Harry Targ
A NEW SPIRIT OF REVOLUTION: 2015 Observations
David Harvey has written about a “co-revolutionary
theory” of change. In this theory Harvey argues that anti-capitalist movements
today must address “mental conceptions;” uses and abuses of nature; how to
build real communities; workers relations to bosses; exploitation, oppression,
and racism; and the relations between capital and the state. While a tall
order, the co-revolutionary theory suggests the breadth of struggles that need
to be embraced to bring about real revolution.
Harvey’s work mirrors many analysts who address the
deepening crises of capitalism and the spread of human misery everywhere. It is
increasingly clear to vast majorities of people, despite media mystification,
that the primary engine of destruction is global finance capitalism and
political institutions that have increasingly become its instrumentality.
Harvey’s work parallels the insights of Naomi Klein, Joseph Stiglitz, Robert
Reich, Noam Chomsky, and a broad array of economists, historians, trade
unionists, peace and justice activists and thousands of bloggers and Facebook
commentators.
Of course, these theorists could not have known the
ways in which the connections between the co-revolutionary theory and practice
would unfold. Most agreed that we are living through a global economic crisis
in which wealth and power is increasingly concentrated in fewer and fewer hands
(creating a global ruling class). Human misery, from joblessness, to hunger, to
disease, to environmental devastation, to state violence, is spreading. And as
events since Ferguson have pointed out, the links between class exploitation,
structural racism, and patriarchy are inseparable.
But history has shown that such misery can survive for
long periods of time with little active resistance. Even though activists in
labor, in communities of color, in anti-colonial/anti-neo-colonial settings are
always organizing, their campaigns usually create little traction. Not so since
2011. Tunisians rose up against their oppressive government. Larger mobilizations
occurred in Egypt. Protests spread to Yemen, Algeria, Oman, Bahrain, and Libya.
Assuming that working people, youth, women, and
various professional groups would remain quiescent in the United States,
right-wing politicians saw the opportunity to radically transform American
society by destroying public institutions and thereby shifting qualitatively
more wealth from the majority to the minority. In North Carolina, Wisconsin,
and later in Ohio, Indiana, and around the country a broad array of people
began to publicly say “no, enough is enough.” Even those with criticisms of
President Obama continued their mobilization to secure his reelection and the
defeat of the right-wing. Youth, particularly African-Americans, Latinos,
Asian-Americans, and Native Americans, have risen up angry all across the
United States, increasingly deepening their understanding of and demands for
fundamental institutional changes.
The resistance in the Middle East launched in 2011 was
about jobs, redistribution of wealth, limiting foreign financial penetration,
and democracy. In the United States the issues have been even more varied: the
right of workers to collectively bargain, Right-To-Work laws, defending public
education, free access to health care including the defense of reproductive
rights, and greater, not less, provision of jobs, livable wages, and secure
retirement benefits. Police accountability, mass incarceration, and an end of
the “schools to prison pipeline” have been increasingly prioritized in mass
movements.
Where do progressives go from here? I think
“co-revolutionary theory” would answer “everywhere”. Marxists are right to see
the lives of people as anchored in their ability to produce and reproduce
themselves, their families, and their communities. The right to a job at a
living wage remains central to all the ferment. But in the twenty-first century
this basic motivator for consciousness and action is more comprehensively and
intimately connected to rebuilding trade unions, opposition to racism and
sexism, and support for education, health care, sustainable environments, and
peace. All these motivations are part of the same struggle.
It is fascinating to observe that the reaction to the
efforts of the economic ruling class and political elite to turn back the clock
on reforms gained over the last 75 years have sparked resistance and
mobilization from across an array of movements and campaigns. And
activists are beginning to make the connections between the struggles.
It is too early to tell whether this round of ferment
will lead to victories for the people, even reformist ones. But as Harvey
suggests, “An anti-capitalist political movement can start anywhere…The trick
is to keep the political movement moving from one moment to another in mutually
reinforcing ways.”
RECONFIGURING A 21ST CENTURY LEFT IN THE UNITED STATES: More 2015 Observations
Mapping Left/Progressive Forces
-The traditional
Left
- Issue Groups
- Electoral politics
Barack Obama’s historic victory in 2008 sent spirits
soaring. The first African-American President had been elected. Also he had
been an early opponent of the war in Iraq, indicated he supported worker rights
to organize unions, and would take on the Wall Street bankers who were behind
the dramatic economic crisis that was destroying the economy. Liberal pundits
saw Obama’s election as a prelude to the institutionalization of a new New Deal
that would reconstitute a reformist state for years to come. And, these pundits
argued, the Obama electoral coalition would make the 2008 election a
transformative one: liberal Democrats would dominate the federal government and
several pivotal states in the East, Midwest, West, Southwest, and in a few
Southern states. The eight-year foreign and domestic policy disasters of the
Bush years, of necessity, would lead to a new and brighter future.
The years since 2008 did not work out the way the celebrants
predicted. First, Wall Street dominance of the political system survived the
public outcries to break up the banks, convict the criminal CEOs, and
reestablish regulations of banking and finance.
Second, despite demilitarization of Iraq and Afghanistan,
the military/industrial complex and the advocates of humanitarian interventions
around the world continued to influence the character of United States foreign
policy. From the disastrous policies toward Libya, Syria, Yemen, and the use of
drone warfare to avoid “boots on the ground,” to sending more troops into
failed trouble-spots such as Afghanistan, the pursuit of U.S. empire prevailed.
