This
essay was originally posted in advance of the 2016 primaries. It drew upon the social
movements and debates of the years preceding that campaign season. But the
political currents which included “the left,” grassroots social movements in
the tradition of the Occupy Movement, and the variety of single and multi-issue
progressive groups in similar form still exist today.
What is
different about 2020 from 2016 is the qualitatively more dire circumstances in
which we live under the Trump administration. Whether we are talking about the
climate, white supremacy, grievous inequality, the celebration of misogyny, a new arms race and Cold War,
the life chances and quality of life of the vast majority of humankind, the
situation is worse.
While
no one candidate for president can fix the mess, and indeed the minimum
requirement of substantial change requires a sustained political movement, the
Sanders campaign, its young, diverse, and energetic supporters, and elected
officials and cultural workers who have joined the campaign, make it clear that
supporting and working for Bernie Sanders is vital to the future of the country
and the planet. The fundamental question that must be asked as we engage in the
political process is: will the Sanders campaign and movement have the prospect of
reducing human misery, irrespective of whether he is a Socialist, a Social
Democrat, a New Deal Liberal, or a Populist. The answer to that question is
undeniably “yes.”
Harry
Targ
The
multiracial working class in alliance with trade unions, women, African
Americans, Latinos and other people of color, youth, and progressive sectors of
business now form the promising components of the progressive majority. The
profound challenge before the working class and its allies is to organize this
majority into a coherent force capable of responding to the various issues it confronts.
(“Goals and Principles,” Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and
Socialism, adopted at its 6th National Convention, July, 2009,
www.cc-ds.org).
Protest Movements in the United States
In addition to anecdotal evidence, aggregate data confirms the continuation and expansion of activist groups and protest activities all across the face of the globe. For example in the United States, Mark Solomon in an important essay “Whither the Socialist Left? Thinking the ‘Unthinkable’” (March 6, 2013, www.portside.org) discusses the long history of socialism in the United States, the brutal repression against it, damaging sectarian battles on the left, the miniscule size of socialist organizations today and yet paradoxically the growing sympathy for the idea of socialism among Americans, particularly young people. He calls for “the convergence of socialist organizations committed to non-sectarian democratic struggle, engagement with mass movements, and open debate in search of effective responses to present crises and to projecting a socialist future.” The Solomon article does not conceptualize “left unity” and “building the progressive majority” as separate and distinct projects but as fundamentally interconnected. For him, and many others, the role of the left in the labor movement and other mass movements gave shape, direction, and theoretical cohesion to the battles that won worker rights in the 1930s.
Solomon’s call has stimulated debate among activists around the idea of “left
unity.” The appeal for left unity is made more powerful by socialism’s appeal,
the current global crises of capitalism, rising mobilizations around the world,
and living experiments with small-scale socialism such as the construction of a
variety of workers’ cooperatives.
Effective campaigns around “left unity” in recent years have prioritized
“revolutionary education,” drawing upon the tools of the internet to construct
an accessible body of theory and debate about strategy and tactics that could
solidify left forces and move the progressive majority into a socialist
direction. The emerging Online University of the Left (OUL), an electronic
source for classical and modern theoretical literature about Marxism,
contemporary debates about strategy and tactics, videos, reading lists, and
course syllabi, constitute one example of left unity. The OUL serves as one of
many resources for study groups, formal coursework, and discussions among
socialists and progressives. Those who advocate for “left unity” or left
“convergence” celebrate these many developments, from workers cooperatives to
popular education, as they advocate for the construction of a unified socialist
left.
A second manifestation of political activism, the Occupy Movement, first
surfacing in the media in September, 2011, initiated and renewed traditions of
organized and spontaneous mass movements around issues that affect peoples’
immediate lives such as housing foreclosure, debt, jobs, wages, the
environment, and the negative role of money in U.S. politics. Perhaps the four
most significant contributions of the Occupy Movement have been:
1.Introducing grassroots processes of decision-making.
2.Conceptualizing modern battles for social and economic justice as between the
one percent (the holders of most wealth and power in society) versus the 99
percent (weak, economically marginalized, and dispossessed, including the
“precariat”).
3.Insisting that struggles for radical change be spontaneous, often eschewing
traditional political processes.
4.Linking struggles locally, nationally, and globally.
During the height of its visibility some 500 cities and towns experienced
Occupy mobilizations around social justice issues. While less frequent, Occupy
campaigns still exist, particularly in cities where larger progressive
communities reside. Calls for left unity correctly ground their claims in a
long and rich history of organized struggle while “occupiers” and other
activists today have been inspired by the bottom-up and spontaneous uprisings
of 2011 (both international and within the United States).
A third, and not opposed, approach to political change at this time has been
labeled “building a progressive majority.” This approach assumes that large
segments of the U.S. population agree on a variety of issues. Some are
activists in electoral politics, others in trade unions, and more in single
issue groups. In addition, many who share common views of worker rights, the
environment, health care, undue influence of money in politics, immigrant
rights etc. are not active politically. The progressive majority perspective
argues that the project for the short-term is to mobilize the millions of
people who share common views on the need for significant if not fundamental
change in economics and politics.
Often organizers conceptualize the progressive majority as the broad mass of
people who share views on politics and economics that are ‘centrist” or “left.”
