Code Pink image
PROCESSES OF CHANGE AND PATTERNS OF RESISTANCE
Harry Targ
(In an
extraordinary rebuke to Donald Trump on Thursday,
the Indiana state Senate rejected a gerrymandered congressional map
relentlessly pushed by the president and his allies that would have given
Republicans a lopsided 9-0 advantage in the state’s House delegation by eliminating
the seats of two Democratic members of Congress. The final vote was 31-19 in
the state Senate, where Republicans have a supermajority: Twenty-one
Republicans joined 10 Democrats to defeat the legislation.
Republican state
senators who opposed the gerrymandered map sharply criticized the months-long
pressure campaign by Trump and his allies, which led to threats of violence
and intimidation against at least
11 state lawmakers.)
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/12/indiana-republican-redistricting-trump-bill-fails/
Change
Upon historical reflection we have seen many paths to social/political/ economic change. Some are great leaps, others incremental movements from one kind of political order to another. The Russian Revolution had its roots in multiple failed mobilizations and an outburst of protest in 1917 that led to a reformist, then a revolutionary government that step by step moved the society along. Not all the moves were wise, humane, or in keeping with original goals, but they were changes, nevertheless. For China, revolution entailed a long military struggle and the same case for Vietnam. Lastly, the Cuban case involved armed struggle, followed by policy implementations of various sorts.
A more modest set of changes over fifty years in the United States was initiated by a New Deal, followed by a Fair Deal, and a Great Society. These were halting and sometimes forestalled more fundamental changes. But I think it is fair to say that in each case the lives of majorities were positively impacted by the change. And whether it is revolutionary or reformist, we want people’s lives to be improved and pain and suffering reduced. Maybe that should be our standard for judging candidates, policies, institutions, and visions. Any all those that improve lives should be supported, only asking how can we do better?
Patterns of Resistance
Of course, ruling classes, oligarchs, generals, and others
seek to resist change
and reverse it if at all possible. Sometimes regimes emerge which seek to
damage rather than improve lives. They seek to reverse progress
because such reversal serves their own interests. They use corruption, lies,
police forces, and armies to reverse what has already been achieved.
Progressives must always be wary of those who will undermine human progress.
And when the reactionaries gain power resistances are called for.
What we are seeing today in the United States and countries elsewhere, are sustained efforts to reverse human progress. But Patterns of Resistance to reversals of human progress must and do emerge to protect what has been gained and to stop the erosion of human progress. Patterns of Resistance in our own day take a variety of forms: protests, rallies, electoral campaigns, popular education, building social movements and political parties, and in some places armed resistance takes place. Those seeking to protect the gains in human progress need to study, learn from, and organize patterns of resistance that are viable in communities, cities, and the nation at large. Patterns of resistance vary. All should be viewed as part of the processes of change that are moving society further in the direction of human progress.
In the dark days of Trumpism, let us celebrate elections in New York, Seattle and elsewhere, the mobilization of communities in Chicago who stand against military thugs, massive rallies in towns and cities throughout the nation, groups who organize against racism, sexism, war, and for access to education and healthcare and give support to our brothers and sisters who oppose armed imperialism in their countries. And, perhaps most of all, we should create unity in our common struggles for uplifting humankind.
THE WORLD TODAY: EXPLORING WHAT WE
KNOW
Harry Targ
https://soundcloud.com/user-240416425/2025-10-14-2000-grass-is
Reality and Appearance
…the most important contradiction of all [is] that between reality and
appearance in the world in which we live (David
Harvey, Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism, Oxford
University Press, 2014, 6).
In David Harvey’s opening chapter “On Contradiction,” the
author refers to Karl Marx’s discussion of narratives about life that are
distortions of reality. He quotes Marx: “If everything were as it appeared on
the surface there would be no need for science.” He interprets Marx’s
admonitions as requiring us to “get behind the surface appearances if we are to
act coherently in the world.” (Harvey, 6)
How the world is framed; Spokespersons
from the Hegemonic Power and the Global South
(The
essay below was originally written in 2022 just after President Gustavo Petro
spoke at the United Nations for the first time In 2023 he spoke again. He later
was interviewed by Amy Goodman and elaborated on the perspective of the Global
South about peace, justice, and the threat to human survival. https://youtu.be/6-6Ni7jbi3U?si=CdPsWUWWOTFFUsDw)
After his recent speeches in September, 2025 at the United Nations and his appearance at a rally for Palestine, the United States revoked his visa. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz9jv8kne7no
The peace and justice movements in the US (and elsewhere)
must connect our struggles against fascism at home with imperialism worldwide
and link our visions with those in the Global South who have engaged in
struggles against imperialism for years and years (close the bases, stop the
bombings, end the genocide against Gaza, end the Cuban blockade, stop the
aggression against Venezuela, end deportations etc. . And we must show how
these campaigns are inextricably connected to huge military budgets, inadequate
healthcare and education, climate disasters, racism, and patriarchy. This is
tough stuff but necessary.
Insights from Social Science
A long time ago the eminent political scientist Murray
Edelman wrote a book entitled The Symbolic Uses of Politics. In
it he postulated that most people experience the political world not through
concrete reality but through emotional symbols. For example, the classic way in
which people relate to their political institutions is through the flag of
their nation. Americans viewing the flag see images of men in combat fighting
for freedom or men and women standing in line waiting to vote for their
preferred political candidates. A colorful cloth with stars and stripes gets
transformed in our consciousness into a rich, glamorized history even when
the emotive images are in direct contradiction with people’s lives.
In addition, Edelman
suggests the ways in which the emotional symbols get embedded and reinforced in
the consciousness of peoples by borrowing from anthropological writings on myth
and ritual. Myths are networks of emotional symbols that collectively tell a
story that explains “reality.” Rituals reinforce in behavior the mythology of
public life. We need only reflect on the pledge to the flag that opens
elementary and secondary school class sessions in rich and poor communities
alike or regular meetings of AFL-CIO labor councils.
Edelman pointed out that emotional symbols (he called them condensational”)
provide the primary way people connect with the world beyond immediate
experience. The extraordinary complexity of the modern world is reduced to a
series of powerful symbols such as the threats of “international communism” or
“terrorism.”