Third, while unemployment rates dropped and the auto
industry was saved, support for labor organizing continued to decline, real
wages remained stagnant, and those workers who returned to employment were
earning less in real wages than workers had made thirty or forty years ago.
And finally, almost literally wars on people of color,
youth, and women escalated during the Obama years. Incarceration rates
continued to rise. Police violence against the citizenry rose. Attacks on
women’s health and reproductive services grew stronger. And new federal and
state educational policies were adopted (charter schools, vouchers, egregious
testing of young people) that weakened the quality of education particularly
for poor, Black, and Latino children. Vicious racism which has been
a feature of United States history since the founding of the nation was
rekindled by the Tea Party, rightwing media outlets, and major contingents of
the Republican Party.
Bringing the Left/Progressive Forces
Together
As 2016 approaches, debates about the causes of the
retaliation against the modest gains brought about by the 2008 electoral
victory should shift to discussions about how to move ahead. It can be said
that broad sectors of the American people—workers, people of color, youth,
women—believe that creating a new society is critical and possible. But today
people with a passion for fundamental social change have coalesced around a
diverse array of strategies, ideas, visions, experiences, and practices. By
identifying core components of those who are working for change, we can begin
to see how unity out of diversity of thought and action can be achieved.
First, despite efforts of historians to deny it, there
has been a vibrant Left tradition in the United States. Wobblies, Communists,
Socialists, and Anarchists built the modern labor movement, struggled against
racism, advocated for women’s rights, and opposed United States
imperialism. Today the traditional Left, manifested in
political parties with historical pedigrees, still meet, advocate, organize,
and agitate. In addition, newer generations of left activists have begun to
dialogue about rebuilding the traditional Left, with 21st century
characteristics. Older and younger Socialists and Communists are beginning to
talk together about what was relevant from the past and what can be learned for
the present and the future. Both seek to link radical theory to radical
practice. The traditional Left prioritizes viewing and acting to transform
basic economic and political institutions, even as it engages in a political
system in which discourse emphasizes reform rather than revolution.
A second tradition, the mobilization of issue
groups, is deeply embedded in American political history. Groups motivated
by opposition to particular outrages--destruction of the environment, police
killings of young black men, attacks on reproductive rights, efforts to reduce
the rights of citizens to vote, the marginalization and deportation of
immigrants—form to address immediate concrete peoples’ concerns. Most issue
groups share the sense that there are deep structural causes of the problems
they oppose but they believe that immediate action to address their specific
problem takes first priority. The issue orientation is part of the narrative
about American “democracy.” From James Madison, to Alexis de Tocqueville, to
modern political science, citizens are told that things change when citizens
organize around lobby groups. Issue groups implicitly, if not explicitly,
embrace an interest group model of political life.
Sometimes issue group mobilizations seek to blend campaigns
about interests with moral claims. Throughout American history many issue
groups—such as those addressing war or racism—have organized on the basis of
moral arguments. Finally, it should be mentioned that some
progressives are engaged in building alternative social institutions, such as
cooperatives, to address issues of worker rights, community power, and economic
justice. Here the activities seek to circumvent centers of power by working on
new grassroots partnerships.
A third political tradition, also with deep roots in
the American experience, prioritizes electoral politics. Sometimes
progressives have sought to participate in one or both of the two major
political parties. At various points in US history, vibrant third parties have
formed, despite restrictive electoral laws, to articulate new policies,
programs, and visions. Efforts to transform major parties or organizing
alternative parties have been features of state and local political life as
well. Central to electoral political approaches is the proposition that for
most Americans, politics is seen as involving elections. Also, it is clear that
the dramatic shift toward reaction in recent years is intimately connected to
the election of rightwing politicians at the national, state, and local levels,
often as a result of low voter turnout. Sectors of the political class, such as
the Koch brothers, have used their enormous financial resources to transform
political institutions and public policy. As Reverend William Barber and others
have pointed out, contemporary politics is about the struggle between the
super-rich and the many.
Having mapped a 21st century “US Left,” several
tentative conclusions about political practice emerge.
Millions of Americans identify with traditions of
reform and/or revolution and that the roots of these have been deeply embedded
in American history. Social and economic change has occurred because of the
multiplicity of efforts from all of these traditions.
In addition, a significant portion of those who
participate in issue groups and progressive electoral politics share the
sentiment of the traditional Left that fundamental, systemic, and revolutionary
change is needed if social and economic justice is to be achieved.
And perhaps most fundamentally, given the growing
power of political reaction, the traditional Left, issue groups, and those
working in electoral politics need to find ways to work together and support
each other if some kind of humane and environmentally sustainable society is to
be created.
TODAY: 2021
I am coming to the view that at this stage, with all the horrors described above magnified by four years of Donald Trump and the rise of white supremacist and neo-fascists, folks need
to figure out how we can support each other in the multiplicity of honorable
struggles against racism, sexism, homophobia, worker exploitation,
environmental despoilation and for healthcare for all, the right to form
unions, cutting military spending and nuclear weapons, guaranteed income, the
Green New Deal etc. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of movement
organizations out there (a 2015 data-base estimated that there were 500
progressive organizations in the United States grouped in ten issue
categories). Maybe a slogan like "building the progressive majority"
or working with multi-issue movements such as the New Poor People's Campaign is
the most effective route for most of us to follow today (whether inside left
organizations, single issue groups, or not affiliated with any of these).
In the end, no matter how we do it, we need to be
engaged in the struggles for humanity.
