💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › wayne-price-liberal-illusions-and-delusions.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 14:49:03. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: Liberal Illusions and Delusions Author: Wayne Price Date: May 3, 2018 Language: en Topics: liberals, USA, Trump, Democratic Party Source: Retrieved on 2018-08-25 from https://web.archive.org/web/20180825011311/http://utopianmag.com/articles/the-eclipse-of-class-or-keeping-the-vision-alive
Facing the Trump regime, there are several different liberal delusions
(although these views are also held by many who regard themselves as
radicals). One is to see Trump as leading pretty directly to fascism and
another believes that Trumpism does not really represent a major change
in U.S. politics.The view that the U.S. is approaching fascism is based
on an unrealistic expectation that the U.S. government is—or at least
ought to be—a fair and open democracy, as portrayed in high school
civics classes.
Instead, many people are shocked—shocked!—when the state acts in an
undemocratic, unjust, and authoritarian manner (I am not thinking of
young people, new to politics, but to older people who should know
better). What, the government lies to us!Elections are distorted and
votes are suppressed! African-Americans are killed by police at random!
Public opinions (on gun reform or the environment) are ignored by
elected “representatives”—who are really agents of the wealthy! The
government attacks people in countries with which the U.S. is not at
war! And so on. Therefore the conclusion is often reached that the U.S.
is undemocratic and on the road to fascism, or perhaps is already
fascist.
On the contrary—this is what capitalist democracy looks like. It is a
system, which serves the interests of the capitalist class and its
systemic need for capital accumulation. “The three wealthiest people in
this country own more wealth than the bottom half of American society.
The top one-tenth of one percent now owns as much wealth as the bottom
90 percent.” (Bernie Sanders in an interview with John Nichols for The
Nation 4/2018; p. 4.) How could such an arrangement permit true
democracy? Instead, the system of representative democracy permits
factions of the capitalist class to fight out their differences and make
decisions.And it fools the mass of working people into thinking that
they really control the state—that they really are free.
At times things have been worse.The ‘50s were part of the “golden age”
of capitalism, the prosperous years following World War II. They were
also the years of the anti-communist hysteria and McCarthyite
witch-hunt.Thousands of leftists were persecuted, jailed, or thrown out
of their jobs in government, universities, public schools, unions,
entertainment, and other private businesses.Meanwhile, the whole of the
South was under legal segregation, the vicious oppression of
African-Americans. This was enforced by the law and by the terror of the
Klan.The anti-communist repression and the legal Jim Crow laws were
defeated by the 70s.This was done by the massive struggles of
African-Americans and by the movement against the war in Vietnam, and
other efforts.
There has since been a rightist backlash. This includes the rise of a
real fascist movement, one that aims to overthrow bourgeois democracy
and replace it with a political dictatorship.Trump has encouraged these
people to come out into the light.However, the neo-Nazis, Klanspeople,
and advocates of a theocracy are still a small minority, even of Trump’s
followers.All parts of the establishment, including businesspeople, high
military officials, and leading Republicans have denounced them.There
has not been an effort to cancel elections, establish a
president-for-life, ban all but one political party, outlaw unions,
throw political radicals into concentration camps, legally persecute
Jews, LGBT people, and women, and reinstall African-American
slavery.That is what fascism would really be, and it is not what we are
currently facing.Claiming that we are confronting an immediate fascist
threat from Trump weakens us when we deal with real fascists.
This may lead to the other illusion.Since Trumpism isn’t fascism, then
perhaps it is nothing new or important. The vile Trump is then seen as
an accidental president with personal peculiarities.Therefore he will be
defeated in 2020 (if not impeached before that). Then U.S. politics will
return to “normal.”Hopefully a moderately liberal Democrat—or at least a
not-crazy Republican—will be elected.Progress marches on.
This approach ignores what is new and dangerous in U.S. politics.Just
as, in regard to climate change, we are not facing immediate ecological
catastrophe, but there is no more “normal weather.” So, in politics, we
are not facing imminent fascism, but there are no more “normal
politics.”Since the early 70s, the post-World War II prosperity has
ended, and the overall direction of the world economy has been toward
stagnation in real production, growth of empty financial and speculative
“wealth”, increased inequality within and between nations, and limited
and fragile growth even in the “up” phase of the economy.In order to
keep and expand profits, the bourgeoisie has attacked the world working
class, in various ways.In the U.S.A., the main political instrument of
this attack has been the Republican Party. Now completely controlled by
far-right reactionaries (“conservatives”), it has become the cutting
edge of the assault on the working class, as well as on women,
African-Americans, Latinos/as, LGBT people, and the environment.
In 2008, much of the public was fed up by eight years of George W’s
Republican administration.The capitalist class gave them someone
apparently different, the first Black presidential candidate.Besides
electing Obama, the Democrats expanded their majorities in both
congressional houses. In reaction, the Republican response did not
seriously try to increase their voting base. For example, they could
have tried appealing to the increasing population of Latinos/as. But
such an appeal would antagonize their existing base of nativist-racist
white people, even if this sector was declining in population. And there
was a limit as to how much they could appeal to the voters, since their
real program of cutting taxes on the rich and cutting benefits for
working people had only limited attraction. So instead they sought to
build in political control, to “rig the game”.
