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Parliamentary coups of the Right in Latin America

5/23/2016

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      In the second half of the nineteenth century, the United States and Great Britain were in competition for economic penetration of the continental republics of Latin America, which had attained independence from Spain and Portugal by 1825.  In conjunction with similar dynamics on a global scale, this culminated in the neocolonial world-system, with the United States as the hegemonic core power. The system reached its zenith in the period 1946 to 1968.  Latin America provided cheap raw materials for the United States as well as markets for its surplus agricultural and industrial goods, a relation that was fundamental to the industrial, agricultural, commercial and military expansion of the United States during the twentieth century.  Thus the natural resources of Latin America promoted the wealth of the United States and at the same time promoted the impoverishment of its own peoples, with the support of the Latin American estate bourgeoisie. These are the fundamentals of the history that US President Barack Obama wants the peoples of Latin America to forget, but they are unable to do so. Indeed, they consider it their duty to remember (see various posts in the categories Latin American History, Imperialism, and Neocolonialism).

     From 1919 to 1979, the Latin American industrial bourgeoisie and the popular sectors of urban workers, miners, and students (but not peasants and indigenous peoples) cooperated in the a developmentalist project, which promoted industrial development and concessions to workers’ demands to an extent that did not challenge the fundamental core-peripheral relation between the United States and its Latin American neocolonies.  Inasmuch as these modifications were limited to space allotted by the neocolonial world-system, they did not involve the transformations that were necessary for the protection of the social and economic rights of the people.  However, they were sufficient to attain the support of the majority of the popular organizations.  The dynamics were similar to what was occurring with respect to moderate (but not revolutionary) governments in the newly independent nations of Asia and Africa in the post-World War II era.

     When the world-system entered its long structural (and possibly terminal) crisis in the 1970s, the US power elite led the global elites in the implementation of the neoliberal project, designed to break the limited capacity of Third World governments to regulate their economies, thus rolling back concessions to the Latin America developmentalist project.  The neoliberal project undermined imperialism, inasmuch as imperialism was based on a degree of cooperation with the national industrial bourgeoisie, which was responsible for social control.  With the weakening of the national bourgeoisie and its turn to increasing subordination to international capital, and with the need for governments to make drastic cuts in social services expenditures, the national bourgeoisie and its political representatives could no longer present themselves with credibility as defenders of the rights of the people or the sovereignty of the nation. The popular indignation and rejection of the traditional political parties was not long in coming.

     In the period of 1994 to 2011, Latin America and the Caribbean were transformed by popular movements and new political parties that stood in opposition to neoliberalism and in support of the true independence of the nation and the protection of the social and economic rights of the people.  New political parties of the Left came to power in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, and El Salvador.  The new governments adopted measures designed to respond to the needs of the people and to control and protect natural resources.  And they cooperated with one another, forming regional associations that have been guided by a policy of South-South cooperation and mutually-beneficial trade, seeking to break the core-peripheral relation with the United States.

     From the outset, the Latin American Right has been opposed to the anti-neoliberal popular project, and it has used a variety of strategies to undermine it, including attempted military coups, regional secession, economic disruptions, and media ideological campaigns.  The social base of the opposition is formed by the Latin American estate bourgeoisie, the middle class, and new urban residents, with the latter two sectors being vulnerable to the ideological distortions of the mass media, which remains for the most part under the ownership of the elite.  Since 2012, the counterrevolutionary project of the Right has attained a degree of momentum, established by various factors: decline in the prices of Latin America’s raw materials exports, on which it continues to be dependent; the persistence of corruption, an endemic problem that the progressive and Leftist government have been able to reduce only partially; and the normal tendency of the people to blame the government for any unresolved problem, driven by idealistic hopes that expect more than is possible for any government, including one fully committed to the people.

     The Latin American Right has turned increasingly to the strategy of the parliamentary coup, involving the removal of the president from office by the parliament under some pretext.  The Right used the strategy with success in Honduras and Paraguay in 2009.  Recently, the Brazilian parliament removed the President on a temporary basis. And in Venezuela, the parliamentary majority is invoking a recall referendum of the President.  The strategy represents a significant advance over the military coup, inasmuch as the parliamentary coup has the appearance of legitimacy.  No one doubts that the military coup is indeed a coup; but the parliamentary coup has provoked a debate between the Left and the Right, between those who are naming the coup and calling for its international denunciation, and those who claim that it is a question of a parliament exercising a legitimate constitutionally-defined function.

      The specific situations in the four nations are significantly different.  In Honduras, the president was brought to office as a candidate of one of the two traditional parties, and he therefore did not have support in the parliament for his efforts to deepen relations with the Latin American governments of the Left.  In Paraguay, the elected president was a former Bishop, popular for his defense of the poor, who was elected as an independent.  He too lacked parliamentary support for his progressive agenda.  

     In the case of Venezuela, the economy was severely affected by the drastic reduction in oil prices, inasmuch as Venezuela is a major oil exporter, and its economy is dependent on the oil industry.  In addition, many of the import-export companies began to stockpile or refuse to import food and medicine, producing a shortage in these necessary goods and a drastic rise in prices.  At the same time, the corporate-controlled mass media continued their long-standing denunciations of the government, characterized by the repetition of false or misleading information.  From the period of 1998 to 2012, the Fifth Republic Movement, which later became the Socialist Party of Venezuela, enjoyed for the most part an electoral majority of fifty to sixty percent. But as a result of the factors mentioned, the Socialist Party attained only thirty-five percent of the votes in the December 6, 2015 parliamentary elections, and the opposition obtained a parliamentary majority of nearly two-thirds.  The Socialist Party remains the largest single party, and the opposition consists of a variety of parties that do not have a coherent program.  However, the opposition does agree on its opposition to the presidency of Nicolas Maduro, and it has initiated a referendum for the revocation of the president.  Some believe, however, that the referendum is not in the interests of the opposition, and that it will not proceed.

     In Brazil, the Workers’ Party came to power in 2002 not as a party, but as the leader of a coalition of parties.  During the fourteen years of Workers’ Party rule, the coalition has gradually fallen apart.  At first, the defectors were parties of the Left, who were not satisfied with what they believed was an overly moderate government program, the specifics of which were shaped by concessions to the centrist coalition partners.  With the fall in prices for Brazilian goods on the international market, and the ensuing economic problems, the principal centrist party of the coalition, the Brazilian Party of Social Democracy (PSDP), jumped ship and allied itself with the Right in opposition to the government.   Now with a parliamentary majority, the opposition was able to obtain a parliamentary vote for the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, making vague charges of corruption.  Many observers consider the charges to be farcical, inasmuch as the accusers are tainted by charges of corruption, and Dilma enjoys a reputation as an exceptionally honest political figure.  But as a result of the parliamentary vote, Dilma has been temporarily removed from office, and the vice-president has formed an interim government.  In this case, the vice-president is the head of the PSDP, who held the position as a result of its alliance with the Workers’ Party.  Now aligned with the Right, he has formed a notably right-wing cabinet as interim President.

      The Right also attained a victory in Argentina.  In this case, the candidate of the Right won the presidential elections in a close vote, ending four presidential terms of the progressive governments of Nestor Kirchner and Cristina Kirchner.  The narrow electoral victory of the Right was aided by the factors of prices, corruption, and popular idealism, mentioned above.

      In the cases of Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina, the Right in power is overplaying its hand.  It is not seeking to form a right-center coalition that would enable it to govern for a period of time; instead, it is taking extreme measures that are likely to alienate people with a centrist political orientation.  In Venezuela, the Right-dominated parliamentary majority offers no program to respond to the economic problems, which its own sectors helped to create.  Rather, it is focused on seeking to remove the president from office before the end of the term to which he has been elected.  In Brazil, the government has formed a cabinet of the Right, ignoring that it is constitutionally an interim government whose leader faces charges of corruption. In Argentina, the president has negotiated an agreement with creditors of “vulture funds,” leaving the government with excessive debts; and the president has made drastic cuts in government employment.  

      But the Right must overplay its hand.  It seeks a restoration of the neoliberal project and the return to rule by international capital and its national allies.  With this agenda, it cannot make concessions to the center.  It must take decisive action in defense of its particular interests.  In times of crisis, the center disappears.  It becomes a battle between the Left and the Right.

      In overplaying its hand, as it must, the Right is revealing its true character as a promoter of the interests of international capital in opposition to the sovereignty of the nation and the protection of the social and economic rights of the people.  As a result, there is a good possibility that the progressive and Leftist political parties will be able to discredit the restoration project of the Right, and recapture the ten percent electoral vote that it has lost recently.  

