Harry Targ
What Do They Want Us to Think?
We
have been living with the 2022 elections ever since November 2020. Day after
day the corporate media has speculated about which candidates for public office
were in the lead and whether the Congress will continue in Democratic hands or
Republicans will win majorities in one or both houses. And lurking behind every
news story has been the ominous vision of Donald Trump, the threat of fascism.
and the extent to which the 2022 elections will determine whether the US
chooses “democracy” or “authoritarianism.” And finally, the trope suggests, on
November 8 the election will determine whether progressives will declare
victory and assume the battle is won or lose and retire in despair.
At
least, that is what the corporate media and its clients hope will happen. And
it will
happen if progressives
forget that social change is a long and arduous process with victories and
defeats. But if it is true that majorities of Americans crave affordable
healthcare, remunerative work, the hope of some reduction in environmental
disaster, and access to food, housing, transportation, and education, they will
continue the struggles to achieve these goals whoever wins at the polls. So while
the finality of the election trope, victory or defeat, is what has pervaded
public discourse for months it is critical to recognize that whatever the
outcome the battle for a just and humane future will continue, irrespective of Tuesday’s
outcomes.
Protest
Movements in the United States:
Left
Unity Projects
Data
confirms that there has been a continuation and expansion of activist groups
and protest activities all across the face of the globe since the dawn of the
twenty-first century. For example in the United States, Mark Solomon reported in
an important essay “Whither the Socialist Left? Thinking the ‘Unthinkable’” that
there has been a long history of socialism in the United States despite the brutal
repression against it, damaging sectarian battles on the left, and the small
size of socialist organizations. Yet paradoxically the growing sympathy for the
idea of socialism among Americans, particularly young people, exists
extensively today. For that reason, he called 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.”
https://portside.org/2013-03-06/whither-socialist-left-thinking-unthinkable
Solomon’s call a few years ago stimulated debate among
activists around the idea of “left unity.” The appeal for left unity he said
was 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 emergence of 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, constituted one example of left unity. The OUL is also
one example among many of available resources for study groups, formal
coursework, and discussions among socialists and progressives.
Mass Movements
The Occupy Movement, first surfacing in the media in September
2011, initiated and renewed traditions of organized and spontaneous mass
movements around issues that affected people’s immediate lives such as housing
foreclosures, 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 included:
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 Occupy’ s visibility some 500
cities and towns experienced mobilizations around social justice issues. While Occupy
campaigns are gone today activists correctly ground their claims in the long
and rich history of organized struggle and remain inspired by the bottom-up and
spontaneous uprisings of 2011. And in 2020 the explosion of street actions to
protest the police murder of George Floyd led to thousands of protest
demonstrations around the country, inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement.
https://acleddata.com/2020/09/03/demonstrations-political-violence-in-america-new-data-for-summer-2020/
Along with left unity projects and those who were
inspired by Occupy, many have embraced a third approach to political change,
“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, the environment, and
peace for example, are understood as part of the common problem that people
face.
At this point in time, as the recent data set called
“Start” shows there are 500 leading organizations in the United States working
for progressive change on a national level. https://www.startguide.org/orgs/orgs00.html “Start”
divides these 500 organizations into twelve categories based on their main
activities. These include progressive electoral, peace and foreign policy,
economic justice, civil liberties, health advocacy, labor, women, and
environmental organizations. Of course,
their membership, geographic presence, financial resources, and strategic and
tactical vision vary widely. And many
of the variety of progressive organizations at the national level are
reproduced at the local and state levels as well.
START Study, Think, Act, Respond Together
In sum, when looking at social change in the United
States at least three emphases are being articulated: left unity, the legacies of
the Occupy and Black Lives Matter movements 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.
Co-Revolutionary
Theory Becomes Practice: The Road Ahead
David Harvey has written about a “co-revolutionary
theory” of change (The Enigma of Capital and the Crisis of Capitalism,
New York: Oxford 2011). 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
(perhaps a global ruling class), and human misery, from joblessness, to hunger,
to disease, to environmental devastation is spreading.
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. But
sometimes, such as in 2011 (and in response to the police killing of George
Floyd in 2020), mass mobilizations occur. And they facilitate the ongoing
organizing that already is going on. In 2016 the Bernie Sanders candidacy
inspired a generation of activists. Since then, many joined existing socialist
organizations as a new round of militancy grew among youth, women, African
Americans, workers, environmentalists, and peace activists. Since 2016 a broad
array of people began to publicly say “enough is enough.”
Where do we 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 trade unions, education, health care, sustainable environments, opposition
to racism and sexism, and peace. So all these motivations are part of the same
struggle. And activists are beginning to
make the connections between the struggles. 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.”
On Resistance
As this recent election season comes to a close,
activists need to see their work as part of an historic process. Whatever the
outcomes of the 2022 elections the multiple struggles for progressive change,
and indeed movement towards socialism will continue. Electoral work will
continue. Movement building work will continue. And addressing singular issues
such as health care, the environment, workers’ rights, anti-racism,
anti-patriarchy will also continue.
And some time these movements and campaigns will need
to address the question of resistance. Gene Sharp, peace researcher, identified
198 non-violent ways in which activists can resist repression and build for
social change. He and others have argued that in the long-run non-violent
actions have yielded significant positive results. https://www.brandeis.edu/peace-conflict/pdfs/198-methods-non-violent-action.pdf
And Dr. King in his historic “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” has argued that some times resistance requires embracing a “higher law” when civil law does not address profound human grievances. In sum, education, advocacy, and organizing requires action as well and that action might pit the activists in contradistinction to those who resist humane and necessary change.
In the end, the election trope promulgated by the
powerful and their friends in the corporate media serve to minimize the mass
impulse to endorse and work for social change. If progressives lose, the
message is that pursuing change is hopeless. If progressives win, the trope
suggests, the need for waking the sleeping giant, the masses, is not necessary.
However, whatever the election outcome,
the struggle must continue.
***************************************************************
"What the establishment says to you is that you are powerless. Let's prove them wrong. Let’s transform this country.” Bernie Sanders
Assessments of prior election outcomes: 2012-2022:
ANOTHER ELECTION ASSESSMEN1 (003).docx
