THE UNTOLD HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES IS NOT UNTOLD

Harry Targ

Oliver Stone has made an enormous contribution to discussions of the United States role in the world. His films have described the horrific consequences of United States foreign policy for the people of El Salvador and Vietnam, the American political system, and the U.S. soldiers victimized by wars not of their making. While his films, such as JFK, raise controversial claims, they have stimulated important public conversations.

This television season, Showtime, a cable channel, is showing a ten-part series written and produced by Stone and his academic collaborator, historian Peter Kuznick. The series, “The Untold History of the United States,” is a brilliant and entertaining narrative of the United States role in the world since the onset of World War II. It warrants broad distribution within educational institutions and among communities of political activists. Because of our ahistorical culture people do not have a sense of the critical decisions that were made fifty or a hundred years ago which have structured the political and economic life of the country ever since.

Critical moments in United States history have channeled the prospects for progressive social change today and tomorrow. From the arrival of colonial armies to the “new world,” to the introduction of slavery to the Western Hemisphere, to revolution against British imperialism, to the civil war and the defeat of post-war reconstruction, the American experience has been shaped by class and race in the context of burgeoning industrial and financial capitalism. The Spanish/Cuban/American war stimulated the rise of the United States as the preeminent empire from the Philippines to the Western Hemisphere.

Most of us have received a sanitized history of these earlier historical moments. In addition, our understanding of the rise of socialist movements in the 1930s in response to the Great Depression and the global fascist threat, the realities of World War II, and the emerging U.S. hegemony after the war which led to the “Cold War” between global capitalism and socialism have been limited as well. Oliver Stone’s ten-part “untold history,” in collaboration with Professor Kuznick, fills in some of the void. Several themes about the onset of the Cold War are particularly important:

First, while the series overemphasizes the role of elites in shaping U.S. history Stone and Kuznick do point out that these elites always perceived the threat workers, radicals, and other rank-and-file activists meant to ruling class dominance. Much of foreign policy was designed to crush revolutionary ferment overseas and at home.

Second, in the first two episodes emphasis is placed on the lost opportunity for the left that resulted from the successful efforts of political elites, particularly in the Democratic Party, to force Henry Wallace, President Roosevelt’s third term vice president, and 1948 candidate for president on the Progressive Party ticket, from power. Wallace as Secretary of Agriculture during the New Deal was an economic populist, anti-racist, and pro-union sympathizer and after World War II an advocate for United States/Soviet Union collaboration.

Stone and Kuznick probably exaggerate Wallace as an alternative to the imperial, counter-revolutionary, and racist path the United States took after the war but correctly make it clear that CEOs from massive corporations and banks and political elites from both political parties were committed to crushing those left forces that flowered in the United States in the 1930s and grew in popularity all across the globe. The Soviet Union was one manifestation of global resistance to capitalism that paralleled the spread of massive anti-colonial ferment in the Global South.

Third, the film makers provide overwhelming evidence to show that the defeat of fascism in Europe was largely the result of the massive Soviet military machine. Americans suffered about 290,000 wartime dead and the Soviet Union 27 million. And Stone, who narrated the documentary, suggests that while Joseph Stalin was a cruel dictator, his policies must be understood in the context of the rise of fascism in Europe and the refusal of western powers, particularly Great Britain, France, and the United State, to stand up against it. He correctly portrays Stalin as a nationalist who was prepared to sacrifice all principles, in this case Communist ones, to prepare for and to defend the Soviet Union. This overriding commitment, Stone implies, carried over into Soviet diplomatic interaction with the rest of Europe and the United States after the war.

Fourth, in great detail Stone and Kuznick make it clear that the United States did not have to use two atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki to force the Japanese to surrender in the summer of 1945. The Japanese leadership knew they were soon to be defeated. Many had advocated for surrender by the time of the Potsdam Conference of July, 1945 and American policymakers were aware of it.

President Truman’s advisors knew that if the Soviet Union declared war on Japan which the Soviets promised to do by August 8, the enemy would give up. But despite this, the film makers suggest, President Truman tried to use the powerful new weapon against the Japanese before the Soviet Union had a chance to enter the war, and thus be a diplomatic player in Asia after the war. Also, and this was critical, the bomb was designed to send a message to the Soviet Union as well as Japan. The United States in the years ahead would be the dominant military power in the world.