      The forces that defend neoliberalism and the neocolonial world-system do not have a constructive project to offer as the world-system experiences a multifaceted crisis.  The alternative world-project emerging from the Third World, including the progressive project of the Latin American Left, remains the only possibility for the development of a just, democratic and sustainable world-system.  These factors contribute to the possibility that the Latin American progressive and Leftist governments will be able to overcome the restoration project of the Right and to proceed with the consolidation of its project for truly independent republics and a better world.

     For blog posts on the new political reality in Latin America since 1994, see the categories Latin American and Caribbean unity, South-South cooperation, Bolivia and Evo Morales, and Rafael Correa and the Citizen Revolution in Ecuador as well as a reading on Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela.  


​Key words: parliamentary coup, Right, Latin America, Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina
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May Day and the socialist alternative

5/18/2016

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​     On May 2, 2015, Harry Targ posted in his blog, Diary of a Heartland Radical, an article that was originally published on May 1, 2009, “May Day Brings Thoughts of Socialist Alternatives.”  I dedicate today’s post to reflections on Harry’s article.

     Harry begins with a good description of the turn of the United States to a permanent war economy immediately following World War II, and the turn of the global elite in 1980 toward neoliberalism and financial speculation, two developments that are inconsistent with the well-being of the US republic and that undermine the sustainability of the world-system.

     Drawing upon visions of a socialist future articulated by utopians, anarchists, Marxists and revolutionaries of the world, Harry formulates a conception of socialism for the twenty-first century, along four dimensions.  (1) Institutions must be created by and serve the interests of the working class.  Harry notes that there are disagreements concerning the meaning of the working class in today’s world, and Harry wants to focus on those who do not own or control the means of production and are excluded from an instrumental role in political institutions, and these conditions pertain to the overwhelming majority of humanity.

     In my view, we socialists need a clarifying reformulation of the Marxist concept of a working class at the vanguard of the socialist revolution.  Marx believed that the development of capitalism would create automated industry, which would create the technical foundation for a socialist society, characterized by versatile forms of work and reduced labor time, thus creating a more humane type of society, similar to the primitive communism of the first human societies, but on a foundation of advanced technology.  The capitalist class, however, would resist the transition to socialism, because its interest was in profit as an end in itself; it would seek to create false needs to expand markets, rather than reduce labor time.  The factory workers, on the other hand, had the clearest vantage point for seeing the trend of automation and envisioning the more fully human form of work and way of life that it implied; accordingly, they would take necessary revolutionary steps to promote the emerging economy and society (see “Marx on automated industry” 1/13/14).  

     Marx thus envisioned a socialist revolution with factory workers in the vanguard.  But the workers’ revolution did not occur in Western Europe, as Marx (and Engels and Lenin) anticipated.  Instead, the Western European working-class movement became reformist, coopted by the capitalist world-economy.  As a result, the epicenter of the global revolution shifted from Western Europe to the colonized and ex-colonized regions.  They evolved as revolutions of a dual character, on the one hand seeking social liberation, a transformation of class and other inequalities; and on the other hand, seeking national liberation and the end of European colonial and neocolonial domination of the world.  The leaders of the Third World revolution found that the notion of the working-class vanguard, especially understood in the strict Marxist sense as an industrial working class, did not fit their colonial situation.  Not only was the industrial working class much smaller than in Western Europe, but in addition, the petty bourgeoisie and the peasants formed the mind and heart of the revolution.  So the revolutionary leaders, in different ways, fudged the Marxist concept of the proletarian vanguard.  I like the way Fidel did it. He simply proclaimed a revolution of the people, and he named and invoked the various popular sectors: the industrial working class, agricultural workers, peasants, the unemployed, teachers, professionals, women, and students.  Later, Chávez in Venezuela used a similar strategy, and he was particularly oriented to the spreading of socialist ideas to the middle class (see various posts in the category of the evolution of Marxism-Leninism).

       I think that today, in the interests of clarity and for purposes of strengthening our appeal, we should follow the strategy of Fidel and Chávez.  Instead of describing a socialist revolution as a revolution of the working class, we should describe it as a revolution of the people, formed by various popular sectors.  In fact, this is the way that it was in Marx’s time and has been ever since, although Marx’s projections have tended to confuse us.  We should understand the revolutionary subject to be the people, and we should be calling all of the sectors of the people to revolutionary understanding and revolutionary action.  In the United States, the popular sectors include workers, industrial, agricultural and service as well as urban and rural; blacks, Latinos, and original peoples; women; students; farmers; small businessmen, teachers, professionals, and other sectors of the middle class; and the unemployed and the homeless.

     (2) Harry maintains that in a socialist society, the working class fully participates in the institutions that shape their lives.  I believe that we socialists should more fully articulate the difference between representative democracy and popular democracy.  The latter has been developed in socialist societies, and they have attained an advanced expression in Cuba.  They involve the development of structures of popular power, established on a foundation of neighborhood nomination assemblies and elections of municipal assemblies.  And they include mass organizations of workers (in the broadest sense to include professionals), farmers, students, women and neighborhoods, which are intertwined with popular power (see “The Cuban revolutionary project and its development in historical and global context”).  If we were to more completely explain popular democracy and critique the limitations of representative democracy, we would be able to begin to develop popular organizations, in accordance with the principles of popular democracy, that would be able to play various roles in socialist movements in capitalist societies.  Although the pace of development of popular democracy is shaped by particular political and ideological conditions, the development of structures of popular democracy in appropriate and politically possible forms is integral to socialist transformation.

      (3)  A socialist society develops policies that sustain life, and Harry is on the mark in identifying policies that protect social and economic rights.  But I would add another: the right of all nations to full independence.  The protection of the rights of all nations to sovereignty is the fundamental historic demand of the Third World project of national liberation, and it is a necessary precondition for a just, democratic and sustainable world-system.  This socialist principle implies a rejection of US imperialist policies and a commitment of US socialists to propose national policies of cooperation and to develop practices of solidarity with the nations and peoples of the world.

     (4)  As Harry notes, a socialist society creates institutions that foster the maximum development of the human person.  I believe that this has been one of the impressive characteristics of the Cuban Revolution, which understands itself as affecting not only political, economic and social transformations, but also as involving the cultural and spiritual development of persons.  It not only has educated doctors; it has formed doctors who live modestly and are committed to providing services humanely and to all in need.  It not only has educated scientists; it has formed scientists dedicated to developing those components of knowledge that serve the needs of the world’s poor.  And it has formed doctors, scientists, and artists who are knowledgeable about human history and the contemporary world, and who are committed to the creation of a just, democratic and sustainable world.  Moreover, it not only has educated philosophers, historians, economists and political scientists; it has formed intellectuals in philosophical-historical-social science that have an integral view of the world, analyzing contemporary social problems from the vantage point of the colonized.  Cuba demonstrates that socialism involves not only a political and economic transformation, but also a cultural and spiritual formation of persons committed to the good of the nation and of all humanity.

     Harry concludes with the observation that we who believe in socialism have a contribution to make.  I am in agreement.  We who are socialists in the United States must creatively and actively search for ways to create a popular coalition that unifies the diverse sectors of our people, integrates the various single issues into a comprehensive project, formulates a perspective that sees the problems of the nation (and their solutions) in a historical and global context, and rejects the imperialist policies that have guided the nation for more than a century; a popular coalition that seeks to take political power in order to be in a position to defend the people, humanity, and the earth.  We need to form a new socialist political party that is connected to the needs and hopes of our people and that is able to mobilize them to action in their own defense and in defense of humanity.

     In Socialist Cuba, we celebrated May Day, or International Workers’ Day, with mass marches organized by the Cuban Federation of Workers (CTC).  The CTC is a mass organization of workers, without distinction between white collar and blue collar labor; between manual and mental labor; among industrial, agricultural or service; or between rural and urban.  All are workers, and more than 90% of Cuban workers are members.  The membership elects its leaders; it is a non-governmental organization, but it is not anti-government.  Pertaining to socialist civil society, it participates in the Cuban socialist revolution.

