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What are the origins of neoliberalism?

6/24/2016

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Posted June 17, 2016  

     In our last post (“Neoliberalism” 6/15/2016), we looked at the definition and description of neoliberalism offered by Asin Shivani in “This Is Our Neoliberal Nightmare: Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and Why the Market and the Wealthy Win Every Time” (Alternet, June 8, 2016).  I maintained that Shivani’s description focuses on the dynamics of neoliberalism in the core nations, and it lacks an historical and global perspective.  This limitation is evident with respect to Shiyani’s speculation concerning the origin of neoliberalism.  He writes:
​“It’s an interesting question if it was the stagflation of the 1970s, following the unhitching of the United States from the gold standard and the arrival of the oil embargo, that brought on the neoliberal revolution, with Milton Friedman discrediting fiscal policy and advocating a by-the-numbers monetarist policy, or if it was neoliberalism itself, in the form of Friedmanite ideas that the Nixon administration was already pursuing, that made stagflation and the end of Keynesianism inevitable.”
     Let us seek to address the question of the origins of neoliberalism with an historical and global perspective.  

     The modern world-system and the capitalist world-economy were constructed on a foundation of colonial domination of the world by seven Western European nations from the beginning of the sixteenth to the beginning of the twentieth centuries.  The conquered regions of Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and Southeast Asia (excepting China and Japan) were converted into suppliers of the raw materials of the nations of the core, on a base of forced labor.  In addition, with their traditional economies destroyed, the conquered regions provided markets for the surplus industrial and agricultural goods of the core (see various posts on the origin and development of the modern world-system).  

     The conquered peoples resisted.  At first, the resistance was military.  Those initially conquered were no match for the politically concentrated and more militarily advanced emerging nation-states of Western Europe.  As the Western European states were able to accumulate more power through the emerging colonial systems, the empires of China, India and the Islamic World ultimately would have to make significant concession to the new global powers of Western Europe.  Later, the resistance of the conquered peoples took the form of anti-colonial and anti-neocolonial social movements, seeking to transform colonies into independent nations, and seeking to form an interstate system based on the principles of the equality and sovereignty of all nations.  However, the European nations-states were able to contain the Third World movements through the development of a neocolonial world-system, characterized by formal political independence of the nations of the world, and by imperialist economic and financial penetration of the peripheralized zones, in practice maintaining inequality among nations and negating true sovereignty for the formerly colonized nations (see “The characteristics of neocolonialism” 9/16/2013).

     In addition to managing the anti-colonial movements in the colonized regions, the world-system was able to contain popular movements in the core.  These movements, formed by workers, artisans, peasants, farmers and the middle class, were a constant threat to take control of the core states from the capitalist class.   However, the elite was able to undermine the revolutionary potential of the popular classes through the granting of material concessions and the development of a consumer society.  The concessions to popular demands in the core were financed by the superexploitation of the peripheral and semi-peripheral regions and by government deficit spending.

      The world-system provided a relatively high standard of living for the popular sectors of the European colonial nations and of the ascending European settler societies, such as the United States and Canada.  Thus, the world-system worked fairly well for those who were strategically positioned to benefit from colonial and neocolonial domination of vast regions of the world.  However, in the middle of the twentieth century, the world-system began to reach its geographical and ecological limits, in that had run out of lands and peoples to conquer, thus losing the principal motor that drove its expansion.  And this was occurring just as the Third World national liberation movements were reaching their zenith, demanding more and more political and economic concessions from the global powers.  At the same time, the deficit spending strategy in order to satisfy popular demands in the core had reached its limits, as core government debts exceeded sustainable levels.  

      In modern capitalism that have been periodic crises of overproduction, giving rise to economic recession or repression.  And there have been other periodic crises, such as the Mexican debt crisis, the Third World debt crisis, and the financial crisis of 2008.  But in the 1970s, the world-system was beginning to see signs of a more profound type of crisis: a fundamental structural crisis of the world-system, which was rooted its basic contradictions.  There was, on the one hand, the contradiction between the economic system and the environment, in that it is a system that economically expands by conquering more lands and peoples, yet it pertains to a planet with a finite amount of land and peoples.  Secondly, there is the contradiction between the democratic ideology, which proclaims the equality of persons and nations, that has been the dominant ideology of the system since the late eighteenth century; and the logic of colonial and neocolonial domination and the exploitation and superexploitation of labor, which provides the economic foundations of the system.  The contradiction between democratic values and domination/exploitation had the consequence that popular movements were invoking democratic values as an arm of struggle, compelling the elite to continually make concessions to anti-colonial movements in the Third World as well as popular sectors in the core, concessions that were beyond the capacity of the system to sustain.  