Stone and Kuznick point out that the decisions to drop two atomic bombs on Japan signaled the dawn of a new age. Now weapons of mass destruction would be used to pursue global hegemony. There no longer would be any limits on the possibility of death and destruction derived from world affairs.

In other words, Stone and Kuznick are making the case that at least from the onset of the Cold War to today, U.S. foreign policy has been driven by economic and political interests to dominate the world and has responded violently to a multiplicity of forms of resistance. The locales of struggle changed as would the forms of resistance. But the structure that was put in place after World War II remains the albatross around the necks of those who seek change today and tomorrow.

The series is an indispensable lesson for peace and justice activists today. However, it should be added that the “untold” story has been told before. As a result of the threats of nuclear war in the 1950s, United States policies toward Cuba and Vietnam in the 1960s, and patterns of U.S. covert interventions and violence against peoples on every continent, progressive scholars began to use their methods to uncover this history fifty years ago.

Historians and activists were inspired by the classic text by William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy. Williams’ work, called then “historical revisionism,” inspired other groundbreaking studies of the onset and perpetuation of the Cold War by Joyce and Gabriel Kolko, Gar Alperovitz, Diane Clemens, Lloyd Gardner, Walter LaFeber, Thomas Patterson, and many more. The works on McCarthyism, repression of labor militancy, and mystification in popular culture could fill libraries.

While it is true that documentary films cannot provide footnotes, it is important for viewers to realize that progressive scholars during the depths of the Cold War used their skills to research, teach, and for some, engage in political activism based on their findings.

And finally, if the “untold” story has in fact been told many times, a question that becomes important is why we as a people, even the political activists among us, are not apprised of it. And this leads to analyses of how knowledge has been appropriated in the service of United States foreign and domestic policy.

 

THE MYTHOLOGY OF "RIGHT-TO-WORK" PERSISTS

Harry Targ

The Michigan legislature and Governor Richard Snyder passed a new “right-to-work” law on December 11, 2012. Such laws, authorized by the anti-labor Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, allow states to prohibit union locals from requiring workers who choose not to join the union that represents them at the work place and who receive union services from having to pay for them.

Social scientists refer to the dilemma this creates as the “free-rider” problem. Why pay for bargaining and negotiation, support for worker grievances, and other services if you can get them free? In the long run, supporters of right-to-work laws hope to reduce union membership and weaken organized workers as an economic force in the workplace and a political force in the electoral arena.

The Michigan Governor reversed his earlier declaration that he would not support this controversial legislation. Michigan is a state where the modern labor movement was formed in the 1930s during the sit-down strikes in auto plants. Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels also promised labor leaders that he would not support such legislation. They both changed their minds because the prospects of defeating labor at this critical juncture seemed too good to miss. So Michigan, like Indiana, dusted off its copy of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) model legislation and passed it.

As the Economic Policy Institute states, right-to-work provisions have negative consequences for workers. In right-to-work states workers earn significantly lower wages than workers in states without such laws. Also, they are less likely to benefit from employer-sponsored health insurance plans. Some studies note that health and safety at workplaces in right-to-work states fare poorly compared with workers in states without such laws. In short, Section 14 (b), the right-to-work provision of the Taft-Hartley Law of 1947, was designed to weaken the burgeoning new and militant labor movement of that day and as a result to increase corporate rates of profit.

On December 12, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels (soon to be Purdue University president) announced that nine companies were “expected” to make investments in his state creating 2,552 new jobs. These included such companies as Angie’s List, BidPal Inc, and Mitsubishi Engine North America.  The Indianapolis Star indicated that the nine companies who “expect” to add these jobs by 2016 will receive over $27 million in tax credits. It was likely that the Daniels announcement was designed to support Michigan Governor Snyder’s claim that he was inspired by the alleged economic boom Indiana experienced since adopting right-to-work legislation last winter.

Governor Daniels indicated that “…we have seen a significant surge of new interest in the past several months.” Again, Governor Snyder was inspired by the Indiana story not because of the tax giveaways but because he claimed it was Indiana’s right-to-work law which was passed ten-months ago that spurred this “economic miracle” in the Hoosier state.