     In Havana on May 1, workers were lined up before dawn on the length of Paseo Avenue and its various tributaries to pass through the Plaza of the Revolution and before the review of Raúl, the principal leaders of the revolution, and representatives of 209 labor organizations from sixty-eight countries.  The festive celebration of unity and commitment occurred throughout the country:  300,000 in Santiago de Cuba; 300,000 in Artemisa; 150,000 in Granma; 300,000 in Matanzas; 400,000 in Pinar del Río; 300,000 in Cienfuegos; 242,000 in Holguín; 200,000 in Camaguey; 50,000 in Mayabeque; 200,000 in Las Tunas; and unreported numbers in Villa Clara, Sancti Spíritus, Guantánamo and Ciégo de Ávila.


Key words: May Day, socialism, International Workers’ Day
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Authoritarianism vs. legitimate power

5/16/2016

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     Today’s post is the final in a series of six posts reflecting on Mitchel Cohen’s What is Direct Action? Reframing Revolutionary Strategy in Light of Occupy Wall Street.  The first five can be found by scrolling down.  Their titles and dates are as follows:
“What is direct action?” 5/9/2016; 
“The vanguard party model” 5/10/2016; 
“Connecting to the needs of our people” 5/11/2016; 
“Herbert Marcuse Revisited” 5/12/2013; and
“The New Left and its errors” 5/13/2016.

      Mitchel is opposed to “the vanguard party/social democrat ‘consciousness raising’ construct” that leads to organizational structures that are “hierarchical,” “elitist” and “anti-democratic” (Cohen 2013:174, 179, 307).  He maintains that our task is not to organize ourselves to get out the Truth to the masses, with the presumption that the masses are ignorant (Cohen 2013:189, 207).

     In rejecting the model of the vanguard party as an arm for leading the people to the taking of power and effecting a revolutionary transformation, Mitchel mirrors the strong tendency of the Left to distrust authority.  The tendency is a consequence of confusing authoritarianism and authority, and it has been a historic strategic error of the New Left.

      The New Left, like the rest of US society in the 1960s, had good reasons to be fearful of the ever present threat of authoritarianism, for it had major manifestations during the twentieth century: the totalitarianism of Nazi Germany, fascist Italy and Spain, and communism in the Soviet Union after Lenin; and the authoritarianism of the military dictatorships of Latin America and newly independent nations of Asia and Africa.  Mass murder, concentration camps, torture, disappearances, arrests without cause, and the suppression of political parties are their legacy.  

     But we must be careful here.  In the first place, the Left has the obligation to formulate an historical social scientific understanding of the emergence and the characteristics of authoritarianism/ totalitarianism in the twentieth century.  Secondly, and more importantly, we must maintain a distinction between authoritarianism and authority, with appreciation that no human society or social organization can function without structures of authority.

      At the beginning of the twentieth century, the German sociologist Max Weber defined power as the ability to exercise one’s will, even over the resistance of others.  Authority, he maintained, is legitimate power, that is, it is accepted as reasonable and justifiable even by those over whom it is exercised.  He further maintained that in human social organization, there have been three types of authority: (1) traditional authority, which is vested by tradition in a chief or a king or queen; (2) rational-legal authority, with strictly defined limits, exercised by a president or prime minister in a constitutional republic, or by the director of a bureaucratic organization with defined goals; and (3) charismatic authority, exercised by a leader with exceptional gifts who calls upon the people to follow new goals and norms, drawing from traditional and constitutional understandings, yet forging new proposals.

     In studying and observing the revolutionary process of the last 100 years, I have seen that the concepts formulated by Weber are confirmed.  Charismatic leaders with exceptional gifts emerge, and authority is conferred on them by people, who have the intelligence and capacity to discern their exceptional gifts.  From this dynamic, vanguard organizations emerge, which possess charismatic authority among the people, but which also have structures of rational-legal authority.  When the revolution triumphs and forms a government, it must establish social order, and it develops constitutional definitions of authority, in accordance with revolutionary principles; at the same time, the charismatic authority of the leader and the vanguard party continues to be present, educating the people and exhorting them to support the new constitutional order (see various posts in the category Charismatic Leaders). 

     When the New Left emerged in the early 1960s among white students, it was influenced by the anti-authoritarian climate of the US political culture.  However, the New Left was concerned not only with authoritarianism, but also with the abuse of authority by holders of government office.  It was influenced by the oft-repeated phrase: “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”  If power corrupts, then any person who holds a governmental position, even if he or she possesses purity of heart and mind at the time of assuming office, will become corrupted by the possession of legitimate power, and he or she will begin to abuse the constitutionally-conferred authority.  This moves us beyond fear of authoritarianism to distrust of power, even when it is legitimate and necessary for the attainment of social goals.

     The New Left distrust of authority became the frame for viewing political power in the world.  It was believed that political candidates make promises to the people, but once they are elected, they ignore their promises and attend to their own personal gain.  And it was believed that revolutionary leaders proclaim a new vision to the people, and the people lift them to power; but once in power, the revolutionary leaders exploit and oppress the people, in a form similar to the deposed rulers.

      The betrayal of the people by politicians and by “revolutionary” leaders is a common phenomenon in the world.  But let us analyze its source.  The attaining of political office in representative democracies requires financial and political support from the wealthy, so successful politicians are those that are skilled in appearing to support the interests of the people while fulfilling their obligations to their rich supporters.  Successful politicians were seduced by wealth and power as young men and women, before they attained political power. Rather than power corrupting individuals, it is the system itself that is corrupt, and successful politicians were morally compromised from the outset by their participation in it.
 
     With respect to Third World “revolutionary leaders,” Third World movement leaders are unavoidably divided between a moderate sector, which tends to be tied to international capital and foreign corporation; and a revolutionary sector, composed mostly of members of the petit bourgeoisie that have cast their lot with workers, peasants, students and women.  Although both present themselves as defenders of the interests of the people, the moderates from the outset were connected to the interests of international corporations.  Thus the “revolutionary leader,” like the successful politician in representative democracies, is not corrupted by power; rather, he or she was corrupted before the attainment of power.

     On the other hand, there are numerous examples of revolutionary leaders, tied to the people and lifted up by the people, who faithfully fulfilled their commitment to the people until their final days: Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, Nasser, Fidel, Lumumba, Che, Salvador Allende and Chávez, to name a few.  And there are leaders today who have shown every sign of continuing on the path of fidelity to their last breath: Evo Morales, Rafael Correa, Nicolas Maduro, Cristina Kirchner, Lula, and Dilma.  When such charismatic leaders are brought to power, the people do not know if they will be faithful at the decisive moment when they take power.  But if the charismatic leader continues at that decisive moment to cast his or her lot with the people in opposition to the elite, the bond between the leader and the people becomes greater, so that the political and physical survival of the leader completely depends on the continued support of the people.  In such a situation, rather than power corrupting, the arrival to power deepens the relation between the charismatic leader and the people.  The people can see and appreciate this dynamic, and they see the leader as a personal symbol of the revolution, for whom and for which they are prepared to sacrifice.  

      The triumph of popular revolutions and the permanent fidelity of revolutionary leaders is not a general phenomenon, as a result of the power of national and international sectors opposed to the people and its interests.  However, it is a phenomenon that has been repeated on various occasions.  We of the Left must cast aside the maxim “power corrupts,” because in fact, the exercise of power by a charismatic leader in defense of the people, denouncing the powers-that-be like the ancient profits, is a part of the human story, and it is a glorious thing to behold.

     In the 1960s, the US Left celebrated and supported the revolutions led by Ho Chi Minh and Fidel.  But it did not study these revolutionary processes, and thus it was unable to arrive to understand the legitimate exercise of power by a charismatic leader and vanguard organization, whose authority is validated by its connection and fidelity to the people.  It could not discern that the remedy to the abuse of authority is not the rejection of authority itself, an idealist conception that could never be the foundation of a just and democratic society or an effective revolutionary organization.  It did not discern that the abuse of authority is overcome by the taking of power by leaders committed to the moral exercise of power in defense of the interests of the people.

     The US Left must cast aside its distrust of authority.  It must analyze the social sources of authoritarianism and the abuse of authority, so that these phenomena do not confuse our people into thinking that authority itself must be rejected.  It must explain the role of charismatic authority in the process of revolutionary transformation, as well as the nature of authority in socialist society, based on the examples of socialist revolutions that have triumphed.

     Authority can be abused.  Indeed, a central problem in the socialist and progressive governments of Latin America today is corruption in the middle levels of authority.  The transition to socialism is a long and complex process, and the formation of persons with new ways of being is not accomplished overnight.