Media analyst Todd Gitlin, wrote about “media frames;” that is the ways in
which media construct the symbols and myths that shape information about the
world. Print media shapes what we read, who are regarded as authoritative
spokespersons, and what visual images shape our thinking about countries,
issues such as war and peace, trade, investment, and the global climate.
Television emphasizes visual images rather than words. Whatever the media form,
points of view are embedded in the words and images communicated.
Writers such as Noam Chomsky, Michael Parenti, and Robert McChesney accept implicitly Edelman’s counsel that people experience the world indirectly and usually in emotional form. They also assume, as does Gitlin, that what we read, see, and hear about the world is framed for us. They go further to suggest that what Marx called the “false conceptions about ourselves” in symbols, myths, rituals, and frames are usually the product of ruling class interests.
How the Washington Post Sees the World
Charles
Lane, “Migration’s ‘Root Cause” is Latin American Socialist
Dictatorship, Washington Post, September 21, 2022
wrote about the migration this year of 200,000 Cubans from the
island. He also pointed out that such migrations over the years have involved
thousands of fleeing Venezuelans: “The exodus is thus a
tremendous compliment to the United States and other democratic capitalist
countries. We should appreciate it.”
For Lane, the “root cause” of such migrations, of course, is communist dictatorship, a pattern of people fleeing their home countries because of dictatorship and failed economies. Lane may have been aware of the declassified State Department document, The Decline and Fall of Castro,” quoted in a speech by Senator Patrick Leahy, February 7, 2022 that US policy’s “purpose was “denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation, and the overthrow of [the] government.” Cuba became the model for applying economic sanctions against governments who the US tried to bring down.
Today US sanctions have
been levied against 39 countries. And in most cases, while citizens of these
countries suffer, most remained committed to their governments and/or reject
United States intervention. And Cuba, despite Lane’s dismissal of Cuba as a dictatorship,
has remained a beacon of hope, a model of economic and political development
for the global south. Health care is free, Education is free. Cubans in their
communities discuss and debate issues and vote on key constitutional changes.
Most recently this is illustrated by the national vote on a proposed new Family
Code to give legitimacy and rights to all kinds of families and children. And
paradoxically virtually every country in the world (except for the US and
Israel) condemns the US economic blockade.
And in another editorial statement on the Chinese
“challenge” to the United States the author writes: “In just over 40 years, the
People’s Republic of China has arisen from the political chaos and poverty of
the Mao Zedong era to become a powerhouse on the world stage. Its unmistakable
clout is intensifying its rivalry with the United States over which country
will dominate the global order and, crucially, which system will stand as the
world’s political and economic model: the authoritarianism and
state capitalism of China, or the liberal democracy and market-oriented economy
of the United States.” Thus, the media frame is global competition
between authoritarianism and “state capitalism” versus markets and democracy
(Dexter Roberts, “At Stake in the U.S.-China rivalry: The Shape of the Global
Political Order,” Washington Post, September, 22, 2022).
And the Washington Post and other
corporate media usually reflect a common agenda. For example, from a Washington
Post editorial, May 21, 2016:
“HARDLY A day goes by without evidence that the liberal international order of the past seven decades is being eroded. China and Russia are attempting to fashion a world in their own illiberal image…This poses an enormous trial for the next U.S. president. We say trial because no matter who takes the Oval Office, it will demand courage and difficult decisions to save the liberal international order. As a new report from the Center for a New American Security points out, this order is worth saving…”
But How Others See the United States:
The Powerful Voice of the New President of Colombia Gustavo Petro
Recently elected president of Colombia Gustavo Petro made a
powerful presentation at the opening of the United Nations General Assembly on
the plunder of the Global South by the Global North, a portrait markedly
different from the view of the “liberal international order” repeated over and
over again by the corporate media and foreign policy spokespersons of the
United States. Petro’s major points concluded the following:
THE WORLD IS DIVERSE IN ITS LANDS, LIVING THINGS, AND PEOPLE
“I come from one of the three most beautiful countries on Earth.
There is an explosion of
life there. Thousands of multicolored species in the seas, in the skies, in the
lands…I come from the land of yellow butterflies and magic. There in the
mountains and valleys of all greens, not only do the abundant waters flow down,
but also the torrents of blood. I come from a land of bloody beauty.”
BUT THE WORLD ALSO IS A
VIOLENT PLACE
“The jungle that tries
to save us, is at the same time, destroyed. To destroy the coca plant, they
spray poisons, glyphosate in mass that runs through the waters, they arrest its
growers and imprison them. For destroying or possessing the coca leaf, one million
Latin Americans are killed and two million Afro-Americans are imprisoned in
North America. Destroy the plant that kills, they shout from the North, but the
plant is but one more of the millions that perish when they unleash the fire on
the jungle. Destroying the jungle, the Amazon, has become the slogan followed
by States and businessmen. The cry of scientists baptizing the rainforest as
one of the great climatic pillars is important.”
AND THE CAUSE OF THE VIOLENCE? THE GREED OF THE GLOBAL NORTH
“For the world’s power relations, the jungle and its inhabitants are to blame for the plague that plagues them. The power relations are plagued by the addiction to money, to perpetuate themselves, to oil, to cocaine and to the hardest drugs to be able to anesthetize themselves more. Nothing is more hypocritical than the discourse to save the rainforest. The jungle is burning, gentlemen, while you make war and play with it. The rainforest, the climatic pillar of the world, disappears with all its life.”
AND THE VICTIMS? LAND
AND PEOPLE
"Coca and the
peasants who grow it, because they have nothing else to grow, are demonized.
You are only interested in my country to spray poisons on our jungles, to take
our men to jail and put our women in exclusion. You are not interested in the education
of the child, but in killing its jungle and extracting coal and oil from its
entrails. The sponge that absorbs the poison is useless, they prefer to throw
more poisons into the atmosphere.”