     Thus, by the 1970s, the system had reached its limits.  Corporate profits were stagnating.  Economic stagnation was combined with inflation.  Global production has surpassed ecological limits.  Peoples all over the world, in core and peripheral zones, were in movement, demanding concessions and/or structural change.  The hegemonic neocolonial power was overextended, with balance of payments and government deficits, which compelled it to eliminate the gold standard for the US dollar.

      It would not have been unreasonable for global elites to respond to this situation by the taking of an enlightened turn, recognizing that the world-system had reached its limits, and that it would be necessary to change the logic of the system from domination to cooperation, and to search for mutually beneficial forms of international trade and ecologically sustainable forms of production.  It would have been reasonable, given objective conditions, but it would have been inconsistent with the previous comportment of the elite, which had persistently pursued its interests at the expense of the common good. During the second half the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth, it had turned to monopoly capitalism, imperialism, consumerism, and war, seeking to maximize production and profits. Following World War II, rather than reconverting to a peacetime economy and seeking to develop peace and cooperation among nations, as Franklin Roosevelt had envisioned, the US power elite led the world in the development of a military-industrial complex, a permanent war economy, ecologically unsustainable forms of production and consumption, military intervention in the Third World, and new forms of imperialism.  The neoliberal turn of the global elite in 1980, provoked by a fundamental structural crisis of the system, was fully predictable.

     Consistent with its past behavior, perhaps true to its nature, the global elite, rather than taking a reasonable and enlightened turn, took an aggressive turn, driven by the pursuit of short-term particular interests.  It sought to reassert its control over the world-system, reversing forty-five years of concessions.  It imposed the neoliberal program on the neocolonies, using the debt of Third World governments as leverage, thus rolling back concessions that had been made to the Third World during the course of the twentieth century.  At the same time, it turned to an economic war on the popular sectors of the core, rolling back programs that had been developed in response to popular demands.

     As applied in the Third World, neoliberal policies had direct short-term benefits to core corporations.  The neoliberal project required Third World governments to eliminate government protection of national currencies and to permit the trading of currency at a free market rate, thus greatly increasing the purchasing power of the US dollar in Third World nations, reducing the costs of labor.  The neoliberal project compelled privatization of government-owned enterprises, thus making economic enterprises available for purchase at devalued prices.  Neoliberal policies required Third World governments to reduce protection for their national industries, reducing or eliminating tariffs and taxes on imported goods, thus expanding the market for the goods of core corporations.  Neoliberal policies facilitated the free flow of capital into and out of countries, thus making possible enormous profits through financial speculation.  And neoliberal policies reduced or eliminated union restrictions, thus increasing profits to core corporations through the exploitation and superexploitation of labor in the Third World (Prieto 2009:108-11).  

     Thus, the neoliberal project of the core powers was an aggressive response by the global elite to the structural crisis of the world-system, and it had a certain logic to it.  But the logic pertained only to the short-term.  In dismissing the needs of the humble people who form the majority of humanity, the neoliberal project provoked popular indignation, giving rise to a renewal of popular movements that seek structural transformation of the world-system.

     The origins of neoliberalism cannot be treated as a mystery or the subject of mere speculation.  We intellectuals of the North have the duty to understand it, and to explain it to our people, so that our options can be more fully understood.  We must be clear on two issues.  First, the world-system, based on neocolonial domination and the superexploitation of labor, has overextended its ecological and political limits, and it cannot be sustained.  Humanity must seek to develop an alternative world-system based on cooperation and mutually beneficial trade, if it hopes to avoid chaos and/or extinction. Second, the mainstream and established political-economic actors of the nations of the core have demonstrated that they are morally and politically unprepared to rule the world in anything approaching a necessary and responsible form.  They must be removed from power by the people in movement.  

      If we intellectuals of the North were observing with a more open attitude what has been occurring in the Third World since the 1990s, we would see that there has begun a process of peoples in movement seeking to develop an alternative world-system.  We intellectuals of the North must discern not only the unreasonable and morally irresponsible behavior of those in power, but also the dignified behavior of the world’s humble.  We must call our peoples in the North to participation in the movement that has been formed by humanity in defense of itself.
​ 
Reference
 
Prieto Rozos, Alberto.  2009.  Evolución de América Latina Contemporánea: De la Revolución Cubana a la actualidad.  La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.
 