In a recent article on the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) website written by political scientist Gordon Lafer, economist Marty Wolfson, and Indiana state AFL-CIO President Nancy Guyott, it was pointed out that investment decisions require a lengthy process of study. Since the law was passed last January, became effective in March and is being challenged in court, the authors argued, it was unlikely that the new law would have affected decisions to invest in Indiana.

Further Lafer, Wolfson, and Guyott point out that none of the nine companies the Daniels’report referred to claim that the new right-to-work law had anything to do with their plans to invest more in the state. Some of the nine already had major facilities in the state. In addition, the authors examined companies that were courted by the state but chose to go elsewhere. Their research indicated that right-to-work was not a criteria for choosing before 2012 to invest in other states.

Perhaps the most significant facts gleaned from recent research on the Indiana economy were published by the Indiana Institute for Working Families in their study entitled “Status of Working Families in Indiana, 2011.”  (http://www.incap.org/statusworkingfamilies.html). Among their key findings are the following:

-the state had 231,500 fewer jobs as 2012 began than pre-recession employment.

-21,200 state and local government jobs were lost from August, 2008 through February, 2012 (22 percent of jobs lost).   

-in 2012, 19 percent of unemployment is among youth.

-Indiana is among 17 states continuing to experience absolute declines in the labor force since the recession began.

-only 14.6 percent of Hoosiers over the age of 25 have bachelor’s degrees.

-Indiana ranks 41^st in average wages earned; economic inequality in the state has grown since 2000 but worker productivity has increased by 14 percent.

-median family income fell by 13.6 percent over the past decade.

-since 2000 poverty has increased by 52 percent.

The figures on the devolution of the Indiana economy over the last decade, as its state government has shifted to the right, are staggering. This is the model to which the Michigan Governor and legislature aspire.

Several conclusions can be drawn from the data and the contemporary political context in the industrial heartland of America.

First, economic decline has been a characteristic feature of workers’ lives before, during, and since the recession.

Second, during much of the last decade, particularly in states like Indiana, the political environment has been increasingly shaped by the rightwing economic agenda of the Republican Party.

There is no evidence, historical or contemporary, that right-to-work laws will reverse the severe economic decline workers experience. But there is evidence that the wealth and power of the super-rich will increase, while workers’ wages decline at the same time that their productivity rises.

Third, looking at capital/labor relations since the onset of the twentieth century, the strength of organized labor matters for all workers. Right-to-work, rather than attracting new investors, primarily enriches the current corporations in right-to-work states and weakens unions. 

Finally, as President Obama stated in a visit to Detroit just before the Michigan legislative vote, the resurgence of right-to-work campaigns is “political.” Why? Because the labor movement is the only financial and grassroots base of opposition to the shift to pre-New Deal economic policy. This was demonstrated in the “ground game” of the labor movement in key battleground states during the last election. It also was reflected in campaigns to reverse assaults on public employees in Ohio and mobilizations of teachers in Chicago to protect public education. In general organized labor represents the front-line of defense against shocking inequalities in wealth and power, opposition to the privatization of virtually all public institutions, and the protection of programs that have given modest economic security to large portions of the population.

The Michigan story and the mythology about Indiana are just part of the ongoing struggle of the financial/corporate class and their rightwing politicians to destroy the last movement that can save Americans from destitution. While weakened labor appears to be mobilizing to protect the interests of the broadening working class.

 

 

 

 

"IN TIMES LIKE THESE"

Harry Targ

In times like these when night surrounds me

And I am weary and my heart is worn
When the songs they’re singing don’t mean nothing
Just cheap refrains play on and on
…

When leaders profit from deep divisions

When the tears of friends remain unsung
In times like these it’s good to remember
These times will go in times to come
 

I see the storm clouds rise above me

The sky is dark and the night has come
I walk alone along this highway
Where friends have gathered one by one

I know the storm will soon be over
The howling winds will cease to be
I walk with friends from every nation
On freedom’s highway in times like these.