AND THE PURSUIT OF POWER IS TO MAKE UP FOR THE EMPTINESS OF CONSUMER SOCIETY
“These are the things of
world power, things of injustice, things of irrationality, because world power
has become irrational. They see in the exuberance of the jungle, in its
vitality, the lustful, the sinful; the guilty origin of the sadness of their societies,
imbued with the unlimited compulsion to have and to consume. How to hide the
loneliness of the heart, its dryness in the midst of societies without
affection, competitive to the point of imprisoning the soul in solitude, if not
by blaming the plant, the man who cultivates it, the libertarian secrets of the
jungle.
According to the
irrational power of the world, it is not the fault of the market that cuts back
on existence, it is the fault of the jungle and those who inhabit it. The bank
accounts have become unlimited, the money saved by the most powerful of the earth
will not even be able to be spent in the time of the centuries.”
THE CULPRIT? MONEY AND
UNBRIDLED CONSUMPTION
“The culprit is their society educated in endless consumption, in the stupid confusion between consumption and happiness that allows the pockets of power to fill with money. The culprit of drug addiction is not the jungle, it is the irrationality of your world power. Try to give some reason to your power. Turn on the lights of the century again. The war on drugs has lasted 40 years, if we do not correct the course and it continues for another 40 years, the United States will see 2,800,000 young people die of overdose from fentanyl, which is not produced in our Latin America. It will see millions of Afro-Americans imprisoned in its private jails.
The Afro-prisoner will
become a business of prison companies, a million more Latin Americans will die
murdered, our waters and our green fields will be filled with blood, the dream
of democracy will die in my America as well as in Anglo-Saxon America.”.
THE EXCUSE FOR
DESPOILING NATURE AND MAKING PERSONS EXPENDABLE
“They invaded in the
name of oil and gas. They discovered in the 21st century the worst of their
addictions: addiction to money and oil. Wars have served them as an excuse not
to act against the climate crisis. Wars have shown them how dependent they are
on what will kill the human species.
If you observe that the
peoples are filling up with hunger and thirst and migrating by the millions
towards the north, towards where the water is; then you enclose them, build
walls, deploy machine guns, shoot at them. You expel them as if they were not human
beings, you reproduce five times the mentality of those who politically created
the gas chambers and the concentration camps, you reproduce on a planetary
scale 1933.”
LATIN AMERICA (AND THE
WORLD) MUST UNITE AGAINST THIS SYSTEM OF GLOBAL ECONOMIC AND MILITARY POWER
“If you do not have the
capacity to finance the fund for the revitalization of the forests, if it
weighs more to allocate money to weapons than to life, then reduce the foreign
debt to free our own budgetary spaces and with them, carry out the task of saving
humanity and life on the planet. We can do it if you don’t want to. Just
exchange debt for life, for nature. I propose, and I call upon Latin America to
do so, to dialogue in order to end the war. Do not pressure us to align
ourselves in the fields of war.
It is time for PEACE.
Let the Slavic peoples
talk to each other, let the peoples of the world talk to each other. War is
only a trap that brings the end of time closer in the great orgy of
irrationality.
What Does All This Mean
for Peace and Justice Activists
There are lessons to be learned by analyzing significant narratives of the contemporary world order. First, narratives are inextricably connected to the position from which the narrative comes. Is the narrative one disseminated by spokespersons of the wealthiest country in the world or from a spokesperson from a poor and marginalized country, for example? Second, narratives often reflect the interests of the powerful, economically, politically, and militarily or the interests of most nations and peoples. Third, these narratives have consequences. They justify policies that may or may not be in the interests of humanity. They may justify violence, plunder of resources, the exploitation of workers or they may envision a future of greater equality and the satisfaction of human needs. Finally, as Edelman, Gitlin, Chomsky and Herman, and others suggest our understanding of the world is often controlled and manipulated by those in power. Today the dominant symbols, myths, and media frames from the Global North must be challenged.
***
TRUMP MAKES "WAR" ON EVERYONE
Code Pink
A Washington Post editorial correctly asserted that the old name, The Department of War, more accurately describes what the agency of the US government does than the cold war euphemism, the Department of Defense, a renaming in 1947. The editorial points out that our use of words becomes embedded in our collective consciousness such that we begin to incorporate ideology in our thinking.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/09/05/war-department-defense-trump-rebrand/
However, President
Trump’s dicta to rename the Department of Defense to the Department of War has
a deeper meaning as well. The same week he unilaterally renamed the
instrumentality of US imperialism to clearly call it “war,” he ordered an
attack on a Venezuelan "ship", killing those on board, claiming with
no evidence that the vessel was shipping drugs to the United States. This
attack was supported by the “Defense Department’s” placing of other ships in
the Caribbean and implicit military threats against the government of
Venezuela. And, of course, the United States has been arming and funding “war”
in the Middle East. And we know that in the name of “defense” the United States
has placed some 900 bases around the world and has authorized almost a trillion
dollars for more “defense,” or more accurately “war,” in the future.
But along with peace
movement reminders of the escalating US war-making capacity, and naming it as
such, attention must also be addressed to war-making at home. Agents of the US
government, along with the FBI, such as ICE and the National Guard, have begun
to make war on the American people. ICE agents and soldiers have occupied and
attacked communities within the United States such as in Los Angeles, and as we
reflect, threaten to send military troops to Chicago, Baltimore, New Orleans
and elsewhere. Most of the war-makers are being sent to locations in which
majorities of voters are Democrats, and the mayor of these
cities are African American.
In short, the United
States government is making war on targets outside the continental United
States and against people within the United States.
If ever in US history, there is a need for the forces of peace and justice to unite it is now. The renaming of the Department of Defense, as the Post admits, is a frank admission of what the project and vision of the Trump administration is, to make war on people everywhere.
PROGRESSIVE
MOVEMENTS IN THE UNITED STATES: Reflections on History as a Guide to the Future
("I'VE BEEN ON THE LEFT FOR 60 YEARS. I know
the full range of socialist and communist groups. Since the demise of the
Weather Underground 40 years ago, I don't know a single group that's into violence or terrorism of any sort,
even against Charlie Kirk and others like him," Carl
Davidson, from Facebook)
Harry Targ
What
are Progressive Movements?
Marx believed that all history was the history of class
struggle. Class struggle was basic to history because all societies were class
societies. Those classes that owned or controlled production, such as the
factories or fields, gained disproportionately while those who worked as
slaves, servants, or wage workers gained less.