 
Key words: neoliberalism, Shivani, crisis

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Ideological frames

6/23/2016

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Posted June 20, 2016  

     In “This Is Our Neoliberal Nightmare: Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and Why the Market and the Wealthy Win Every Time” (Alternet, June 8, 2016), Asin Shivani sees four ideologies in the modern world: classical liberalism, communism, fascism, and neoliberalism.  He speaks of them in a form suggesting that none of them is good for the human person, with the possible exception of classical liberalism. Classical liberalism, he maintains, elevates the individual; in contrast to fascism, which elevates the state, and communism, which elevates the collectivity.  The new ideology of neoliberalism, which emerged in the 1970s, “has been more successful than most past ideologies in redefining subjectivity, in making people alter their sense of themselves, their personhood, their identities, their hopes and expectations and dreams and idealizations,” in accordance with the demands of the market.  He appears to dislike classical liberalism because it did not practice what it preached, for capitalism under the sway of liberal ideology in practice elevated the market and not the individual.

       The difficulty with this characterization of modern ideologies is that it implies that ideologies necessarily have negative consequences for humanity.  This negative view of ideology is made possible by not seeing the alternative ideology that has been forged by Third World popular movements during the last 100 years.  These Third World ideologies and movements were conceived during the first half of the twentieth century with the intention of constructing an alternative to the capitalism of the modern West and the communism led by the Soviet Union, rejecting both as different forms of materialism that debased the human person.  In their more radical formulations, the Third World movements were anti-colonial and anti-neocolonial, seeking to establish the independence, equality, and full sovereignty of all nations; and they sought to protect the social and economic rights of all persons.  After the setback caused by the global neoliberal project, they reemerged in the 1990s, with greater maturity, incorporating insights that had emerged in the West, such as the principle of equality between men and women and the need to protect and sustain the natural environment.  When they took control of governments, they proceeded to take fundamental measures in defense of the nation and the people.  The lists of steps that they have taken is impressive: literacy programs; free education; free health clinics; and the subsidizing of food, housing, utilities and transportation.  Being countries that were underdeveloped, a legacy of colonialism and neocolonialism, they took necessary steps to fund their programs: nationalization, agrarian reform, and alliances with “outlaw” nations, thus provoking the hostility of the global powers.  Finding themselves in a situation in which they had to fight both the legacy of poverty and the wrath of the global powers, they persisted, and they never ceased in proclaiming to the world the need for a more just and democratic world-system.

      The significance of this global movement from below cannot be denied in an historic moment in which the world-system is experiencing a profound systemic crisis, increasingly demonstrating its unsustainability.  But the theory and practice of the Third World movement does not appear in the characterization of modern ideologies presented in the Shivani article.  Does this represent a subtle form of Eurocentrism? 

      Equally problematic is the list of bad guys that Shivani presents, each of which is associated with communism or fascism, but not liberalism, classic or neo:  Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Mao and Franco.  In the first place, we should maintain a distinction between fascism, which is based on the identification and repression of scapegoats, exploiting the fears and confusions of the people, in alliance with the capitalist class; and communism, which at least began as something more noble.  Secondly, the cases of Stalin and Mao should be treated with more care.  Stalin qualifies as an evil dictator, but we should make an effort to understand and explain the fall of the project of Lenin and the rise of Stalinism.  The Trotskyites have done excellent work in this regard (see Grant 1997), but they have made an historic, strategic error in rigidly applying the lessons of the Soviet Union to other lands and times.  The case of China and Mao is complicated and exceptional.  It is an oversimplification to suggest that Mao is a bad guy, as a piece in the construction of a pejorative role of ideology.

     But where are the good guys?  In this list of persons who emerged as leaders who forged ideologies, where are Ho, Nasser, Fidel, Nyerere, Allende, Chávez, Evo, Correa, Lula, Dilma, and Cristina?  I suppose that overlooking Third World charismatic leaders comes with overlooking Third World popular movements.