      And false prophets can emerge, as the emergence of fascism in twentieth century Europe demonstrated.  The battle of the twentieth-first century is between fascism and socialism; between, on the one hand, the exploitation of the fears and anxieties of the people by false leaders that are supported by powerful national and international sectors; and on the other hand, the calling of the people by charismatic leaders to the construction of a dignified national project and a just, democratic and sustainable world-system.  In the struggle between fascism and socialism, we socialists cannot possibly prevail, if we have disdain for structures that are necessary for leading the people to revolutionary transformation.

     In my criticisms of the direct-action strategy and its assumptions, my intention is not to be dismissive.  I believe that a popular movement in the United States ought to have vanguard political parties that formulate analyses of history and programs of action and that call the people to participation in a movement for an alternative national project; but the vanguard party also should support direct action strategies and the formation of direct action communities of resistance. 
​
Reference
 
Cohen, Mitchel, et.al.  2013.  What is Direct Action?  Reframing Revolutionary Strategy in Light of Occupy Wall Street.  Brooklyn: Red Balloon Collective Publications.
 
 
Key words:  authoritarianism, authority, direct action, participatory democracy, charismatic authority, revolution, socialism
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What is direct action?

5/13/2016

3 Comments

 
Posted May 9, 2016

     In my post of May 2, I offered a critique of Jeffrey St. Clair’s article in CounterPunch, “Bernie Sanders: the Candidate Who Came in From the Cold,” in which St. Clair maintains that the Sanders presidential campaign should have developed a direct action strategy instead of a conventional campaign.  In the post, I maintained that if Sanders were a revolutionary socialist, rather than developing a direct action campaign, he would have developed an alternative political party that sought to capture the executive and legislative branches of the government (“What should Bernie Sanders have done?” 5/2/2016).

      I came across the St. Clair article as a result of the fact that it was posted on the discussion list of the Radical Philosophy Association by Mitchel Cohen.  Mitchel is an advocate of the concept of direct action, which I imagine is one of the reasons that he posted the St. Clair article on the Radical Philosophy Association list.  So I take this opportunity to offer a series of six posts on Mitchel’s 2013 book, What is Direct Action? Reframing Revolutionary Strategy in Light of Occupy Wall Street.

     Mitchel is well-qualified to write on the theme of direct action.  He has been involved in direct action since 1967, when as a student at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, he organized student participation in a demonstration against the Vietnam War at the Pentagon.  Issues in which he has been involved include US imperialist wars, environmental degradation, student rights, and US political prisoners.  He was one of the founding members of the Red Balloon Collective at SUNY Stony Brook in 1969.  He currently lives in Brooklyn, and he hosts a weekly internet radio show, “Steal This Radio.”

       Mitchel describes the US system of capitalism as characterized by: low taxes for the rich and high taxes for the 99%; a high level of home foreclosures; high student debt; high debts for home mortgages and credit cards; an impending environmental catastrophe; imperialist wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya; and government bailout for Wall Street banks and brokerage firms.    He maintains that, confronting this situation, “appeals to the morality or conscience of those in power are futile” (Cohen 2013:85).  Mitchel believes, however, that a new better world is possible, and it can be established by direct action (Cohen 2013:81-88, 97-98).

     What is direct action?  Mitchel writes:
​“Direct action is . . . a way . . . of accomplishing for ourselves, and not through intermediaries, some action goal ‘directly’ in the here and now.  By participating in such projects, we expose and attack the system for exploiting our needs in its service to Wall Street, and at the same time we create models to build upon as we strive to create a different kind of society that values people and nature over the accumulation of private profits” (Cohen 2013: 24-25).
He maintains that direct action is not a tactic for pressuring those in power.  Rather, it is a revolutionary strategy that seeks to construct alternative communities through the direct implementation of demands, thus liberating its participants from capitalist forms of thinking and being, freeing us for a reconceptualization of societal transformation.  When we participate in direct action projects, we seek to liberate others, but we primarily are liberating ourselves from alienation (Cohen 2013: 24, 116-19, 156-58, & 176).
 
    An important example of direct action was the occupation of Zucotti Park on September 17, 2012, establishing a base for the Occupy Wall Street movement, as well as subsequent Occupy movements in other US cities.  Some examples of direct action are well known in the history of the US Left: the refusal of Rosa Parks to give up her bus seat in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955; the Freedom Schools established by the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee in 1964 in Mississippi; the Black Panther Party free breakfast for children program in the late 1960s; the storming of the Pentagon in 1967; the United Farm Workers grape boycott in the late 1960s and early 1970s; the resistance of US soldiers to the Iraq war in 1990; and the protests against the global neoliberal project in Seattle in 1998 and in other cities in subsequent years  Direct action in some cases has involved blocking activities, such as the disabling of nuclear missiles, the blockage of Japan’s whaling boats, the action to stop the construction of the Seabrook nuclear power plant in New Hampshire in 1979-80, the refusal by San Francisco dockworkers to unload a ship carrying goods from South Africa in 1984, and the blockading of trains with arms destined for the contras in Nicaragua by the Vietnam Veterans Against the War in 1987.  Direct action strategies date to the early nineteenth century, when the Luddite movement in Great Britain opposed the mechanical transformations that would lead to the destruction of true work through the assembly line (Cohen 2013:27, 29, 30, 43, 53, 66-77, 90-96, 111-17, 120-22, 224-35, 291-94, & 330).
 
     The strategy of direct action implies an organizational form that contrasts with hierarchical organization.  Four to twelve people work together on a direct action project, forming “affinity groups” or “action teams.”  They may network with other affinity groups, and they may give one of their members the responsibility of serving on a coordinating committee of the network (Cohen 2013: 170-73).  
 
    As people work together on direct action projects, they are constructing alternative communities and new ways of relating to each other, seeking to build effective and long term communities of resistance.  “Direct action communities prefigure, to the extent possible, the new society we hope to create” (Cohen 2013:25). Communities of resistance thus redefine cultural norms (Cohen 2013: 24-26. 157-58, 164-65, 337).
 
      Direct action is characterized by the direct and immediate implementation of demands, rather than waiting for acceptance of the demands by the government or corporations.  Examples include the formation of alternative health clinics and schools, alternative media of communication, and food coops; squatters’ movements; workers’ councils; and actions to prevent foreclosures and evictions.  This creates a dynamic very different from that in which most organizations of the Left are trapped.  The organizations issue demands to those in authority, and when the demands are not met, there is nothing that the organization can do, a situation that obliges Leftist organizations to move from issue to issue (Cohen 2013: 123-24, 161-65, 303). 
 
      Through direct action, we liberate ourselves from the habits, thoughts and ways of being into which we have been socialized by the capitalist system. Central to this process is the reframing of questions.  The issue of welfare, for example, should be reframed, so that instead of focusing on assistance to the poor, the focus is on various polices that constitute welfare for the rich.  And the issue of property should be reframed, as Marx did.  Rather than proposing the seizing of the property of the capitalist, we should advocate the seizing of property that by right belongs to the workers or to the people.  In order to reframe issues, we must overcome our fear and anxiety, which can be done through the political task of creating direct action organizational structures (Cohen 2013: 163, 193-99, 206-12, 321, 337-38).
 
     In the following five posts, I will critically analyze Mitchel’s concept of direct action.  I will maintain that direct action projects often are constructive, involving people in acts of solidarity and in taking power into their own hands; but they are no substitute for vanguard organizations, for we must seek to take control of the political-economic-cultural institutions of the nation as delegates of the people. And I will argue that we must assess the political consequences of any direct action that is disruptive, not with concern for its effect on the elite and their political representatives, but with care to avoid alienating the people, who must be brought on board in a movement in their own defense.     

Reference
 
Cohen, Mitchel, et.al.  2013.  What is Direct Action?  Reframing Revolutionary Strategy in Light of Occupy Wall Street.  Brooklyn: Red Balloon Collective Publications.
 
 
Key words: direct action, protest, Occupy Wall Street, revolutionary, socialism
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The vanguard party model

5/12/2016

0 Comments

 
Posted May 10, 2016

​     In yesterday’s post (“What is direct action?” 5/9/2016), I described Mitchel Cohen’s concept of revolutionary transformation through the formation of direct action communities of resistance, which Mitchel formulates in his 2013 book, What is Direct Action? Reframing Revolutionary Strategy in Light of Occupy Wall Street.  I continue today with reflection on Mitchel’s analysis of revolutionary strategies in the United States.