Therefore, basic to the production and reproduction of life in class societies is inequality in wealth, power, and control which generates conflicts of interest. As history unfolds, these conflicts of interest spill over into mobilizations to demand change. The demands may be modest or fundamental. Sometimes mobilizations to create change, such as for a fair wage, escalate to demands for qualitative change, such as to destroy the economic and/or political system of inequality. Revolutionary movements are motivated by the belief that the basic institutions of society cause exploitation and oppression and therefore must be replaced by new institutions. Reformist movements wish to change some institutions and/or policies to alleviate human problems.
The Marxian assumption is that inequality in wealth, and
therefore power, is basic to capitalist societies. As a consequence the
economic organization of society fundamentally shapes all its institutions and
relationships, including politics and culture. However, some inequalities,
while parallel to and significant for the system of wealth and power, are
derived from institutions, interests, and ideologies integral to but not
necessarily derived from the economic system. Racism and sexism are vital to
capitalist exploitation but have their roots in institutions and cultures
preceding it. Racism is a system of control based on social constructions of
race; that is institutional definitions of superior and inferior “races.”
Patriarchy is a system of power and control tied to gender. In addition to the
economic structures of society, systems of racial oppression, and patriarchy,
institutionalized forms of domination and subordination have existed
based on religious beliefs or other characteristics of difference. In
other words, the basic inequalities in wealth and power generated by class have
been reinforced and replicated throughout societies in different economic,
social, political, and cultural realms.
Given systems of inequality in wealth and power and the negative consequences of these inequalities, demands for change of varying kindsare essential features of societies. As suggested above, individuals and groups organize from time to time to create change: workers, people of color, women, or peoples of faith, for example. Progressive movements are coalitions of groups who come together to bring about changes in policies and/or institutions to improve the lives of people and to reduce inequalities in wealth, power, and/or status. They may come together to address issues of class, race, gender, religious toleration, or specific problems such as abuse of the environment. More radical coalitions have a vision of changing several realms of economic, political, social, and cultural reality at once. Progressive movements are coalitions of groups who agree to work together because of some common purpose even if they do not share a particular understanding of history, economic and political structures, or a particular view of human possibilities. They realize that with numbers there is power and that a mass movement is needed to bring about some of the changes they desire.
Kinds of Social Movements
Political activism varies from country to country based on
history and context. Some countries experience more mass mobilizations, street
protests, frequent ouster of leaders, and violence than others. Also some
countries have longer histories of leftwing political parties and Socialist
movements than others. Despite the significant variation in political
histories, it is important to remember that social movements are basic to
history and historical change.
Social movements differ as to vision and purpose and strategy and tactics. Movements have been created to solve specific problems in institutions or policies. These are single issue movements. Groups organize living wage campaigns, work to end particular wars, demand environmental protections, seek to protect women’s right to choose and work on a whole host of other important issues. In societies like the United States there are literally thousands of groups seeking changes that would improve humankind in some way and single-issue groups constitute the vast majority of this organized political activity.
Other movements are multi-issue, that is, they believe that
issues of class, race, gender, the environment, and peace are interconnected
and require a common approach to problem solving. Political parties committed
to significant change, such as the Greens, serve this kind of purpose. Most
mainstream parties, while they address a multiplicity of issues, do not have a
vision or commitment to significant change.
Many movements are reformist, that is they promote modest
but significant changes. Usually, they work toward some policy change or
institutional adjustment in the polity. Others organize with the goal of
radically transforming economic and political institutions. Their vision is
considerably more comprehensive drawing upon a systemic analysis of the
underlying flaws in the economic and political order. Of course, Socialist
movements foresee the overthrow of the capitalist system and its replacement by
a humane Socialist society. These movements are revolutionary.
Life is considerably more complicated than simple
categorization schemes and social movements often consist of persons seeking
change on individual issues as well as broader structural change. Also
activists in particular social movements may be motivated by a desire to reform
while others may share more revolutionary visions of change. But, it is still
useful to look at the two categories raised: single vs. multi-issue movements
and reformist vs. revolutionary to help to distinguish kinds of movements in U.S.
history and their strengths and weaknesses.
Single-Issue Reform Movements
Throughout U.S. history, groups have formed to address specific changes in institutions and policies. Some, such as the environmental movement, have mobilized around single issues that have had long-term political and economic consequences for the nation. Most such groups have addressed individual policies of more limited impact such as supporting a clean water act or an endangered species act. Single-issue reform movements are often seen as part of the “pluralist” character of American politics, the standard social science rendition of how the political process works. Every citizen can participate in the policy process by joining a group. These groups organize around specific issues. For mainstream political scientists, single-issue reform groups are the heart and soul of US democracy.
People's World
Single-Issue Revolutionary Movements
Less common in U.S. history are single-issue movements that
have a revolutionary agenda. Sometimes people mobilize around single issues
without realizing the long-term consequences for economics and politics of
their actions. Perhaps the Abolition Movement of the 19th century and the Gay
Rights Movement of the 1970s are examples. What begins as specific demands for
institutional or policy change leads to a growing mobilization that transforms
society in significant ways.
Multi-Issue Reform Movements
These movements, less frequent, but very significant for U.S. history, involve a coming together around a variety of issues with a shared vision and purpose. For these reform movements, such as the Populists of the late 19th century, which sometimes include the mainstream political parties, institutional and policy changes are promoted with an eye towards rectifying social problems without radically changing the distributions of wealth and power. As the momentum for change escalates, significant economic and political changes might occur. Even though they are not revolutionary, the totality of the reforms add up to substantial economic and political changes. The New Deal reforms of the 1930s, discussed below, are an example.
Multi-Issue Revolutionary Movements
While having less of a presence in the United States
than Europe, a Socialist left animated by a vision of radical transformation of
the economy and the polity are relevant here. These movements have an analysis
of the fundamental connection between capitalism and class, race, and gender
that leads them to advocate a fundamental transformation of society. That is,
the systems of capitalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy must be overturned
and replaced with a new society based on humane visions of Socialism. . At
various times Socialist and Communist parties have had significant impact on
U.S. politics. Paradoxically, their impacts have been to stimulate the creation
of successful single- and multi-issue reform programs that have led to modest
but valuable changes in institutions and policies.