     If we do not see the Third World movements and leaders and the ideology that they formed, how can we hope to construct an ideology that responds to the conditions of our own nations, thus participating in the making of a more just and democratic world-system?  The characterization of modern ideology presented by Shavani contributes to the cynicism and pessimism of the North, consistent with the realism or pragmatism that is an adjustment to neoliberalism, as Shavani observes.  To overcome cynicism, we must learn to listen to the voices from below, emerging in the Third World, for they are voices that educate and inspire.
 
Reference
 
Grant, Ted.  1997.  Rusia—De la revolución a la contrarrevolución: Un análisis marxista.  Prólogo de Alan Woods.  Traducción de Jordi Martorell.  Madrid: Fundación Federico Engels. [Originally published in English as Russia: From Revolution to Counterrevolution].
 
 
Key words: ideology, neoliberalism, liberalism, communism, fascism, Third World popular movements, Shivani
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The nation-state in a neoliberal world

6/21/2016

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     We have been discussing “This Is Our Neoliberal Nightmare: Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and Why the Market and the Wealthy Win Every Time” (Alternet, June 8, 2016) by Asin Shivani (see “Neoliberalism” 6/16/2016; “What are the origins of neoliberalism?” 6/17/2016; “Ideological frames” 6/20/2016).

     Shivani maintains that under the force and logic of neoliberalism, the state no longer exists in the form that we are accustomed to viewing it.  Like everything else in the age of neoliberalism, the state is being made over in the image of the market.  He maintains that “a new entity is being created, which is not the state as we have known it, but an existence that incorporates potentially all the states in the world and is something that exceeds their sum.”  Accordingly, “the state has become the market, the market has become the state, and therefore both have ceased to exist in the form we have classically understood them.”

     If this were true, what would it imply for political action?  How would it be possible for the people to take control of, or even influence, a political process with such a hazy existence?  The implication is that the people are powerless.

     I submit, however, that this description of a nebulous entity that is neither state nor market, but somehow both at once, is not consistent with the empirical reality of the political dynamics of the modern world-system.  Nation-states were the principal actors in the creation of the modern world-system, and they continue to be the principal actors. International organizations of various kinds are playing an increasingly important role, reflecting an increasing global consciousness of the need for cooperation among nations and peoples, but these organizations have been created and are sustained by nation-states, which sometimes seek to work through international organizations in the pursuit of nationalist goals.   And transnational corporations are increasingly powerful, but when they act politically, they do so primarily through states, whose representatives they control.

      From the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries, Western European nation-states were forged by an alliance between monarchs and the emerging merchant class, which overcame the decentralized power of the feudal lords and consolidated centralized economic and political power through conquest of the empires and societies of America (see “The modern nation-state” 8/14/2013).  At the end of the eighteenth century, the bourgeois revolution cast aside the kings and queens, and it established representative democracy, which is a political system with the appearance of rule by the people, but in reality is a political system that enables control of the state by the capitalist class.  The phenomenon of states acting, both domestically and internationally, in the interests of the capitalist class, but pretending to respond to the people, continues to our time.  The modern nation-state, for more than 200 years, represents the interests of the capitalist class, governed by ethically compromised political figures who are adept at pretending to promote the needs of the nation and the people as they represent the interests of the capitalist class, on whose support they depend for political survival.

      Following World War II, seeking to protect its recently attained global hegemony, the United States played a leading role in establishing the United Nations.  With the support of its principal allies, it established structures in the new international organization that ensured control by the United States and the nation-states that were allied with it.  As colonialism came to an end, the newly independent nations became member states of the United Nations, constituting an overwhelming majority of states, and representing the great majority of humanity.  But their capacity to influence the United Nations is limited by its undemocratic structures.  The democratic reform of the United Nations has been a persistent demand of the nation-states of the Third World, which they express through organizations that they have formed among themselves.

      In the post-World War II era, the United States also established a number of regional defense alliances, such as NATO.   And it established the Organization of American States, culminating more than sixty years of seeking to institutionalize the participation of Latin American and Caribbean nation-states in the US project of neocolonial domination and economic and financial penetration.    The United States no longer has absolute control of these organizations, and it is compelled to act to some extent multilaterally.  But this is a consequence of the decline of the United States from hegemony, and not a decline in the role of nation-states as actors in the world-system.

      The nation-states of the Third World have formed their own associations of states, recognizing their common interests rooted in their common experience of colonialism and neocolonialism.  These organizations are based on the understanding that through cooperation they will be able to more effectively attain their interests as nation-states.  They include the Group of 77 and the Non-Aligned Movement, which have in recent years made more evident the contrast of interests between the nation-states of the Third World and those of the North.