Consequently, over the long run, “left” participants see their task as
three-fold. First, they must work on the issues that concern majorities of
those at the local and national level. Second, they struggle to convince their
political associates that the problems most people face have common causes
(particularly capitalism). Third, “left” participants see the need to link
issues so that class, race, gender, and the environment, for example, are
understood as part of the common problem that people face.
A 2005-2007 data set called “Start” (startguide.org) showed that there were
some “500 leading organizations in the United States working for progressive
change on a national level.” START divided these 500 organizations into twelve
categories based on their main activities. These included progressive
electoral, peace and foreign policy, economic justice, civil liberties, health
advocacy, labor, women’s and environmental organizations. Of course,
their membership, geographic presence, financial resources, and strategic and
tactical vision varied widely. And, many of the variety of progressive
organizations at the national level were reproduced at the local and state
levels as well.
In sum, when looking at contemporary social change in the United States at
least three tendencies have been articulated: left unity, the Occupy Movement,
and building a progressive majority. Each highlights its own priorities as to
vision, strategy, tactics, and political contexts. In addition, the relative
appeal of each may be affected by age, class, gender, race, and issue
prioritization as well. However, these approaches need not be seen as
contradictory. Rather the activism borne of each approach may parallel the
others. (the discussion of the three tendencies of activism appeared in
Harry Targ, “The Fusion Politics Response to 21st Century
Imperialism From Arab Spring to Moral Mondays,” ouleft.org, and was presented
at the “Moving Beyond Capitalism” Conference, Center for Global Justice, San
Miguel de Allende Mexico, July 29-August 5, 2014).
Building the Progressive Majority in 2016
The
statement above from CCDS was published in 2009 and the description of the
three political tendencies in the United States was presented in 2014. Since
then, the Moral Mondays Movement in North Carolina captured national attention
and stimulated a growing campaign around Reverend William Barber’s narrative of
United States history referring to the “three reconstructions” and the
articulation of his theory of “fusion politics.”
The
egregious police violence against African Americans, particularly young men and
women of color, has sparked a vibrant Black Lives Matter campaign that has
caused a renewed interest in understanding the functions the police serve, the
role of white supremacy, rightwing populism, and Michelle Alexander’s “New Jim
Crow” in America.
Militant
workers in growing sectors of the economy are rising up. Fast food workers are
organizing around the “Fight for 15.” Health and home care, and other service
sector workers are demanding the right to have their unions recognized. And
teachers, transportation workers, and state employees have hit the streets and
legislative assemblies to demand worker rights.
The
peace movement has begun to resuscitate itself challenging a new cold war with
Russia, boots on the ground and drones in the air to fight ISIS, and the
unbridled growth of the military/industrial complex.
Finally,
environmentalists have made a convincing case that the connection between
neoliberal global capitalism and environmental catastrophe “changes
everything.”
The
three tendencies presented above—left unity, the Occupy Movement, and
building a progressive majority—continue to be reflected in different kinds of
organizing around the country based on the issues, levels of organization,
predominant ideological manifestations, local political cultures, and the
composition of movements in different places based upon class, race, gender,
sexual identity, religious affiliation and issue orientation. And all these
tendencies are worthy of attention and support, particularly in the 21st
century “time of chaos.”
But a
new campaign (potentially a movement) has emerged since the summer, 2015.
Bernie Sanders, an aging left-oriented Senator from Vermont began his long
uphill march to secure the Democratic Party nomination for the presidency. A
sixties activist on civil rights and peace, a populist mayor of Burlington,
Vermont, a Congressman and Senator from that state, Sanders, since his early
days of political activism, has articulated an anti-Wall Street,
anti-finance capital mantra that has its roots in various progressive currents
in United States history, These include the populist campaigns of the 1890s,
the militant workers struggles of the Wobblies during the
Progressive era, the popular electoral campaigns of five-time Socialist Party
candidate for President, Eugene V. Debs from 1900 to 1920; the industrial union
movement of the 1930s which built the Congress of Industrial
Organizations (CIO) and support for the New Deal legislation that provided some
measure of economic security to many workers; to the civil rights and anti-war
movements of the 1960s and beyond.
Sanders
has proceeded to excoriate finance capital and to link the enormous
accumulation of wealth and income at one pole of American society and the
maintenance and growth of the misery of the masses on the other. He has
advanced his narrative by linking class, to race, to gender issues, and has
begun to incorporate the apocalyptic possibilities of a future without
addressing climate change. In a word, he has articulated a program that the
CCDS program defined as the vision of “the progressive majority.”
The
vision of a progressive majority is one that emphasizes the systematic
articulation of the causes of human misery and what needs to be done to
overcome them and the belief that the vision already exists among the
majority of the American people. So far, the popularity of the Sanders
campaign, the particular enthusiasm it is generating at the grassroots,
including from youth, labor, feminist, anti-racist, and environmental
organizations, and the demographics reflected in the Iowa caucus turnout and
polling data, suggest that activists from the three tendencies identified above
should direct their energies to supporting the Sanders presidential run. Most
importantly, the Sanders campaign has inspired the possibility of building a
long-standing progressive movement that will survive and grow until the
November, 2016 election and beyond.