(From Arlo Guthrie, “In Times Like These,”

http://youtu.be/nk3Iqgv56Hk

All year we have been celebrating the 100 year anniversary of the birth of Woody Guthrie. “This Land is Your Land” has become the new national anthem, particularly for the 98 per cent of the population, mostly the American working class. Singers now sing the forbidden verses challenging the rights of private property and choruses of cheering people, young and old, black and white, straight and gay, join in. It is a song of struggle, pride, and recognition that this world belongs to everybody.

 

Although the song has inspired us all as we sing it, sometimes we forget that the trajectory toward progressive change is not smooth. Guthrie’s friend and voice of our times, Pete Seeger, reminds us that “it is darkest before the dawn.”

 

Perhaps the anthem of these times, after hundreds of domestic instances of violence from Columbine to Newtown, from Trayvon Martin to Jordan Davis, to the streets of Chicago, is most poignantly articulated by Arlo Guthrie. And it is an anthem that peace activists should sing as we struggle against bombings, drones, economic blockades, covert interventions, assassination lists, killer teams, wars on drugs, huge appropriations of human resources to kill, violent video games, war toys, endless television shows and films that portray and normalize killings, as well as the tragedies such as at Newtown.

 

Major targets of violence and murder are educational institutions and particularly students. It is ironic that it is in these institutions that some of the most creative debates ensue around direct, or physical, violence and structural, or economic, sexual, and racial, violence. After World War II, scholar/activists concerned about atomic war, arms races, and war on poor countries introduced Peace Studies into university and public school curricula. Educators and activists had studied and advocated for peace for hundreds of years, but in the environment of the Cold War distinguished academics demanded that the tools of modern research and education be applied to war, the social cancer of our time.

 

Peace Studies programs since the 1950s have taken many forms. Some concentrate on the “war problem” and engage it through studies of philosophy, social theory, and theology. Others, using modern statistical techniques, gather data on war and other forms of violence and test hypotheses about causes. And finally, others, the “radical peace educators” argue that research and teaching should use all available techniques to study violence. In addition, we should include in our study of violence, the violence of exploitation, discrimination, the prerogatives of institutionalized power, and the manipulating of minds as well as bodies. These latter peace research/educators also argue that a connection needs to be made between theory and practice, reflection and action, studying causes and working to eliminate them.

 

Today there are some 250 peace studies programs. Some emphasize one or another or all of the three approaches. Despite efforts of rightwing political forces to eliminate Peace Studies programs, they persist. They persist because university alums, professors, teachers, and students remain committed to addressing the problems of violence in the 21^st century. So researchers continue to learn more about the problem of violence, teachers (kindergarten through college) try their best to develop curricula that celebrate the preciousness of all human beings, and activists continue to struggle to eliminate institutions and cultures of violence.

 

In sum, in the midst of our deep sorrow, we remember Arlo Guthrie’s words. “In times like these,” despite the emotional energy and time spent achieving some electoral, labor and Occupy victories, we get weary and our “heart is worn.” While we see the “storm clouds rise above,” we should remember that “the storm will soon be over.” Why? Because “I walk with friends from every nation, on freedom’s highway in times like these.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2012 ELECTIONS:THE CONTRADICTORY REALITY OF THE PROGRESSIVE MAJORITY AND REACTIONARY FORCES

Harry Targ

By many measures progressive forces seeking to defend the rights of women, workers, Latinos, African-Americans, youth, and the elderly won major victories in the 2012 election. President Obama was reelected with strong support from those to his political left. Democrats, some identifying with populist policies such as Elizabeth Warren and Tammy Baldwin, increased their control of the Senate. And in the House of Representatives, Democrats gained a few seats including those for progressives such as Alan Grayson. The House remained in Republican control despite the fact that Democratic candidates out-polled Republicans nationwide by about 200,000 votes.

Most importantly, the coalition of progressives who increasingly see connections between the interests of workers, women, people of color, and those passionate about the environment, immigration reform, and peace have vowed to stay mobilized. They see the danger of “grand bargains” which might make Beltway politicians weaken Medicare, Medicaid, and/or Social Security. Progressives also are wary of deals that could sacrifice the environment to big oil, maintain the grotesque economic inequalities through tax breaks for the rich, and continue budget-busting military expenditures.