      Mitchel maintains that the New Left of the 1960s indicted the system, rather than trying to reform it.  In contrast, he notes, the official Left today is reformist. Composed of unions, churches, liberals, mainstream environmental groups, academic Marxists and solidarity groups, it seeks to pressure the government to make changes, through protests and the issuing of demands as well as lobbying Congress.  Many of the groups of the official Left use a strategy that Mitchel calls “lowest-common-denominator coalition-building.”  This involves framing issues in a form that intends to maximize popular support, using appeals based in underlying cultural assumptions that are central to the maintenance of the system.  Examples include: the advocacy of free health care, but for legal residents, not illegal aliens; the opposition to wars not on the basis of their immorality, but on the grounds that the money spent could be used for jobs in the United States; and the anti-war slogan “Support our Troops, Not the War!” The reformist approach of the official Left accepts the legitimacy of those in power and the underlying assumptions of the system; it is lacking in vision and imagination (Cohen 2013: 41, 218-24).

     Mitchel maintains that many of the organizations of the official Left follow a vanguard party model, in which the leaders of the organizations engage in a strategy of consciousness-raising, seeking to overcome false consciousness among the people.  Mitchel, however, rejects the concept of false consciousness.  He maintains that the people are isolated, impotent and afraid; but they are not lacking in political information.  Rather than analytical presentations of Truth, the Left should establish direct action projects, enabling the people to overcome isolation, impotence and fear (Cohen 2013: 174, 179-80, 189, 217, 307, 341).

     In rejecting the concept of false consciousness, Mitchel apparently does not see the limited understanding of the people of the United States, a phenomenon that is a result of patterns that have been in place for more than a century: ideological distortions by a corporate-controlled media; fragmentation in higher education, limiting the possibility for a global and integral view of human history; the creation of a consumer society, giving emphasis to the possession of things rather than the quest for understanding; and superficial and ethnocentric discourses by the political representatives of the elite. The limited popular consciousness in the United States is clearly and painfully evident from the vantage point of Cuba, Latin America and the Third World, and it pertains even to the US Left.  It is a phenomenon that has victimized all of us intellectuals and activists in the United States, to a greater or lesser degree, without exception.

      What can be done to overcome the limited historical, social and global consciousness of the people of the United States?  If we study the popular revolutions of the world, we see that the limited understanding of the people, rooted in established structures, was a general problem.  The people possess common sense intelligence and a sense of right and wrong; but most people think concretely, and they only partially understand their situation, provoking feelings of powerlessness.  In triumphant revolutions, the obstacle was overcome through a process of popular education forged by charismatic leaders and vanguard parties.  The common sense intelligence of the people enabled them to discern charismatic leaders and vanguard parties, who possessed the personal qualities that enabled them to see through the ideological distortions and lead the people to a revolutionary theory and practice.  

     So the question emerges, how can we apply these lessons to the United States?  How can we effectively educate our people, who have been ideologically manipulated and mis-educated? Believing that the people are not lacking in knowledge or understanding, Mitchel does not adequately address this question.  But it is a question that we must address.  

      Mitchel maintains that raising consciousness about oppression, without involving the people in direct action projects, leads to an increase in despair and a feeling of powerlessness among the people. In contrast, involving people in direct action projects provides people with the means “to act collectively to empower themselves over the conditions of their lives” (Cohen 2013: 304, 325, 339-42; italics in original).

      I agree with Mitchel that describing structures of oppression without offering a practical road to liberation can lead to an increased sense of powerlessness.  But it seems to me that Mitchel makes the opposite error of denying the importance of analysis, which is necessary for understanding structures of domination and the possibilities for liberation.

      In my career as a college teacher, I found that my most successful efforts in popular education were based on a combination of intellectual work and practical experiences.  So I turn to such a synthetic model in imagining a vanguard party that is effective in involving people, transforming people, and creating the political conditions that would make possible a societal transformation from capitalism to socialism in the United States.

      An effective vanguard political party would be dedicated to popular education, and it would be based on significant intellectual work, developing pamphlets for popular education, which would describe human history, the historic and present structures of domination and exploitation, and the historic and present struggles for personal and national liberation.  At the same time, it would involve the people in a variety of activities.  Some of these activities would include involvement in popular education at the local level.  But they also would involve the kinds of direct action activities that Mitchel advocates.  Indeed, at the local chapters of the vanguard party, the fostering of direct action strategies and direct action communities of resistance would be one of their most important activities.  Participation in such a vanguard political party that combines theory and practice in a variety of forms would empower the people, both subjectively and objectively. 

     If history is our guide, we can see that if the people are to free themselves, they must be led.  The people possess common-sense intelligence and a thirst for liberation and social justice, but they naturally are divided and confused.  They must be led to that unity of action that is necessary for societal transformation, and this is the role of the vanguard party.  A vanguard party can include direct action strategies and the fostering of direct action communities of resistance.

     For further posts on this theme, see “A socialist revolution in the USA” 2/1/2016; “Lessons of socialism for the USA” 1/18/2016; “Popular democratic socialist revolution” 1/15/2016; and “Presidential primaries in USA” 8/25/2015.  They can be found in the category Revolution. 


Reference
 
Cohen, Mitchel, et.al.  2013.  What is Direct Action?  Reframing Revolutionary Strategy in Light of Occupy Wall Street.  Brooklyn: Red Balloon Collective Publications.
 
 
Key words: vanguard, Left, false consciousness, consciousness raising, revolution, socialism
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Connecting to the needs of our people

5/11/2016

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     Today’s post is the third in a series of six posts reflecting on Mitchel Cohen’s concept of direct action, which Mitchel formulates in his 2013 book, What is Direct Action? Reframing Revolutionary Strategy in Light of Occupy Wall Street.  

     Mitchel maintains that the failure of the Left to provide “direct action communities of resistance and nurturance” has the consequence that people turn to fascist and rights wing groups in order to provide for their social-psychological need for community and for meaning (Cohen 2013: 180, 250-51, 310-16).  “The Left preaches against fascism while providing no coherent framework for activities that could cut into fascism’s appeal” (Cohen 2013: 312).

      I think that this is an important observation by Mitchel.  Drawing upon the work of Leon Trotsky, Mitchel discerns that fascism responds to a need established by anxieties and fears provoked by the dislocations of capitalism.  This is why both fascism and socialism gain in influence as crises occur.

     I am in agreement with Mitchel that the appeal of the Left would be greatly enhanced if it were to organize activities in which people could be involved.  Such activities could include the kind of direct action projects that Mitchel advocates, and it also could include some activities that Mitchel mentions only in passing: sports teams, political groups, alternative discussion groups, community centers and legal counseling (Cohen 2013: 251).

     But addressing the social-psychological needs of the people requires not only involving people directly in activities; it also requires the formulation of a political program that addresses the concrete needs of the people.  If we study triumphant socialist revolutions, we see that leaders were skillful in formulating a proposed program of action that responded to the frustrations that the people experienced in their daily lives.  In the case of Lenin, the slogans that captured the people were peace, land to the peasants, and power to the popular councils (see “The Russian Revolution (October)” 1/23/2014).  In the case of Fidel, the concrete proposals included the ceding of land to tenant farmers, the sharing of profits by workers in industry and mining, increasing small farmers’ share of the sugar yield, nationalization of foreign companies that charge exorbitant rates, and just punishment for corrupt government officials (see “The Moncada program for the people” 9/5/2014 and “Reflections on ‘History will absolve me’” 9/8/2014 in the category Cuban History).  When popular revolutions move forward under the guidance of charismatic leadership, the people become involved in the revolution, providing them with a sense of belonging and meaning in life.

     But the US Left has not formulated a program of action that connects to the needs of the people.  In the first place, that Left has jumped from issue to issue, rather than formulating a coherent plan. Moreover, the Left has framed a number of these issues in ways that are insensitive to the concepts, values, religious sentiments, and patriotism of the people.  From 1967 to the present, the Left has not been creative and sensitive in the formulation of its concepts, and thus it has not demonstrated an affinity with the concerns and aspirations of the people.  And as a result, it has not convinced the people that it is prepared to make any sacrifice necessary in the people’s defense.  It has failed to formulate a national project that can unify our people into a great movement.

     The formulation of a coherent program that connects to the people is precisely the challenge of leadership.  When revolutions take-off, it is because charismatic leaders have emerged to offer a plan of the people, of which the people previously had a sense but were unable to formulate.  When charismatic leaders emerge, a vanguard begins to take shape, educating the people and exhorting the people to sacrifice in their own defense.