Generalizations About Single and Multiple Issue Reform and
Revolutionary Movements
First, the practices of all social movements are shaped by
their interaction with the forces that resist them. Oftentimes groups mobilize
around an issue, encounter resistance, reexamine the systemic source of the
resistance, then articulate demands for more fundamental change, and develop
new strategies and tactics to achieve the new goals.
Second, resistance often leads to the development of a new understanding of the problem at hand. Single-issue campaigns, about environmental policy for example, might lead activists to the conclusion that opponents of reform represent corporate capitalists who oppose any restraint on their pursuit of profit.
Third, U.S. history is replete with examples of individuals
and groups becoming “radicalized” by resistance to modest demands on single
issues. As activists meet resistance, they begin to see that other groups with
other agendas have experienced the same problems. Usually, confrontation with
state power leads reform minded activists to develop a consciousness of “layers
of causation” in reference to resistance to change. What begins as a campaign
against recalcitrant politicians sometimes leads to a more systemic analysis of
the economic underpinnings of support for the status quo.
Fourth, the character of the state reaction in the context
in which the activism occurs significantly affects the kind of activism
that is advanced. Under certain circumstances, single-issue reform constitutes
the most that can realistically be expected. At other times, a multiplicity of
issues can be addressed in a comprehensive way and on rare occasions, analyses,
vision, and tactics can take on a more revolutionary character.
Finally, “left” political activism should be based
upon the historical possibilities that exist at any given time in history. Left
participation in political activities of all sorts is important. The “left”
contribution to building any progressive political movement should be to
suggest an outlook based on a systematic theoretical understanding of society;
for example, that human problems have a root cause or root causes; the variety
of human problems are connected; and in the long run the solution to human
problems require radical or revolutionary solutions,
Portside
Cultural
Fronts, the 1930s, and Progressive Movements
Michael Denning (1996) has made an important theoretical
contribution to the study of social movements in the United States. He
introduced the notion of a “cultural front” to discussions about the 1930s and
1940s. He argued that in those epochs, when masses of people were organized
around and sympathetic to fundamental social change, networks of influences
relating class struggle to politics and to culture seemed to be prevalent.
The primary political forces in the 1930s, the labor and
Communist movements, indirectly influenced popular discourse and culture and
how the vast majority of people viewed their times. Hundreds of thousands of
workers were marching, striking, and sitting in factories to demand the right
to form unions and thousands of them were affiliated and motivated by the
Communist movements of the day. In daily newspapers, the saga of the CIO
unfolded regularly. In many towns and cities workers not directly involved in
organizing struggles were sympathetic to those workers who were. The newly
emerging industrial unions, under the banner of the CIO, published newspapers,
broadcast radio programs nationwide, and, in the case of Chicago, owned a radio
station.
Communists, who had played a leading role in the early days of the CIO, had for years been involved in campaigns to demand relief for workers hit hard by the Depression, such as forming Unemployment Councils to demand welfare payments for the unemployed, supporting hunger marches, and agitating for an alternative to the kind of capitalism that brought the Great Depression. The Communists also played a leading role in challenging racism in the South: organizing against the charges of rape leveled against the young men of Scottsboro, demanding federal legislation against lynching, and organizing boycotts of businesses in cities like New York and Chicago which refused to hire African American workers.
Communists, Socialists, and peace activists organized
opposition to European war in the 1930s. After the Soviet Union was attacked by
Nazi Germany, the Communist Party joined with many Americans to support the war
against fascism in Europe and later in Asia. Also Communists played a leading
role in organizing the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, young American volunteers
to fight against General Franco’s fascist forces that attacked the beleaguered
democratic regime in Spain.
In short, in the 1930s, class struggle was manifested
in the nationwide drive to organize industrial workers in trade unions
supported and encouraged by a Communist movement that had worked for years to
organize industrial workers, a sector of the work force that had traditionally
been excluded from unions. Also the Communist left put the struggle against
racism on the agenda. As masses mobilized, the unemployed, factory
workers, and farmers, class struggle became a visible feature of public life.
And, workers, Communists and Socialists, and pacifists, worked to oppose war
and fascism in Europe. Most of these currents were visible to Americans
through the mass media.
Denning suggests that the union organizing was the driving
force behind the visible presence of a progressive movement in the United
States.
Arts and culture were inspired by the mass movements during the decade. Through the working class balladry of Woody Guthrie, the anti-colonial and anti-racist artistic politics of Paul Robeson, the proletarian novels of Jack Conroy and James T. Farrell, the artistic imagery of war and fascism in Picasso’s Guernica, the worlds of work, politics, and struggle became the subjects of culture. Performers, as varied as Billie Holliday, Duke Ellington, Charlie Chaplin, and Marian Anderson, made artistic statements reflecting the progressive spirit, even though they were not affiliated with the CIO or the Communist Party. This is the point for Denning. The “cultural front” constituted a moment in history where organized movements, shaped by class struggle and Left parties, helped create a left/center political coalition and inspired the creation of a broader progressive politics and culture.
The immediate political byproduct of the cultural front was
the New Deal. Legislation was passed to give workers the right to form unions,
to establish a minimum wage, to require some standards of health and safety at
the work place, and to provide social security for specific categories of
retirees. Unemployed people were put to work to build bridges, highways, and
sidewalks and to clean public parks. Others were paid to write and perform
plays, to prepare histories of states, to photograph rural and urban life, and
to document in writing the pain and suffering of workers experienced during the
Depression. While it is clear in retrospect that many African Americans did not
receive adequate benefits from the New Deal, the seeds of the idea of “positive
government” were planted. The epoch-shaping era of the 1930s began with groups
promoting single issue reforms and evolved into campaigns for multiple issue
reforms. In the background, but not insignificant to the epoch, were those Left
organizations who worked for a revolutionary transformation of American, while
working with mass organizations to achieve multi-issue reforms. The
Left/center coalition that developed over the decade constituted a progressive
movement that significantly changed the economic, political, and cultural life
of the country.
