent Palestinian state. 

But that is only one side of the coin. On the other side, a different picture obtains. Gus threw his full support to the Soviet Union when it invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968 and crushed socialist reforms and democratization there. In a report to Central Committee, Gus said the action was regrettable, but necessary to prevent “a counter revolutionary takeover.” Gil Green, who opposed the party’s position, on the other hand, called it “a very serious blunder” in a statement to the New York Times, while at the same time resigning from the Central Committee.*

When Soviet Party leader Leonid Brezhnev in the invasion’s aftermath declared that the Soviet Union and other socialist states have a right and duty to invade other states in Eastern Europe if they believe the future of socialism hangs in balance there, Gus was on board.

A decade later Soviet troops in the spirit of the Brezhnev Doctrine gathered on Polish borders to “defend socialism,” while other troops invaded Afghanistan in late December 1979. Not a word of criticism to these actions came from the mouth or pen of Gus.

Nor did he oppose the actions of communist parties across Eastern Europe at the end of the 1980s, when they initially employed force to block the desire of tens of millions for democracy and a better life.

Ditto when a handful of Soviet communists organized a putsch on the morning of August 19, 1991. On the same day – Moscow is a few time zones ahead of us – at a meeting in the party’s national office (I was there), Gus, who had become a fierce critic of Gorbachev by then, expressed a cautious optimism that the putsch might succeed. He warned us to be circumspect though, since it wasn’t yet clear if that would be the case. When it quickly collapsed and its organizers were arrested, his only reaction was to flail the incompetence of the coup organizers and the backwardness of the “Russian” people.

If this wasn’t enough, at the first meeting of the National Board after the failure of the coup, a resolution was introduced to “neither condemn nor condone”* the coup. As you might expect, the resolution, was opposed by a number of NB members and narrowly passed, further straining the already strained relations between the two competing camps in the party at that moment. I don’t know if this clash was the final straw in the internal fight going on in the party at the time, but it did exacerbate divisions. A few months later at the party’s national convention in Cleveland, nearly half of the leadership and membership left in protest. 

As I have indicated, Gus wasn’t a lone wolf. In each instance above, the majority of the National Committee, including most who left the party in 1991, supported most of these policies and positions up until the time that Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary of the Communist Party and gave everybody license to criticize Soviet foreign policy during the Cold War years. Aside from Czechoslovakia, which predated me, I include myself in this camp. No whisper of concern, let alone a forceful objection, was heard from me. And not out of fear; I drank the Kool Aid too. 

Only later, in the mid-1990s, did I reconsider my earlier positions supporting Soviet interference and interventions (and much else) and reached the conclusion that I as well as the party were wrong. In my new calculus (1) democratic aspirations, democracy, and national sovereignty shouldn’t be reduced, as we did, to a second order concern, occupying a back seat to the imperatives of the “defense and consolidation of class power and socialism;” (2) no socialist country should be above critical examination nor act as the broker of political correctness; (3) inordinate decision making power shouldn’t be invested in any one person, which, notwithstanding claims to the contrary, was the practice in most communist parties where the General Secretary was much more than first among equals; the U.S. party was no different, (4) nothing good will come from the subordination of marxism to the interests of a socialist state nor should a socialist state – in this case, the Soviet Union – claim to be its official interpreter and codifier, and (5) each of us has to independently make decisions, resisting where warranted collective pressures to fall in line.

Some see this exercise of mine as blame shifting, a political diversion, nothing more than resurrecting old corpses that would be better off left dead. I heard that criticism to my earlier post. I will probably hear it again, perhaps with greater insistence. So be it. I don’t share that point of view. Indeed, with the rise of China and its drift toward authoritarianism and the uncritical support accorded to it by some on the left, the resuscitation of this old history seems like a good idea to me.*

What is more, the old corpses of the past are a reminder that the building of vibrant collective and decision making culture that encourages competing views and thinking outside the box in an atmosphere of equality is, as difficult as it may be, a necessary task.

Finally, the buried bones of yesteryear underscore that the theories and analytical framework that backstop our practical work require regular and collective scrutiny as well as elaboration. Not only should they guide our political practice, but they should be constantly tested against it. No one has a franchise on marxism or radical thought.

• Dorothy Healy, Al Richmond, and a few others members of the Central Committee opposed the invasion too.
• Only later did I learn, while recently reading Al Richmond’s memoir, “Long View from the Left,” that a similar language is found in a resolution at the time of the Soviet intervention in Hungary.
• The consolidation of authoritarian rule in China provides a ground floor for similar practices in other states challenging imperialism and pursuing a non-capitalist path of development.

Gus Hall, the chair of the Communist Party, USA for 4 decades — I was a coworker in the late 1980s and 1990s — didn’t coin the phrase Bill of Rights socialism, but he certainly breathed new life into it. Gus’s recharging of this term wasn’t done on a whim, but came on the heels of the sudden implosion of the Soviet Union. In his view, this world shaking event was directly traceable to the “right opportunist” leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev (as if a calcified party resisting economic renewal, renovation, and democratization had no role), the inept ideological work of the Soviet party (as if the gap between the day to day life of ordinary Soviet citizens and the party’s ideology wasn’t a source of deep discontent and cynicism among ordinary people), and the backwardness of the Soviet people (as if people aspiring for social renewal and democracy is worthy of calumny and derision). 

But Gus, who was shrewd, if he was anything, was well aware that tens of millions of Americans didn’t share his point of view. As they saw it, the sudden collapse of the first and most powerful land of socialism, with barely a scintilla of resistance from the Soviet people, was the result of the anti-democratic nature and economic dysfunction of Soviet society. Rather than challenge this popular understanding, Gus pivoted away from what he considered an unwinnable fight and turned his attention to a far easier lift, reviving the phrase “Bill of Rights” socialism.