     Popular revolutions, therefore, are to some extent top-down.  They involve leaders who teach, exhort, clarify and unify.  But they also are bottom-up.  For the gift of charismatic leaders is precisely their intimacy with the people, their understanding of the people’s needs, their capacity to formulate a plan for addressing the needs of the people, and their boundless commitment to the people; qualities that the people see.

     Yes, as Mitchel argues, we must offer our people the chance to be involved in direct action projects and the creation of communities of resistance, and in doing so, we would undermine the appeal of fascism.  But we also must formulate a program of action, an alternative national project, rooted in the historic values of popular movements in the United States.  This would unify us, overcome our confusion, and lead us forward.  If we study the history of revolutions, we see that the formulation of an alternative national plan is what charismatic leaders do.

      As an old intellectual who has seen the glory of the Third World revolution, I call for the emergence of charismatic leaders in the United States, younger men and women of all classes and colors.  Leaders with the discipline to do the intellectual work necessary for understanding the fundamental dynamics of human history, overcoming the ideological distortions that they have been taught. Leaders with a capacity to explain the dynamics of the nation in a global and historical context, and who can formulate a comprehensive plan of action that connects to the needs of all of the people, voicing the needs of each popular sector with sensitivity to the concerns of other sectors.  Leaders who can unify the people and lead them in the quest for the taking of power and in societal transformation.  I know that such leaders are present, perhaps without fully understanding it, for they are present in all lands.  Your time has come!  

     For further posts on this theme, see “A socialist revolution in the USA” 2/1/2016; “Lessons of socialism for the USA” 1/18/2016; “Popular democratic socialist revolution” 1/15/2016; and “Presidential primaries in USA” 8/25/2015.  They can be found in the category Revolution. 

​Reference

 
Cohen, Mitchel, et.al.  2013.  What is Direct Action?  Reframing Revolutionary Strategy in Light of Occupy Wall Street.  Brooklyn: Red Balloon Collective Publications.

 
 Key words: socialism, fascism, direct action, social psychology, human needs
 
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Herbert Marcuse Revisited

5/10/2016

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Posted May 12, 2016

     I continue with reflection on Mitchel Cohen’s 2013 book, What is Direct Action? Reframing Revolutionary Strategy in Light of Occupy Wall Street, and I focus today on Mitchel’s criticisms of Herbert Marcuse’s 1964 book, One-Dimensional Man.  The book was frequently mentioned, although not necessarily read, during the student anti-war movement of the late 1960s.  There were commemorations on the fiftieth anniversary of the book, so it can be considered a classic. 

     Mitchel interprets Herbert Marcuse as maintaining that capitalism, by the middle of the twentieth century, had undermined entirely the capacity for revolutionary consciousness to emerge, inasmuch as it had arrived to a stage in which it was able to manufacture a desire for commodities, creating what Marcuse calls “false needs.”  Mitchel finds Marcuse’s position to be overly pessimistic, for it concludes that the working class in Western Europe and the United States is not revolutionary and has become part of a “labor aristocracy” that itself exploits (Cohen 2013:60-63).  In my view, Mitchel does not appreciate that Marcuse was insightfully identifying important emerging tendencies in the core nations of the capitalist world-economy.

      Marcuse, along with Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno and Jurgen Habermas, was one of the prominent members of the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, Germany, even though Marcuse did not return to Frankfurt from exile in the United States following World War II, as did Horkheimer and Adorno (Jay 1973).  The strengths and limitations of the analysis of the Frankfurt School reflect their social location in Western Europe and the United States, at a time in which a consumer society had emerged, the labor movement had become bureaucratized, and the intellectuals of the West were not integrally tied to the twentieth century movements of social and national liberation in the Third World.

      The bureaucratization of the proletarian revolution, and its incorporation into a structure of reform from above, was a dimension of a general twentieth century social phenomenon of bureaucratization.  In Russia, the bureaucratization of the proletarian revolution expressed itself in the form of a petty bourgeois counterrevolution, culminating in Stalinism; in Western Europe, in the form of social democratic political parties that were major parties, often in control of the state bureaucracy; and in the United States, in the form of the New Deal social contract and its corresponding structures of labor-management relations.

     In Western Europe and the United States, the bureaucratization of the labor movement and its accommodation to bourgeois democratic parliamentarianism and reform established a tendency toward the conversion of the upper levels of the working class into a kind of petty bourgeoisie, able to consume the multiple products of the consumer society.  At the same time, with an increase in educational opportunity, many of the worker’s sons and daughters entered into middle class professions, thus increasing the size of the middle class and reducing the working class, and decreasing the influence of labor unions and political parties supported by workers.  The increasingly higher standard of living of the working and middles classes in the core was made possible by the colonial and neocolonial superexploitation of the Third World, which reached its ecological and political limits beginning in the 1960s; and by government deficit spending, which would reach its financial limits in the 1970s.

      The containment of the labor movement in conjunction with the emergence of a consumer society provided a social base from which the Frankfurt School was able formulate a penetrating critique of the culture of capitalism.  The Frankfort School described the eclipse of reason in the twentieth century, making impossible the defense of values and reasonable ends and goals.  It analyzed the creation of false needs through advertising, establishing the foundation for the consumer society.  And it maintained that there is a universal human interest in liberation.  In accordance with this interest in liberation, Marcuse proposed the formation of a “transcendent historical project” that could challenge the established historical project; and Habermas envisioned a “communication community,” consisting of representatives of various particular interests who would seek consensus through dialogue in an environment free of coercion (Horkheimer 1972, 1974; Horkheimer and Adorno 1972; Marcuse 1960, 1964; Habermas 1970, 1971, 1973, 1975). 

     However, the penetrating insights of the Frankford school could not indicate the way toward human liberation, because the formulations of the Frankfort School were not connected to any revolutionary social movement, neither to the classical workers’ movement in Europe, which had become bureaucratized and reformist; nor to the Third World revolutionary movements, which pertained to another social world.  Marcuse was loosely connected to the student anti-war movement and the youth rebellions of the 1960s, but his concept of a transcendent historical project was not based on analysis of what the members of the movement were doing.  Moreover, the student/anti-war movement was not able to sustain itself as a relatively permanent social movement, which would have provided the foundation for a more complete formulation in theory and practice of Marcuse’s concept of a transcendent historical project.   Similarly, Habermas’ concept of a communication community was idealist, for the conditions for dialogue free of coercion do not exist in capitalist society.

      Nevertheless, in spite of their limitations, Marcuse and the Frankfurt School formulated penetrating insights into the structures of domination of the capitalist world-system, insights necessary for discerning the road to human liberation.


​References

Cohen, Mitchel, et.al.  2013.  What is Direct Action?  Reframing Revolutionary Strategy in Light of Occupy Wall Street.  Brooklyn: Red Balloon Collective Publications.

Horkheimer, Max.  1972.  Critical Theory. New York:  Herder and Herder.
 
__________.  1974.  Eclipse of Reason. New York:  Seabury Press.
 
Horkheimer, Max and Theodor W. Adorno.  1972.  Dialect of Enlightenment. New York:  The Seabury Press, A Continuum Book.
 
Marcuse, Herbert.  1960.  Reason and Revolution. Boston:  Beacon Press.
 
__________.  1964.  One-Dimensional Man. Boston: Beacon Press.
 
Habermas, Jurgen.  1970.  Toward a Rational Society.  Boston:  Beacon Press.
 
__________.  1971.  Knowledge and Human Interest.  Boston: Beacon Press
 
__________.  1973.  Theory and Practice.  Boston: Beacon Press.
 
__________.  1975.  Legitimation Crisis.  Boston:  Beacon Press.
 
Jay, Martin.  1973.  The Dialectical Imagination:  A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute for Social Research, 1923-50. Boston: Little, Brown, and Co. 
 
 
Key words:  Marcuse, Frankfurt School, false needs, transcendent historical project, communication community

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The New Left and its errors

5/9/2016

0 Comments

 
Posted May 13, 2016

      Today’s post is the fifth in a series of six posts on Mitchel Cohen’s What is Direct Action? Reframing Revolutionary Strategy in Light of Occupy Wall Street.  Mitchel calls for direct action strategies, rejecting the formation of top-down vanguard organizations that issue demands and organize protests.  I have maintained that vanguard organizations are necessary for societal transformation, and that, in the context of the United States at the present time, an alternative political party should be formed that educates and organizes the people, with the intention of taking political power through the mechanisms of representative democracy.  This difference in viewpoint with respect to strategy has been a central part of the story of the New Left.  