The Cultural Front, the 1960s, and Progressive Movements
The cultural front of the 1930s, including the changes in
public policy brought by the epochal struggles of that time, still existed in
weakened form in the 1960s. But it was a shell of its former self for a variety
of reasons. Labor militancy was defused by CIO collaboration with capital
during World War II. Labor/management agreements after the war defused
radical labor demands for control of the workplace in exchange for wage
increases and benefits. Anti-communism, the tool of repression, spread through
the labor movement, schools and universities, government, and movies,
radio, and television.
In sum, the shared values, beliefs, and politics of
the 1930s became defined as subversive and un-American. And specifically, the
Communist Party was hounded into isolation, as were any political and cultural
performers and activists who had been sympathetic with it in years past. The
network of connections between class struggle, politics, and culture were
steadily dismantled and replaced by a “repressive cultural front” that defined
progressive politics as an enemy force.
Manifestations of the cultural front of the 1930s, however,
lingered on in the politics of the 1950s. Radical trade unionists continued the
struggle for the right to organize and some, albeit a small fraction, of the
labor movement continued to incorporate an anti-racist agenda in their work. In
the South and across the nation, Tobacco Workers, Longshoremen, Packinghouse
Workers, Mine, Mill, and Smelters continued the old CIO/Communist campaign;
“Black, White, Unite, and Fight.” However, the mainstream of the labor
movement, which became the AFL-CIO after a 1955 merger, significantly reduced
its commitment to racial justice in the labor movement and the society at
large.
In contrast, militant workers, committed religious leaders, and members of traditional civil rights organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and most importantly rank and file African Americans launched a new civil rights movement that would shape the politics of the 1960s and 1970s. A new “cultural front” was initiated inadvertently by the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955. The working women and men who marched for miles to work instead of sitting in the back of city buses set off a nationwide explosion of forces: people of color, and youth, anti-war, students’ rights, women’s, and environmental activists.
As in the 1930s, the explosion of the spirit of activism
spread throughout the culture. The politics of protest became a daily feature
of electronic and print news, the subject of debate in cafes, barber shops, and
legislative bodies. Folk and rock music became infused with messages of racial
and social justice and peace. Movies and television, so constrained by the
lingering anti-Communism of the 1950s, reluctantly and cautiously followed the
music industry.
Finally, a politics of single issues shifted to a
multi-issue consciousness and some activists shifted from reformism to
revolution in their thinking about social change. By the late 1960s, discourse
involved whether change could be brought about “inside the system” or required
going “outside the system.” Words like, the “establishment,” usually
ill-defined, implied an analysis of society that entailed economic and
political institutions.
Importantly, the “old left,” those activists who experienced the cultural front of the 1930s and concretely who had been schooled in Marxist theory and Communist or Socialist politics, were seen by younger activists as less relevant to the activism of the 60s than the 1930s. The very label of the new movement, a label coined by maverick sociologist C. Wright Mills, reflected the disjuncture between the prior movements and the emerging one. It was Mills who called for the creation of a “new left.” For him, this “new left” would rise up out of the passions of youth for social justice, particularly youth in the universities. This conception of new movement implied that the working class was not central to change. Rather, they were defenders of the status quo.
Despite the fatal flaw in the idea of a “new left,”
that is its anti-worker character, the civil rights struggle and the
inspiration it provided for students and anti-war activists created a political
and cultural atmosphere in the 1960s that resembled that of the 1930s. Dr.
King, Malcolm X, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and the
Black Panther Party inspired a struggle first for basic social and economic
justice and later for revolutionary change to create a system ending exploitation,
racism, and war.
The civil rights and Black Power movements and the 1960s
cultural front had significant policy consequences. The Voting Rights Act of
1965 and affirmative action programs could not have been embraced by the
Johnson Administration and the Congress if mass movements had not demanded
social and economic change. The panoply of programs known as the Great Society,
including day care, pre-school education, legal aid, and the modest Medicare
and Medicaid programs, were reformist byproducts of the ferment. Ironically,
several governmental programs were having measurable impacts but lost resources
and support because of the escalating quagmire in Vietnam.
The Poor People’s Campaign of 1968 symbolized the hope and
the defeat of the 1960s cultural front. Dr. Martin Luther King had come to the
view by the late 1960s that poverty, exploitation, racism, and militarism were
interconnected. His conclusions about the interconnectedness of these issues
and the need to fundamentally transform society to overcome them required the
mobilization of poor people, Black and white, and progressives to demand
fundamental change. His PPC was to culminate in a massive mobilization of
progressive forces in Washington D. C. in May, 1968.
The development of his consciousness was reflected in his 1967 speech at Riverside Church in New York, in which he linked the war in Vietnam to racism and poverty at home. In addition, his support for striking garbage workers in Memphis, Tennessee reflected his efforts to link the issues of class and race. After Memphis, he was to lead the nationwide PPC walk to Washington to construct Resurrection City. He was never to make the trip and the Resurrection City that was constructed on the mall in Washington was torn down in short order after it was erected. His assassination may have been connected in some way to the threat that Black/white unity around class and race issues represented to the dominant order.
The mass movements continued but the concrete (and
theoretical) anchor that the PPC would have provided was destroyed. Various
left formations emerged, the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)
splintered, and state repression escalated. The Black Panther Party, which was
providing hot breakfasts and free health care to people in poorer communities
became the target of counterintelligence programs (COINTEL). Panthers were
killed, arrested, jailed on trumped up charges, and their influence in the
Black communities declined. Students were killed by National Guard
or police authorities at Jackson State and Kent State universities. Meanwhile,
products of popular culture shifted from social justice themes to interpersonal
liberation. Rebellion was channeled more and more into consumerism. The United
States presence in Vietnam came to an end in 1975 and so did the 60s cultural
front.
Progressive Politics After the Cultural Fronts
The “sixties” connoted something special as did the “thirties” before it. As has been suggested here, mobilizations around class and race stimulated the reassertion of people’s campaigns of all sorts. Politics in turn impacted on culture and culture on politics. In terms of a mass psychology a sense of hope flowered and grew. In the 1940s and 1950s and again in the 1970s and beyond, the cultural fronts disintegrated and despair, isolation, and individualism replaced community, solidarity, and activism.