On its face there is nothing wrong with attaching Bill of Rights to socialism, as Gus did. In fact, it makes good sense. Socialism, if it is to be viable and authentic, should organically embrace and grow out of a country’s democratic (and class and national) experience and traditions. Socialism, disconnected from such experience and traditions, will never fire the imagination of millions nor provide the gateway and architecture to building a new society. 

But in making this pivot, Gus dodged an area of inquiry that should have commanded his (and the rest of the party’s) attention, that is, a serious, self critical, and uncompromising effort to understand what in the thinking of U.S. communists allowed them/us to so easily make democracy in the Soviet Union and other socialist states subordinate, conditional, and expendable to the “imperatives” – as they/we understood them – of building and consolidating working class power and the socialist state under the singular and undisputed tutelage of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. 

While lifting up the struggle for democracy here (although even here, our rigid and narrow concept of class, wariness of non-traditional, multi- tendency movements, among other reasons, turned us into critics of gay liberation, environmentalism, second wave feminism, Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaigns, and so on), Gus never expressed even a whisper of concern about the well-known undemocratic practices and features of Soviet society, not least the monopolization of the media, a single party state, and the trashing and incarceration of its domestic critics.

But none of this should surprise anyone. After all, Gus/we thought, because the Soviet working class led by its vanguard party was in power, democratic rights, inscribed in the Soviet Constitution, were substantive, the means of production were public/social property, its foreign policy was beyond reproach, and the USSR was entering its “developed socialist stage” on its way to communism.

Moreover, the “dissidents,” in our calculus, were few in number and “petit bourgeois” in their habits and outlook. They were found, we argued, only on the edges of society. And never were there enough of them to fill the public square.

But we never asked ourselves: why would Soviet citizens publicly dissent en masse, knowing that their arrests were likely, convictions assured, and long jail sentences probable? If we had looked beyond our own understanding, we would have found that the location of dissent in Soviet society took place, not in Red Square, but in kitchens and other safe spaces where dissent wouldn’t earn you a billy club to the head and an “unplanned and long vacation” to a location that was anything but a summer resort. 

We were, in effect, prisoners of a mistaken understanding of class and socialist partisanship, as well as captured by outward appearances, formalized thinking, and a siege mentality, reinforced by the pressures of the Cold War and a top down leadership structure. Our defense of the Soviet Union wasn’t prima facie wrong. Anti-Sovietism, after all, was a powerful political and ideological weapon of the ruling circles in the U.S., designed to legitimize a constantly expanding military budget, imperialist adventures, and a network of military bases and alliances worldwide on the one hand and portray the Soviet socialism as a failed experiment and a remorseless, expansionary “Evil Empire” on the other hand.

In our zeal to defend “Soviet Power,” however, we dismissed any criticism of Soviet socialism, no matter the source or the argument. It was no more than anti-Soviet animus and tantamount to siding with the enemy, U.S. imperialism, we said. This deeply embedded mindset at every level of the party left no space for a concrete, honest, and many sided evaluation of the Soviet Union, including its centralized bureaucracy, endemic corruption, one-man, one-party rule, and a hollowed out democracy..

Admittedly, I drank the Kool Aid too, up until the mid-1990s. But the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and a nasty (and looking back, unnecessary) breakup of the party later the same year left me with a smoldering, but still inarticulate, feeling that something was awry in our politics, ideology, and culture.

When commingled with my growing reservations in the leadership of Gus and his very loyal assistant in the years that followed, I began to develop a critical – in a sense subversive – eye. But I wasn’t the only one. Some other members of the leadership did as well. 

Still it was 10 years before Gus stepped down at nearly 90 years old, and even then he needed a nudge. 

Now the recounting of this experience may feel like ancient history to most young activists with little relevance to today’s movements and struggles. And maybe that is so. Nevertheless, I will take the liberty and run the risk of derision (at my age and situation in life, it’s not something that worries me) by making a few brief observations.

First, solidarity extended to socialist and anti-imperialist governments and movements should rest on more than their rhetorical claims (which are easy to make) or formal markers of their success (which are to easy to declare) or a shared worldview. Decisions of this kind require independent and critical analysis and judgment.

Second, social justice and left organizations should resist a few making decisions for the many. The latter may seem efficient, but only in the short run, and even in the short run, top down decision making can quickly become come back to bite the vitality and unity of an organization, as I learned the hard way. Admittedly, the creation of a democratic and open ended political culture that encourages critical, collaborative, creative thinking and collective decision making is a challenging task that experience tells us can go off the rails.

Third, the training of a broad and deep team of able leaders and activists who are courageous, modest, good listeners, and think analytically and independently is a foundational cornerstone of any live, growing, and successful organization or movement. 

Fourth, a collective readiness to soberly and unflinchingly acknowledge in a timely way mistakes of policy and practice is imperative, though much easier said than done. Ignoring, minimizing, or, worse still, claiming victory in defeat is an appealing option. But such a choice at some point will come back to bite you. Amilcar Cabral, the anti-colonial leader of Guinea-Bissau decades ago advised as well as warned, and its lost none of its contemporaneity. “Tell no lies, claim no easy victories.” We failed to master this mode of thinking in the Communist Party. 

Finally, theoretical and policy development, such as the relationship between class and democracy, should resist simplifications, designated interpreters, and prescribed boundaries of inquiry. It should allow for complexity and contradiction, insist on independent, continuous elaboration, and practice a method of analysis that is historical and dialectical.