However, challenges to a progressive future do not come just from Washington, Wall Street, or the Pentagon. In 2012, state election results led to single-party control of 37 state governments: 24 Republican and 13 Democratic. Think Progress reported that only 12 states will have evenly contested, two-party government as the 2013 legislative sessions open. This much one-party dominance at the state level has not been seen since 1952.

In many of the Republican controlled states, legislatures and governors are controlled by Tea Party advocates seeking to privatize public education, reject key provisions of the Affordable Care Act, install or expand Right-to-Work and anti-collective bargaining legislation, end support for Planned Parenthood, put creationism in science classes, and cut college programs not tied to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) curricula. The states where Republicans dominate governorships and state legislatures are for the most part states in the South and across the Plains.

One of the few Midwest states where one party rule will prevail in 2013 is the state of Indiana. Despite public perception, Indiana has a history of competitive government. Democrats have controlled bigger cities and industrial areas whereas Republicans dominated in rural and small towns of Central and Eastern Indiana. Democrats held the governorship from 1989 to 2005, and elected former governor Evan Bayh as Senator in 1998. He retired from that post in 2010. Democratic candidate, Joe Donnelly, with strong labor support, won the 2012 Senatorial race over Tea Party candidate Richard Mourdock.

In Indiana legislative politics, the Republicans and Democrats each controlled one legislative body from the outset of the new century until the 2010 elections.  Then Republicans gained control of the House of Representatives (60-40) and in 2012 won “supermajorities” in the House (69-31) and the Senate (37-13). Meanwhile Indiana elected Tea Party Congressman Mike Pence to serve as Governor. Pence will replace two-term Tea Party “light” Governor Mitch Daniels who was selected the new president of Purdue University by a Board of Trustees mostly appointed by him. In total, Indiana politics which had been shifting to the right over the last decade will become a “blood red” state in 2013. Republican spokespersons promise to complete the economic and political agenda they began to institute since the early years of the new century.

Paradoxically, Indiana voters solidly rejected the reelection bid of Superintendent of Public Education, Tony Bennett, who has radically transformed education from a public to a private institution. He has opened the door for taxpayer support for private religious schools. And he has introduced ill-advised “performance” standards to determine financial support for public schools. To increase the possibility of incorporating markets and religion into what used to be a public education system, he and his colleagues have worked vigorously to destroy teachers unions.

Glenda Ritz, an award winning teacher and media specialist, defeated Bennett by a 52-48 percent margin. Tea Party legislators have indicated that they will move to make the Superintendent’s position an appointed one in the future. Outgoing Governor Daniels, a key advocate of educational privatization, proclaimed that teachers used improper means to campaign for Ritz, as if the 1 million voters for Ritz who were not teachers were not relevant to the outcome (in Indiana there are 40,000 public school teachers). So if the people make the wrong choices, the Tea Party legislators imply, their right to make those choices must be restricted.

In 2011 the Indiana Institute for Working Families issued a report on the status of working families in Indiana. The report presented economic data on the condition of Indiana’s working families suggesting that workers in the state have suffered above and beyond the level of the national recession of 2007 to 2009. They suggest that contrary to the public image promoted by outgoing Governor Daniels and his Tea Party legislative colleagues, the conditions of Hoosier working families have worsened as a result of their legislative agenda:

“In fact, the data shows a recovery in Indiana marked by a weakened labor market, an unprecedented decline in wages, and dramatic increases in poverty. Due to across-the-board state budget cuts, a significant loss of public-sector jobs, and low uptake rates in work-support programs due to a public policy environment that’s not been conducive to working families, tens of thousands of Hoosiers are unnecessarily experiencing the human toll of this recession.” (Indiana Institute for Working Families, “Status of Working Families in Indiana,” 2011, page 1).

Indiana progressives have a difficult task ahead. They must reverse the rightward drift of Hoosier politics and public policy and in the long run build a progressive political movement that can fight for and win a new People’s Agenda based on justice, prosperity, and peace.