     In the history of the world-system, states have always been constrained by the conduct of other states, by their relative amount of power in the world-system, by the prevailing economic structures, and by other factors.  A constant competition among states was the norm, with some winning and some losing.  But states, nearly always under the control of the national bourgeoisie and its allies that formed an elite, have been and are the principal actors in the world-system.

      In the process of change that has occurred in Latin America during the last twenty years, the peoples in movement were for the most part not hindered by the confusion that states as conventionally understood no longer exist.  Out of the popular movements came new political parties, which consciously sought to take control of states.  In those nations in which the movements took control of the states, or at least partial or shared control, they changed the behavior of the states, both domestically and internationally.  In the process, they improved the conditions in which the people live, and they established new patterns of cooperation among nation-states.  

     The last twenty years in Latin America have demonstrated that states continue to be principal actors in national and international affairs.  And they have shown that, when the people take power from the elite, the way that states act can be changed.  This occurs when the people, guided by charismatic leaders, arrive to understand that they have the right and the capacity to take control of states and to redirect them in accordance with universal human values.

     We should not be confused.  States exist, and they are the principal actors in the world-system.  The great majority of states in the world-system are controlled by the national bourgeoisies.  If there is representative democracy, control by the bourgeoisie is hidden, and there is a great pretense of democracy and responding to the will of the people.  But control of states by an elite through a process that pretends to be democratic is not the only viable option for humanity, because there also have emerged states that are, or have been for a time, under the control of delegates of the people.  Such states act differently in the world-system, and when they do, they are punished by the powerful states.  They thus confront many obstacles, but often they persist.  Certainly, the more of them that emerge, the greater the possibility that they will prevail in the establishment of an alternative and more just, democratic and sustainable world-system.

     We intellectuals of the North have the duty to understand and to explain to our people the whole of the modern human story, as one that includes, in the past and in the present, states that act in accordance with the needs and interests of the people, having become this way as a result of the advanced understanding, organization, commitment and courage of the people.  It is a story that could inspire our people and help them to overcome their confusion and cynicism. Who will teach it to them, if not us?

     The state continues to exist.  The key questions are:  Who will control states in the future, the capitalist class or delegates of the people?  Can humanity avoid chaos or extinction if most states continue to be controlled by the capitalist class, which during the last thirty-five years has demonstrated its indifference to the well-being of humanity, the clamor of the people, and the needs of nature?


Key words: nation-state, neoliberal, Shivani
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Neoliberalism and presidential elections

6/20/2016

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Posted June 23, 2016  

     An important insight in Asin Shivani’s article, “This Is Our Neoliberal Nightmare: Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and Why the Market and the Wealthy Win Every Time” (Alternet, June 8, 2016), is that neoliberalism is more than economic policy.  It is a philosophy of life that interprets everything from the perspective of the market.  And as result of the fact that neoliberal policy and philosophy have dominated the public discourse of the nation since 1980, it has arrived to influence the beliefs and assumptions of many.  But not all.  Many people in US society are ill at ease with neoliberal philosophy and its cultural implications, without having the capacity to articulate their discomfort.

      Shivani maintains that the unarticulated divide among the people of the United States with respect to neoliberalism is playing itself out as a basic factor in the US presidential elections, without it being formulated as such.  Among the candidates, Hillary Clinton has been the fullest expression of neoliberalism.  Shivani writes:
​“In the current election campaign, Hillary Clinton has been the most perfect embodiment of neoliberalism among all the candidates.  She is almost its all-time ideal avatar, and I believe this explains, even if not articulated this way, the widespread discomfort among the populace toward her ascendancy. People can perceive that her ideology is founded on a conception of human beings striving relentlessly to become human capital (as her opening campaign commercial so overtly depicted).”
In Clinton’s view, education and health care are not conceived as rights that ought to be ensured by the state, but as consumer goods. Accordingly, one should invest in education in order to guarantee future capacity to provide education for children, health care, housing, transportation, and other consumer goods.  