Several forces facilitated the demise of “the 60s.” First,
state repression escalated. Assassinations, police violence, arrests, and
incarceration of many Black and white activists reduced the ranks of the
leadership of existing organizations. Second, the global economy experienced
stagnation and crisis spurred by two oil shocks. In the United States
unemployment and inflation together rose precipitously. Capital flight
escalated such that literally millions of high paying industrial jobs were lost
as thousands of plants closed. The percentage of the work force in unions began
its significant decline. In the terms of the day the “economy of abundance” was
replaced by an “economy of scarcity.” When Ronald Reagan came in office an
active campaign to destroy the labor movement was put in place, as symbolized
by the successful effort to destroy the Professional Air Traffic Controllers
Organization (PATCO).
Third, a long simmering right wing backlash to the 30s and
the 60s gained significant force aided by an attractive leader, Ronald Reagan.
During his first term, Reagan launched a program that is still active and successful in 2005 to destroy the vestiges of positive government. Also he used the war against Communism, the “evil empire,” to rekindle national chauvinism and massive increases in military spending. New campaigns were started to repress Central American activists and groups defending civil rights. His followers created campaigns against a women’s right to choose an abortion, against gun control, for school prayer, and for the teaching of creationism to mobilize conservatives and some religious fundamentalists. The use of so-called “social issues” was designed to build a mass base of support for an economic and political ruling class that was committed to shifting the distribution of wealth and income even more to themselves by destroying positive government programs.
The quantum shift to the right nationally could not have
occurred without apocryphal changes in progressive politics. Single issue
politics continued, in some cases with admirable successes. Women’s and gay
rights movements flourished. Anti-nuclear and Central American solidarity
movements successfully mobilized millions of people in opposition to Reagan’s
foreign policy. But the “old left” was in disarray; that is those multi-issue
groups committed to a Socialist political vision. As the former Soviet Union
and the Eastern European Socialist states experienced crises of political
legitimacy and economic stagnation, the image of revolutionary Socialism became
more tarnished. Most Socialist states disintegrated between 1989 and 1991,
leaving only a handful committed in name, if not in principle, to Socialism.
New post-Marxist theoretical currents among the academic left “deconstructed”
the historical “narratives” such that the history of any revolutionary ideal
became suspect. Class and class struggle as empirically grounded theoretical
concepts were dismissed. Class was replaced by identities-racial, gender,
sexual preference, and ethnic-as the focus of political attention. The Marxian
idea of linking exploitation, oppression, domination and subordination to the
economic character of the society was rejected as an intellectual
tool.
The end result of the transformation and deconstruction of progressive movements was a politics of atomization: issues, identities, discourses, discrete contexts replaced a theoretical and practical understanding of history and attempts to understand the continuities between the past and the present were rejected. The dismissal of the Socialist project in general became fashionable on the intellectual left. At the level of electoral politics, the leadership of the Democratic Party shifted from being a party of opposition to being a party of centrist collaboration. The argument of those who rose to influence in the 1980s and 1990s, in the camp of President Clinton, was that electoral victory required embracing a variant of the Reagan revolution in politics to appeal to the “center.”
The end result of these two developments was that the
intellectual left rejected the historical and conceptual tools that would give
vision and purpose to the possibility of constructing a “new new left.” In the
electoral arena, the Democratic Party, the sometimes agent of reform, embraced
a new role, rejecting contestation and adopting collaboration as a political
strategy. Meanwhile wealth shifted more to the top 1 percent of the population,
real incomes declined for most workers, and the economic, political, and
cultural manifestations of racism and sexism resembled the period before
the Great Society of the 1960s.
Political Crisis in the 21st Century
George Bush won two disputed elections in 2000 and 2004. He
is a creature of the neo-conservative, religious fundamentalist, rightwing
faction of the capitalist class. During his reign wealth has continued to shift
to the rich, workers and the poor have become as vulnerable at any time since
the Great Depression, and the United States is attempting to reconstruct a
worldwide capitalist empire that has been the dream of imperialists since the
1890s. This has meant unending wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and threats of war
against Syria, Iran and North Korea. Despite extraordinary demonstrations
against war and racism and the rise of grassroots organizing, the movements are
disjointed, single-issue, bereaved of systemic analysis and vision. Of
particular relevance is the weakness, to the point of near extinction, of the
labor movement The old anti-racist movement, whose heart was in
civil rights and Black Power, does not evidence the solidarity of the past, nor
the solidarity with other sectors of the progressive movement.
Clearly there is a need for a new mass movement which is multi-issue and reform/revolutionary. This new mass movement needs a class base. It must prioritize an anti-racist, anti-sexist agenda. It must be anti-imperialist. And the new progressive majority needs to ground itself in the public discourse and the culture of the majority of the people. The new progressive majority cannot replicate the prior periods of the cultural front but activists can learn from the strengths and weaknesses of the prior periods.
The times are right for a new progressive beginning. The
vast majority of humankind lives in horrific material conditions. Massive
mobilizations are spreading around the world concerning issues critical to
people’s lives. Numbers of passionately committed left intellectuals and
cultural artists are growing. And, there is a history, even in the U.S.,
of Socialist vision and practice.
National Archives
Bibliography
Denning, Michael. The Cultural Front, Verso, 1996
***
REAFFIRMING THE PROGRESSIVE PROJECT IN 2026
Harry Targ
These are indeed hard times for the vast majority of humankind. And the times are troubling for a number of reasons.
First,
communities, nations, and the planet face the possibility of extinction of all
life forms. Warning signs are seen everywhere: drought, fires, heat, cold, and
the prospect of large swaths of land being flooded by global warming. And as
has been the case for hundreds of years, the greatest threats and immediate
suffering is impacting particularly on the peoples and lands of the Global
South.
Second,
despite years of wise counsel, mass movements, campaigns, and demands, the
danger of nuclear war continues. Indeed, many experts and peace activists
believe the danger of nuclear war is as serious now as at any time since 1945.
Ironically, leaders of the G7 countries who met in Hiroshima in 2023 continued
discussing how to further fuel the war in Ukraine.