  

 

 

SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF CAPITALISM

Harry Targ

The War On Women has many dimensions—social, cultural, psychological—but in many ways women’s issues are class issues. That makes the war on women a class war, among other things. (Richard Eskow, Campaign for America’s Future Blog, November 16, 2012)

I was planning my latest blog entry when I saw an essay by Richard Eskow entitled “The War on Women is a Class War.” Coincidentally the subject of the political consequences of class, race, gender, ethnicity, and sexual preference was precisely the subject I wished to address.

Eskow presented compelling data to show that as income levels rise the percentage of women in the higher categories declines, cuts in anti-poverty programs disproportionately affect women, on a worldwide basis austerity measures disproportionately hurt women, cuts in Social Security and Medicare in the U.S. would punish women more than men, and finally reductions in taxes and growing inequality in wealth and income over the last decade have disproportionately benefited men over women.

As I was planning my essay I was thinking about the central features of the capitalist mode of production that has dominated most of the world since the sixteenth century and how, politically, it has made maximum use of differences to protect its fundamental features.

First, capitalism is a system based on the private ownership of the means of production. Workers are paid to come to work to produce goods that are sold by capitalists in the marketplace. The workers are paid a wage that is less than the value of the products that are sold in the market. The difference between the market price of the products and workers’ wages is where profits come from. Marx used the term “exploitation” to refer to that system of production in which the workers produced value based upon their time and energy and the capitalists sold the products of their labor above the cost of labor.

Second, capitalism is a system that exists in history. Over the years and centuries capitalist enterprises grew and grew. Small enterprises consolidated. Huge ones emerged. When demand for one kind of product declined others were produced. When markets in one geographic area declined, capitalists moved elsewhere. When the demand for goods declined, capitalists invested in services.

There has always been conflict over how much workers were to be paid and ultimately who would control the work process, the technology, and the profit. Marx called this “class struggle.” Because of unequal political power there was a tendency for wages to decline except when workers joined together and fought for the improvement of their lives. Creating divisions among male and female workers and workers of different races and ethnic backgrounds often weakened workers’ struggles to achieve economic justice.

Capitalism regularly endured crises as demand for products and places to invest profits declined and profits became so large that capitalists could not figure out how to invest them to gain more profit. In our own day, capitalists shifted dramatically from producing goods and services to financial speculation and promoted political institutions to serve the needs of financialization. And politics entered the picture when the largest capitalists more or less successfully shaped political institutions to maximize their interests.

Libraries of books describe the historical development of capitalism and debate about how the system works and who benefits from it. However, what remains basic to understanding capitalism as an economic system is that it creates workers who dig the coal, harvest the crops, clean the hotel rooms, teach the kids, and do everything else to keep the system going. In a capitalist system almost everybody is a worker and, as the system requires ever-expanding profits, the system strives to reduce the differences among the kinds of work that people do to basic units of physical and mental labor. Marx called this “proletarianization.”

A central feature of the “political” economy of capitalism is the drive to divide workers and to use the political process to reduce workers’ realization that they have fundamentally shared experiences; that is they all are in one way or another “exploited.” A signature feature of capitalist political systems is their effort to create and exacerbate differences; differences by race, gender, ethnicity, sexual preference, and spiritual identities. The old slogan puts this best: “divide and conquer.”

So today as progressives reflect on the recent election and the future, it is important to get beyond narratives that in the main emphasize difference. Eskow’s essay concerning the class war on women serves as a useful reminder that what divides us could also unite us in a common struggle.

In the months ahead we should rediscover the ways in which we share experiences as workers in a capitalist system, at the same time as we recognize different experiences based on race, gender, sexual preference, and ethnicity.

One of the intriguing ideas embedded in the notion of  “21^st century socialism,” is that in a capitalist system workers are exploited in different ways and suffer different degrees of pain but the process of exploitation has a common structure and purpose. And after long years of reflection and political practice, and many false starts, we can now integrate our awareness and respect for difference into our conceptualization of what in human experience unites us.

ANOTHER ELECTION ASSESSMENT

Harry Targ

The commentaries on the 2012 presidential election are rolling in. Over the next several days and weeks progressives will be discussing the meaning of the 2012 elections for “Where do we go from here?” The desperate need is for us to resume rebuilding America and planting the seeds for a vision of “21^st century Socialism.”