     The New Left emerged in the 1960s among white students.  It embraced a liberal agenda of defending the political, civil, social and economic rights of all citizens, but it rejected the anti-communism of liberals.  But at the same time, the New Left did not embrace the communism of the Soviet Union, nor did it accept the classical Marxist formulation of a socialist revolution led by a proletarian vanguard. Inspired by the Civil Rights Movement, the New Left by the late 1960s had turned to an identification with Third World national liberation struggles, and it became opposed to US imperialism.

     In the late 1960s, in response to the escalation of the US war in Vietnam, the New Left movement divided into three tendencies.  (1) A confrontational strategy of disruptive tactics, hoping to create a situation of political polarization, thus forcing the government to seek the means to end the war.  Most of the confrontational strategies were non-violent, but they did include the bombing of government and corporate buildings.  The tendency was most clearly represented by the Weatherman faction of the Students for a Democratic Society.     (2) Non-violent mass protest, with the issuance of demands with respect to the war.  The tendency reached its peak in the period 1967 to 1970. A variety of organizations participated in the anti-war mobilization, which attained a scale never before seen in the history of warfare. However, its efforts with respect to popular education were limited, and they were confined to the single issue of ending the war. (3) The formation of alternative political parties, conceived as vanguard parties in the tradition of classical Marxism, with its conception of the industrial working class in the vanguard of the revolution.  The Progressive Labor Party was its best example (Ayers 2009:135-36, 236; Gitlin 1993:288-94, 409-11; Rudd 2009:35-36, 156, 168, 190, 318; Varon 2004:8-10).

      None of the three tendencies were responding to what the historic moment required: the organization of a popular political party that follows a long-term project of education and organization of the people, with the intention of ultimately taking political power and attempting to reconstruct US society and US foreign policy on a basis of respect for universal human values.  (1) The confrontational strategy alienated the people, inasmuch as there was not a popular consensus that the United States ought to withdraw from Vietnam, and there had not been a US political tradition of strategies of this kind.   (2) The mass mobilizations did not create structures for popular education and sustained organization, developing popular consciousness of the fact that the war in Vietnam was a colonialist war that was symptomatic of a general US imperialist policy, in violation of the democratic values that the nation proclaimed and in which the people believed.  (3) The vanguard political parties had the right idea in a general sense, but their conception of a proletarian vanguard was inconsistent with social reality, for it was white students and blacks, and not workers, who were at the forefront of the anti-war movement. The conception of the vanguard parties was rooted in a classic European vision of class exploitation, and it was not sufficiently influenced by the anti-colonial perspective emerging in the Third World.

      The historic moment of the 1960s created an opportunity for social transformation in the United States, as a result of the emergence of the civil rights/black power movement and the tragedy of the Vietnam War, two phenomena that were national manifestations of a world-wide Third World movement in opposition to colonial and neocolonial structures of domination.  But the historic opportunity was lost, in part because of the repression and maneuvers of the established order, but also because of the errors of the movement, particularly its inability to develop the kinds of structures that were required.  The conditions favored the development of permanent popular mass organizations, but we failed to do it.

     Today, another historic moment establishing possibilities for change has arrived.  The present historic moment is defined by a sustained systemic global crisis, which the global elite is unable to resolve (see various posts on the Crisis of the World-System); and by a renewal of the Third World anti-colonial revolution, a phenomenon most clearly advanced in Latin America (see posts on the process of union and integration in Latin America).  

     We need to learn from our errors of the past, and rectify them, so that we can fulfill our duty.  We need to develop vanguard organizations that can educate, unify and lead our people, but they can include direct action strategies, analyzed from a perspective of their repercussions with respect to the sentiments and attitudes of the people.   

    
References
 
Ayers, Bill.  2009.  Fugitive Days: Memoires of an Antiwar Activist.  Boston: Beacon Press.
 
Cohen, Mitchel, et.al.  2013.  What is Direct Action?  Reframing Revolutionary Strategy in Light of Occupy Wall Street.  Brooklyn: Red Balloon Collective Publications.
 
Gitlin, Todd.  1993.  The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage (New York: Bantam Books, Bantam revised trade edition).
 
Jacobs, Ron.  1997.   The Way the Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground.  London and New York: Verso.
 
Rudd, Mark.  2009.  Underground: My Life with SDS and the Weathermen.  New York: Harper.
 
Sale, Kirkpatrick.  1974.  SDS.  New York: Vintage Books, Random House.
 
Jeremy.  2004.  Bringing the War Home: The Weather Underground, the Red Army Faction, and Revolutionary Violence in the Sixties and Seventies.  Berkeley: University of California Press.
 
 
Key words: direct action, New Left, anti-war movement, Weather Underground
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What is revolutionary socialism?

5/4/2016

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​     In response to my post criticizing Jeffery St. Clair’s article on Bernie Sanders (“What should Bernie Sanders have done?” 5/2/2016), Rich Daniels posted the following comment on the discussion list of the Radical Philosophy Association:
Clearly, what Charles McKelvey describes as a socialist revolution and the (partial) taking of power through the ballot, has no relevance to the Cuban, Russian, or Chinese revolutions, all of which were armed struggles that overthrew established government.  What Charles sets forth is at best a social democratic program that accepts and works within the prevailing government structure, not one trying to effect permanent social change.

     Revolutionary socialist movements are in essence struggles formed by the people that seek to take power from the bourgeoisie and its political representatives.  They are not defined by the method through which they arrive to power, which is dependent on particular conditions.  When socialist revolutions arrived to power, they did so through the leadership of exceptional persons who mastered the art of politics, and thus discerned the road to power.

      In the cases of the Russian, Chinese and Cuban revolutions, the armed struggles took three different forms.  The Russian Revolution was not exactly an armed struggle, but rather a movement for the formation of soviets (councils of workers, peasants and soldiers), accompanied by the formation of popular militias and the placing of some government military barracks under the authority of the soviets. The Chinese Revolution involved a long guerrilla war in the countryside.  The Cuban Revolution was a short guerrilla struggle that was able to move from the mountains and the countryside to the city. In all three cases, the charismatic leaders adopted intelligent strategies that were appropriate and necessary in the context of the particular conditions.

    Political conditions following the triumph of the three revolutions were sufficiently favorable to enable the revolutionary governments to effect a fundamental reconstruction of political, military and cultural institutions. Nevertheless, the power to which they had arrived was partial.  They confronted powerful internal and international enemies, and the obstacles to economic transformation were enormous. Seeking to construct socialism in a global context shaped by a capitalist world-economy, they were compelled to promote the interests and needs of the people on a step-by-step basis, limited to the possible.  In the case of Russia, the contradictions were such that with the death of Lenin, the revolution fell to a bureaucratic counterrevolution, and it subsequently developed in a distorted form.

      In the case of Cuba, the revolution at the moment of its triumph enjoyed significant political possibilities.  The military dictatorship was totally discredited, as a result of its alliance with US imperialism and its oppression of the people.  Representative democracy also was lacking in legitimacy, as a result of its service of US imperialist interests during the neocolonial republic.  Moreover, the national bourgeoisie emigrated rather than remaining in the country to defend its particular interests.  These factors enabled the Cuban Revolution to develop structures of popular democracy, institutionalized in the Constitution of 1976.  

      But the Cuban Revolution confronted major obstacles.  It was an underdeveloped nation, dependent on the exportation of raw materials to the United States and on the importation of US manufactured goods.  Its national bourgeoisie had been a “figurehead bourgeoisie,” totally subordinate to US capital and incapable of leading an autonomous national project.  And its proposal for independent development and true sovereignty provoked the hostility of the United States, which considered the island to be its possession.

      As the Cuban Revolution sought to construct socialism under these difficult conditions, it took decisive and necessary steps, according to what was possible, and it took further steps and adjustments as the revolution evolved.  Many of the measures are understood generally to be socialist: nationalization of agricultural plantations, industry, education and the mass media.  Other measures in health, education, housing, transportation, tourism and international relations are reformist, involving steps that any progressive government should take, including joint ventures with foreign capital.  But such reformist incrementalism was tied to decisive revolutionary steps, and it was part of a national development plan directed by popular power.  It was very different from reform from above, which involves concessions by the elite to popular sectors in order to pacify them.  Cuban reformist incrementalism was reform from below, constrained only by limitations in real possibilities.  All political decisions have been made by delegates of the people and not by representatives of the bourgeoisie, national or international.  Concessions of the Cuban revolutionary government are made not to powerful classes but to the people and to the possible.    