Third, along with these two life-threatening issues, every country and people have experienced poverty, inequality, anomic violence, and weakening educational and health care institutions, Pundits from the Global North report on food, health care, and educational deserts. But because a small number of conglomerates control more and more of what we know, what might be called media deserts reduce the possibility of people having knowledge about the crises facing them, their communities, and the planet. The metaphor of the “desert” speaks to the scarcity of peoples’ access to information about the viability of human life.
Fourth, and
to some extent “the good news,” masses of people are rising up angry within the
United States and around the world. Workers, students, people of color, women,
and other oppressed groups are making their voices heard. And in some places
movements have been impactful. In the United States elections have mattered:
some for good, others for evil. And, in general, if the planet survives,
so-called minorities will be majorities by 2050 (the rightwing fears this
referring to what it calls “replacement theory”).
Fifth, one
manifestation of people rising up angry is a new emerging sensibility and
organizations coming from “the Global South.” The Global South, an imprecise
construct, consists of all those peoples, territories, and nations that have
been victimized by capitalism for hundreds of years. Today leaders of
governments of various ideologies from the Global South have organized around
trading zones, dedollarization and new military security arrangements, and the
construction of new international organizations. They have revitalized demands
for a New International Economic Order and a New World Information Order.
And, sixth, as we read, write, and march a whole people in Gaza is being exterminated. And to heighten the frustration, those who criticize Israel's violence and genocide in the Middle East are dismissed (and repressed) for being "antisemitic."
But seventh,
while people are rising up angry all across the globe (and in the
belly of the beast the United States), they are doing so in an array of
competing organizations characterized by a multiplicity of ideologies, issue
priorities, and even multiple interpretations of the historical past and the
present. As so often happens, many of these organizations claim that they are
prepared to lead to a new world order. Organizational interest and individual
egos get in the way of the broader project; that is saving humanity.
And so all of this is
part of the context of “Left” organizing in the United States today. It leads
to raising again questions of our history, tactics and strategy, elections,
street heat, and education.
Therefore, a number of
issues of strategy, tactics, and thought need to be reexamined.
Second, much
research suggests that there does exist a “politics of resentment” across the
country, a resentment of alienation, powerlessness, and recognition that wealth
and power are grotesquely unequal in its distribution. Often this resentment
leads people to find solace in demagogues or more often to choose to not
participate in what they regard as an unfair system.
The politics of
resentment in this country led the Roosevelt Administration and the Democratic
Party to begin to address real sources of economic pain and suffering in the
1930s. The Democratic party of the New Deal, The Fair Deal, and the Great
Society was built around addressing some of the economic and political needs of
the people. And as a result, on the national level, the Democratic Party became
the majority party.
But in the 1970s, the
Democratic Party tilted toward neoliberalism, primarily policies of austerity
and deregulation of the corporate sector, a neoliberalism that was fully
institutionalized in the 1980s Reagan Revolution. And it is important to note
that the Reagan Revolution was sanctified by the Clinton/centrist wing of the
Democratic Party which has become the dominant faction of that party ever
since.
In short, there has been
an inextricable connection between the rightwing thrust of national and state
politics in the United States and the shift of the Democratic Party away from
the New Deal tradition. For today and tomorrow, demanding a return to the
reforms of the New Deal/Great Society period provides the only way to defeat
the Right.
Labeling extremists as fascists, ridiculing Trump and MAGA, and rewriting narratives of US history will not by itself defeat reaction. Support of a progressive agenda is a necessary feature of reversing our present. And those progressives in the Democratic Party, in the labor movement, and among the sectors of the Left must demand that their candidates uncompromisingly stand for economic and social justice. For sure, there exist vital and popular movements around healthcare for all, women’s rights, the right to form unions, climate change, increased voting rights, support for public institutions such as schools, libraries, and transportation systems, immigration reform, and underlying each an end to the long, painful, and immoral history of racism in the United States.
Finally, and
this is critical, a careful review of twentieth century US history shows that
domestic and foreign policies are connected. In critical periods, US foreign
policies have been used to crush progressive politics at home. As historians
such as Joyce and Gabriel Kolko, William Appleman Williams, Gar Alperovitz and
others have shown there was no Soviet threat to US national security when
President Truman warned of the “international communist threat” in
his famous Truman Doctrine speech of March, 1947. But there was a threat at
home. That threat was a strong, militant labor movement that sought co-equal
input in the making of public policy.
In addition, from 1947
until 1991 the “communist threat” was the device used by policymakers to weaken
or destroy a progressive and pro-labor agenda at home, and with decolonization
around the world from the 1950s through the 1970s, socialist militancy all
around the Global South.
Most importantly United
States foreign policy became the rationale for trillions of dollars being spent
on the military, creating images of diabolical enemies in education and popular
culture, and normalizing the idea of war.
All this suggests that a progressive agenda in the years ahead requires:
1.A systematic
progressive economic and political program that prioritizes the fulfillment of
human needs.
2.A unified political
movement that organizes around this program or at least building an alliance of
Left groups that share this common vision even as they work on particular
issues.
3.A grassroots
organizing strategy that in word and deed does not prematurely identify critics
with pejorative labels. Certain sectors of the population already embrace a
progressive agenda, others are not yet decided, and a smaller percentage have
embraced rightwing fascism. The task of the left should include mobilizing
those who agree, convincing the unconvinced, and finally respectfully seeking
to change the minds and actions of the minority who are reactionary (including
those who believe only violence will protect them).
4.A progressive movement that reaches out to, participates with, and learns from the literally millions of people that are rising up all across the globe. At this stage in human history the campaigns of people of color and various nationalities in the Global South matter. And these movements parallel those of the poor and oppressed in the United States as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkMgqg_wFuM&t=5s
5.A movement that
includes a vigorous anti-genocidal campaign, such as the extermination of the
Palestinian people, war against Venezuelans, economic starvation blockades
against Cuba and dozens of other countries, and supports calls from the Global
South for boycotts, divestments, and sanctions (BDS).
6.Finally prioritizing
in this progressive project an anti-militarist, anti-war agenda. It is clear
that the “permanent war economy” constructed after World War II robbed the
world’s citizens of resources and hopes for a better future. A just world is a disarmed
world, a world of peace.