So for now here is a list of some of the issues progressives and radicals should begin to discuss all across the nation.

First, MSNBC commentator Chuck Todd emphasized from the outset of election night commentary that the demographic changes in American society are and will continue to transform politics and the prospects for change. By 2050, a National Journal report predicted “minorities”--that is Black and Brown people-- will constitute a majority of the population of the country. In the presidential election just completed 24 percent of the voters were African Americans and Latinos. Also youth as a proportion of these populations is growing. Finally, women are a segment of the voting age population that is growing and motivated in part by a rejection of political ideologies and theologies that prohibit their control of their own bodies.

Second, in addition to race and gender, the 2012 election results point out emphatically that class matters. There is no question that the labor movement, including public employees, and grassroots workers’ organizations revitalized after 2010 in the industrial heartland, was instrumental in facilitating a Democratic “ground game” in states like Ohio, Wisconsin, and even Indiana. Working people are fired up, angry, and possibly ready to become a “class for itself.” And, in those states where labor made a difference, activists readily articulated connections between workers’ interests and interests of women and people of color.

Third, big money gives enormous advantage to the one percent as they select and promote candidates and issues. Big money also facilitates voter suppression and it
pressures the mass media to give unwarranted attention to their claims about the society. All the mainstream media, including the more liberal MSNBC, exaggerated the Romney debate bounce, claims about changing momentum, the closeness of the elections, claims derived from multiple and endless polls, and a hyped cognitive airspace about an alleged appeal that Romney/Ryan had. While much of the election hype was driven by the competition for viewers, there is no doubt that the Koch brothers, the Bradley Foundation, and the millionaire super pacs were able to project their vision well beyond the proportion of those in the society who endorse it.

Even though the power of money should not be dismissed, this election shows once again, the power of the people. The unsung heroes and heroines were the millions of people who stood for hours to vote in Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Wisconsin, California, New York, New Jersey and all around the country despite the best efforts of state governments and Tea Party groups to discourage voting.

It would be a great mistake in the future to demean voting, even voting for one of the two major parties. It remains the symbolic hallmark of real democracy. As articulate spokespersons, such as Nina Turner, Ohio State Senator, and Georgia Congressman John Lewis eloquently expressed it, people put their bodies and lives on the line to secure the right to vote. That must never be ignored. What progressives need to work for is a society where that vote can be clearly cast for those who support the people’s interests.

Fourth, building a movement all around the country matters. In 2008, the Democratic Party crafted a 50-state strategy. Resources were channeled into campaigns in states and communities that heretofore had only small progressive movements. But in 2008 that changed and in unlikely places such as Tippecanoe County in North Central Indiana, an overwhelmingly red county, Barack Obama carried the area and Indiana went blue. The same experience occurred elsewhere in states like North Carolina. After 2008, such communities were written off because they were not communities in “swing states.”

Subsequent to 2008, activists in the industrial heartland, some of the western states, and the south were seen as beyond mobilization again. In some places, such as Central Indiana, Eastern North Carolina, and even Ohio, and Wisconsin, those who had mobilized in 2008 remained so despite being written off by the Democratic National Committee (and many progressive groups). The 50-state strategy had the potential for developing into a nationwide social movement. After 2008, the Democratic Party moved away from this approach and some of the Left returned to focusing on progressive politics on the coasts.  In the months ahead, progressive forces need to reexamine the history of social change in America, conceptualizing movement possibilities everywhere, while recognizing the particularities of history, culture, politics, and organizational potentials in different geographic locales.

Finally, progressives need to examine political outcomes in states and communities. Preliminary data indicate that while progressive constituencies rose up angry against reactionary candidates in various state and local races as well as national campaigns, the most rightwing sectors of the one percent control state governments in almost half of the 50 states ( where Republicans control both legislative assemblies). And it is these state governments since 2010 which have imposed right-to-work legislation, attacked collective bargaining for public employees, defunded Planned Parenthood, built private schools and voucher programs that will destroy public schools as we have known them, resolved to impose anti-science subject matter in school curricula, and have systematically ignored environmental hazards. The national government moved “blue” in 2012 while it remains blood “red” in many states.