     The relatively favorable conditions for the taking of power through a guerrilla struggle and the reconstruction of political, military and cultural institutions, which existed in Cuba in the period 1956 to 1963, did not exist in the Latin America of 1995, a region defined at that time by representative democracy, neoliberalism, and corporate control of the media.  In these conditions, fundamentally different from Cuba of 1959, an armed struggle would not have been an effective strategy.  

      In Latin America in 1995, the people were confused by the collapse of a progressive agenda and the imposition of neoliberalism, but they knew enough to know that they were excluded and abandoned.  They began to protest over particular aspects of their situation, such as the high cost of water.  In this context, leaders emerged to direct the people toward a more comprehensive rejection of the neoliberal project, a discrediting of the political representatives that had participated in the implementation of neoliberalism, and the formulation of a more dignified project of national independence.  

      In this changed Latin American political reality at the dawn of the twenty-first century, three charismatic leaders emerged in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador.  They formed alternative political parties that took partial political power and led the people in the development of new constitutions, which were more progressive than those of bourgeois democracy, inasmuch as they included protection of the social and economic rights of the people, the sovereignty of the nation and the ecological balance of nature.  However, political conditions have not permitted the establishment of popular democracy as against representative democracy, nor have they permitted structural economic transformations of a kind that would break the neocolonial relation with the United States or destroy the political power of the national bourgeoisie, which remains politically active as a class, cooperating with imperialist interests in projects of political destabilization and the restoration of the Right.  In addition, the media remains for the most part in the hands of private capital.  In spite of these limitation, Hugo Chávez, Evo Morales and Rafael Correa proclaimed the popular revolutions in their nations to be revolutions of socialism for the twenty-first century, with characteristics different from twentieth century socialism, yet in full solidarity with socialist Cuba.

     What interpretations can we make of the revolutions in Latin American today that have proclaimed themselves to be socialist revolutions for the twenty-first century?  In addressing this question, we should not overlook the context in which they emerged in the 1990s.  It was a time in which the unipolar power had proclaimed the end of history and ideological debates, and that only one model was possible, that of liberal democracy.  It was a time in which the Left was weak, divided and demoralized, and some prominent members of the Left jumped ship.  Indeed, the Non-Aligned Movement, an organization of Third World governments, had abandoned the radical Third World project of national and social liberation in favor of an accommodation to neoliberal assumptions, although Fidel led a minority opposition to the movement’s accommodation.   At that time, no one predicted that in the next fifteen years the politics of Latin America would be completely transformed, with the emergence of self-proclaimed socialist governments in three nations, the electoral victories of progressive governments in other nations, the formation of regional associations that seek to break the neocolonial relation, and the solidarity of the region with socialist Cuba.
 
     The three charismatic leaders played a leading role in this stunning and unanticipated process of change.  They therefore should be appreciated as exceptional persons whose gifts include mastery of the art of politics.  Their leadership has included the formulation of the idea that in the epoch of neoliberal globalization, socialism has been born again, a socialism with different characteristics from before, a socialism that discerns a different road to power and a different vision of the characteristics of the socialist society, but which sees itself as carrying forward the banner of socialism hoisted by socialist revolutions of the past, for like its forebears, it is convinced that the capitalist world-economy is unsustainable.

     Thus, the Latin American revolutions of today signify an evolution in the meaning of revolution and of socialism.  They have followed the example of the socialist revolutions of Russia, China and Cuba, but they have not imitated them.  Practicing the art of politics, they have discerned a road to power adapted to the present epoch of neoliberal globalization and global crisis, in which the world-system is increasingly demonstrating its unsustainability.  

      In the three socialist revolutions in Latin America today, we can see in outline form the characteristics of a socialist revolution in the United States: the formation of an alternative party that proclaims the intention to construct socialism and that unites the various popular sectors; the formulation of specific proposals that respond to the concrete needs of the people; the formulation of constitutional amendments that project the goals of the socialist revolution; and the use of the structures of representative democracy in order to take control of the executive and legislative branches of the federal government, and to struggle from that position to take control of the judiciary, the military and the mass media, and to establish structures of participatory and popular democracy.

      Rather than analyzing the popular revolution in Latin America today from a perspective shaped by the socialist practice of an earlier epoch, we should appreciate the revolutionary spirit alive today in Latin America and join in the construction of socialism, redefined for the present historic moment, but with understanding of its historic roots. 

     Posts reflecting on the meaning of revolution can be found in the category Revolution.
        

Key words:  revolution, socialism, armed struggle, reform
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What should Bernie Sanders have done?

5/2/2016

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​     Jeffrey St. Clair, editor of CounterPunch, published his article “Bernie Sanders: the Candidate Who Came in From the Cold” on April 22, 2016 (www.counterpunch.org).  St. Clair maintains that Sanders is a reformist liberal and not a revolutionary socialist, and that he has been oriented to liberal incrementalism his entire political career, in spite of his cultivation of an image of himself as a political cynic and a professional outsider.  During the Sanders presidential campaign, it has become increasingly evident that what had been promoted as a “movement” has turned out to be a “fairly conventional campaign,” in St. Clair’s view.

     What might Sanders have done if he were leading a real movement?  St. Clair writes:
​What might a real movement have done? If Sanders could turn 30,000 people out for a pep rally in Washington Square Park, why couldn’t he have had a flash mob demonstration mustering half that many fervent supporters to shut down Goldman Sachs for a day? If he could lure 20,000 Hipsters to the Rose Garden in Portland, why couldn’t he turn out 10,000 Sandernistas to bolster the picket lines of striking Verizon workers? If Sanders could draw 15,000 people in Austin, Texas, why couldn’t his movement bring 5,000 people to Huntsville to protest executions at the Texas death house? If Sanders could draw 18,000 people to a rally in Las Vegas, why couldn’t he just as easily have lead them in a protest at nearby Creech Air Force Base, the center of operations for US predator drones?. . .  Instead of being used as stage props, why hasn’t Sanders put his teaming crowds of eager Sandernistas to work doing the things that real movements do: blocking the sale of a foreclosed house in Baltimore, disrupting a fracking site in rural Pennsylvania, shutting down the entrance to the police torture chamber at Homan Square in Chicago for a day, intervening between San Diego cops and the homeless camp they seek to evict? Why? Because that’s not who Bernie Sanders is and that’s not what his movement is about. He’s willing to rock the neoliberal boat, but not sink it.
     In maintaining that the Sanders campaign should have organized sustained protest actions with respect to a variety of issues in order to bring an end to neoliberalism, St. Clair mirrors the limited understanding of the Left in the United States.  Although it might appear that such a direct action strategy is more radical and thus in some sense more effective in defending just causes, we really need to ask a series of questions.  How exactly would a campaign of direct action bring down neoliberalism?  What would be the effect of such a campaign on those federal government officials who are responsible for neoliberal policies, whom presumably the campaign would be trying to pressure?  What would be effect of the campaign on the people, whose support would be necessary in order to end neoliberal policies?  Is the goal of a project of revolutionary socialism merely the end of neoliberal policies, or does it have a more fundamental objective?

       If we were to study the revolutions of the twentieth century and today, we would see that revolutions did indeed organize protests with respect to specific issues, and the protests sometimes obtained concessions from the ruling political class.  But fundamental change occurs not by pressuring elites to make concessions to popular demands, but by displacing the elite from power and replacing it with representatives of the people’s interests.   Triumphant revolutions over the past 100 years formed organizations and political parties that had the conscious intention of taking political power, and they astutely analyzed their political contexts in order to figure out how to do so.

     If Bernie Sanders were a revolutionary socialist, he would have formed an alternative political party that would have dedicated itself for years to forming the consciousness of the people, educating them concerning the necessity of the popular taking of power and the characteristics of the alternative society that the empowered people would seek to construct.  The alternative political party would seek the election of candidates to Congress as well as the presidency, so that the alternative political party would control two of the five principal structures of power in the United States (the other three being the judiciary, the military and the mass media).

       But Bernie Sanders is not a revolutionary socialist.  He never has been.  And in this respect, St. Clair is right.

      For further reflection on this theme, see “Presidential primaries in USA” 8/25/2015 in the category of Revolution and also in the category On the Vanguard.


Key words:  Bernie Sanders, socialism, revolution, reform
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    Author: Charles McKelvey

    Retired professor, writer,  and Marxist-Leninist-Fidelist-Chavist revolutionary

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