With an unprecedented flood of money, they mobilized their racist,
nativist, fanatical base of white, middle class and upper working class
people, especially men and especially evangelicals. Republicans whipped
up sexual hysteria over abortion choice or rights for homosexuals and
trans people.The dupes were organized, through the Tea Party and such,
to take over state legislatures. “Their plan [was] to remake America not
from DC down, but from the statehouse up.” (William Barber, The Third
Reconstruction. 2016; xiv) They won control of the majority of state
governments. There they expanded efforts to suppress votes among People
of Color, youth, and women. Also a very conscious plan was carried out
to gerrymander the voting districts of each state, to give the
Republicans a big advantage.Democrats had gerrymandered too, in the
past, but the extent and the methods (using computer maps) were
unusual.This was not a particularly secret strategy (see the history in
Joan Walsh, “The 7,383 Seat Strategy” The Nation 4/2018). Meanwhile a
huge right-wing media machine was created, from radio, to Fox
television, to the Internet.
These methods did not mean that Democrats could not defeat Republicans
in elections.But it became much harder, requiring more effort and more
money.There was an extra pull to the right, so that Democrats needed to
be more “moderate,” less “liberal,” to have a chance of winning in the
biased political system.
By 2017, the Republicans controlled 32 state governments. If they get
control of two more states, they would have the legal power to call a
constitutional convention—to alter the U.S. constitution. They have
actually discussed this in conservative circles. If they reached this
threshold of power, they would not set up a one-party dictatorship. They
do not have popular or elite support for this.But they could gut the
power of the national government to regulate business, to protect the
environment or labor, or to enforce various democratic rights.
Many liberals believe that the republic can be saved by impeaching
Trump.No matter how many illegal, unconstitutional, or immoral things
Trump has done, it is impossible that he could be impeached so long as
the Republicans hold majorities in both houses of Congress.The current
Republican Party is so corrupt that it has done its best to derail and
discredit the investigations into Trump’s activities.Even their supposed
super-patriotism has wilted under Trump’s connections with
Russia.Therefore passing a bill of impeachment would require a
Democratic majority in the House of Representatives—which is quite
possible. Then actually expelling Trump would require a two-thirds
majority of Democrats and “moderate” Republicans in the Senate—which is
highly unlikely. Polls generally show that most U.S. citizens, including
Democrats, are opposed to impeachment.This makes support for it unlikely
among Democratic politicians from “purple” states, let along “moderate”
Republicans.Historically, only two presidents were impeached (in the
House) but neither was expelled (by the Senate). And suppose impeachment
did work. The result would be... President Mike Pence! Perhaps the
shakeup would be another sign that the system was in crisis, but...all
that effort for so little effect.
The biggest illusion of the liberals is that the attack on the people by
the Republicans can be beaten back by supporting the Democratic Party.
The whole of U.S. politics exists to channel discontent into one or the
other of the two big parties.Both are supporters of capitalism and the
national state, both rely on big money contributions, both seek to
ingratiate themselves with sectors of big business, and both are the
enemy of the working class and most of the rest of the population.
The already cited article by Joan Walsh of The Nation reports on efforts
by rebellious people, new to political action, to work through the
Democrats. However, she notes a problem: “The Democratic Congressional
Campaign Committee, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and
the Democratic Legislative Committee—as well as state-party operations
and legislative-caucus groups—all come to function as
incumbent-protection committees...[causing] the party’s failure to reach
out to its grass roots, especially at the state level....” (4/18; p.
17)She reports on valiant attempts of women, youth, and others to break
through the old-timers establishment.But even if these efforts were to
succeed, basic problems would continue.
What drives people to the Democrats is the horrible failures of the
Republicans.But what has driven people to the Republicans has been the
horrible failure of the Democrats. After eight years of a Democratic
president (which had included two years of a Democratic majority in
Congress), there was still so much suffering and stagnation that a
bombastic demagogue could appeal to a great many people.Even the best of
the left-liberal Democrats (the Warren-Sanders wing) has no real answers
to the decay of capitalism.If people swing to the “left,” to throw out
the Republicans, the Democrats will be unable to improve things
significantly—and there will be another swing back to the right.
As the anarchist Paul Goodman said in the ‘sixties, even a huge
electoral swing to the Democrats, even to their liberal wing, would come
up against “the massiveness of the status quo and its established
powers, venal, blimpish, police-ridden, prejudiced, and illiberal,
officially existing in the Pentagon, the Treasury, the FBI, the Civil
Service...a large part of congress.” (Paul Goodman, “The devolution of
democracy”; Drawing the Line 1962; 62) Today we can add the continued
existence of far-right organizations, funded by big money, and far-right
media.Even with a swing to the “left” (if the Democrats may be called
that), there will still be 30 to 40 % of the population which lives in a
crazed far-right fantasy bubble, supporting Trump or, at least,
Trump-like politics.While only a minority of these people are outright
fascists, they still amount to about one out of every three U.S.
citizens—a lot of people. Meanwhile the decay of capitalism goes on
(even during the current limited “recovery”) and the attack on the
working class continues by the whole capitalist class, including its
“liberal” wing. Gainsmay still be won, but only limited ones.
These forces cannot be defeated by politics as usual, by rushing into
the Democratic Party, or by running in elections. They need to be met by
independent mass direct action by working people and all oppressed.
Anarchists and other radicals need to raise maximal programs of
opposition to the whole rotten system, in all its economic, political,
environmental, and cultural aspects. As Goodman concluded his already
cited essay, “If...catastrophe [is to be] prevented, we must do it by
action outside of their politics, by every means and on every relevant
issue.” (77)