Progressives need to address many, many more issues in the coming months: the “fiscal cliff,” military spending, drone warfare, climate change, and expanding the health care system for example. The key point is to begin to change now. As one wonderful graphic urged on Facebook election day” “Vote Today, Organize Tomorrow.”

 

THE MORAL DEGRADATION OF A POLITICAL SYSTEM

Harry Targ

We live in a country in which wealth and power is grotesquely unequal and getting more so. In such an historical context, the political system functions in two ways. First, and foremost, the political system is designed to create myths, rituals, ideologies, and routinized forms of behavior to reinforce and protect the inequalities that are deeply embedded in the society. This function is manifested in patriotic rituals, appeals to American exceptionalism, prioritizing attention to elections as the one expression of political choice, and the replication of a mythological history of the country’s past and current institutions. Most of us were educated to believe that the American experience has been a two hundred fifty year struggle to achieve perfection. And perfection is the trajectory of America.

But in a democracy, even a flawed one, the institutions of governance offer those who are victims of an unequal distribution of wealth and power an opportunity to change, if not transform, politics and economics. It is critical to realize that the electoral arena and the institutions of government constitute contested terrain. While the tools in the struggle for justice are as unequally distributed as the wealth and power, masses of people--workers, women, minorities, and others historically marginalized--have won victories through political struggle. The historical drive for social and economic justice, American history suggests, has involved mobilizations within the routinized political processes, particularly elections, and in communities, at workplaces, and in the streets. From this point of view all forms of struggle matter. The forms vary in times and places but they all matter nevertheless.

Looking at the electoral arena particularly in a country where the inequalities are so stark and the disenchantment growing, the morality of the discourse of candidates for public office--what they say about themselves and their adversaries--has declined dramatically. The 2012 election campaign began just after Barack Obama won the 2008 presidential election. Republican spokespersons declared that their priority project was to make Obama a one-term president. That was followed with four years of hate-filled, racist attacks on the President, peaking first in the Tea Party campaigns and victories in 2010. After 2010, the Republican presidential candidates shifted into high gear with lies, distortions, and clearly racist, sexist, and anti-worker sentiments as standard fare.

The presidential candidacy of Mitt Romney may be evidencing a new low in the history of electoral campaigns. What is a central feature of his 2012 strategy is the regular pattern of proclaiming positions that are tailored for the audiences the candidate is speaking before. Candidate Romney has been pro- and anti-choice, for peace in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf and for war against Syria and Iran, for the maintenance of medical insurance coverage for persons with preexisting conditions and against it, for bailing out the auto industry and against it, cutting the federal budget and increasing military spending, cutting taxes for the rich and not cutting taxes for the rich, and defunding FEMA and maintaining it.

This past week as Obama was acting “presidential” dealing with the tragedies of Hurricane Sandy, the Romney campaign was distributing television ads in Ohio declaring that a Jeep manufacturing plant in Toledo was shutting down with jobs shipped to China. This claim was so contrary to Chrysler (the parent company) policy that its CEO issued a rejoinder. Jeep was not shutting down its Ohio operations; if anything there would be increases in jobs at the manufacturing facility. It is unimaginable for those not in the local auto industry to fully grasp the sense of fear and despair that workers in the potentially affected plant might feel when hearing that they would lose their jobs. The lie in these ads was targeted at a particular audience to engender shifts in the intention of Ohio auto workers from voting for the President, whose actions saved the auto industry, to Romney who was denying the efficacy of the President’s policy.

Candidate Romney has been making claims on a whole range of subjects since he began running for president years ago. While the American style of democracy encourages lying as a tool of campaigning for public office, the Romney campaign has taken this tool to a new level. The candidate, and the Tea Party constituency who constitute his base, has embraced a tactic of “shifting lies.” Say one thing before audience A, another before audience B. When the usually docile media calls him on A or B claim, he moves on to claim C.

The level of discourse in the end has therefore sunk to a new low. American politics has become a verbal jousting match between candidates who now are rewarded for saying anything to anybody. Along with a radical transformation of the distribution of wealth and power, the American people need to develop a whole new way of talking about politics. Lying, particularly shifting lies, must be eliminated. Honesty, integrity, basic decency and respect for all remain values worth fighting for.