     Bernie Sanders, in contrast, rejects neoliberal assumptions.  Sanders endorses the conventional progressive affirmation of the responsibility of the state to guarantee the social and economic rights of the people, such as education, health care, nutrition, and housing. Shivani writes:
​"The reason why Bernie Sanders, self-declared democratic socialist, is so threatening to neoliberalism is that he has articulated a conception of the state, civil society, and the self that is not founded in the efficacy and rationality of the market. He does not believe—unlike Hillary Clinton—that the market can tackle climate change or income inequality or unfair health and education outcomes or racial injustice, all of which Clinton propagates."
Sanders’ rejection of neoliberalism, however, is not formulated as such.  “Although Sanders doesn’t specify ‘neoliberalism’ as the antagonist, his entire discourse presumes it.”

     Donald Trump also rejects neoliberalism, but in a manner different from Sanders.  Shivani maintains that “Trump is an authoritarian figure whose conceptions of the state and of human beings within the state are inconsistent with the surface frictionlessness neoliberalism desires.”  And he asserts: “while Trump supporters want to take their rebellion in a fascist direction, their discomfort with the logic of the market is as pervasive as the Sanders camp.”  Trump represents an inhumane rejection of neoliberalism, in contrast to Sanders, who expresses a humane alternative to neoliberalism.

      Shivani interprets the emergence Sanders and Trump as an indication of the “breakdown of both major political parties.”  He attributes the breakdown to the frustration of the people, which has been caused by the fact that “there was no sustained intellectual movement to question the myth of the market” following the crash of 2008.    

     I submit that the failure of progressives to offer an alternative paradigm to the neoliberal myth was evident long before 2008.  It dates to 1980, when the nation took the neoliberal turn, and the Left failed to draw upon the insights of the various popular movements to formulate a comprehensive analysis and plan of action, delegitimizing the ahistorical and superficial discourse of neoliberalism.  The period of 1955 to 1972 was a revolutionary period in the United States, during which the fundamentals for an alternative progressive paradigm were formulated by popular movements.  The African-American movement had proposed: full political and civil rights for persons of color (NAACP, SCLC, SNCC); a coalition of the poor of all colors, including whites, for the attainment of social and economic justice (Dr. King’s Poor People’s Campaign); black control of black community institutions, including economic, political, educational, criminal justice, and cultural institutions (Malcolm’s formulation of black nationalism); and an end to imperialist policies with respect to the Third World (King and Malcolm). For its part, the student/anti-war movement: rejected the classical Marxist class analysis as not applicable to the United States; cast aside the anti-communism of American liberalism; and formulated an anti-imperialist perspective with respect to US foreign policy (SDS). Meanwhile, the women’s movement emerged with a gender consciousness that named patriarchy as a central dynamic of domination in human history and that called for full citizenship rights for women.  And the ecology movement emerged to defend the rights of the earth and to critique unsustainable forms of production and consumption.  All of these movements assumed a central role of the state in addressing issues of racial, gender, income, educational and health inequality as well as questions of global inequality and the ecological balance of the earth. None believed that these problems could be addressed by the market.  All possessed historical consciousness and a fundamentally accurate reading of contemporary national and global dynamics.  All appreciated the democratic heritage of the nation and were indignant at policies that intended to dominate and exploit in the name of democracy.

      Thus, all of the elements necessary for the formulation of an alternative paradigm were present in US political culture in 1980.  But we intellectuals and activists of the Left failed to formulate an alternative paradigm.  Academics have been trapped by the bureaucratization of the university and distorted assumptions with respect to scientific objectivity, and they have been unable to formulate an alternative interdisciplinary paradigm tied to political practice. Activists have been disconnected from intellectual work and have been unable to formulate an alternative comprehensive paradigm, and they have moved from issue to issue in the organization of protests. Intellectuals and activists of the Left have been unable to move forward with the revolutionary thinking and proposals of the period 1955 to 1972 in order to present to the people an alternative to the neoliberal paradigm, an alternative rooted in the historic struggles of the people for the attainment of full democracy.  Jesse Jackson pointed us in the right direction with his presidential campaigns of 1984 and 1988, but his project was rejected by white society (he received only 12% of white votes in the presidential primaries of 1988, as against 95% of the black vote and 67% of the Latino vote), and Rev. Jackson himself was not committed to the development of the Rainbow Coalition as a mass organization following the 1988 elections.

     Thus, the failure to seize upon the crash of 2008, converting it into an event that could galvanize the people into new ways of thinking and political action, was predictable, reflecting an historic failure that was rooted in the inability of the Left to build sustained popular movements in the post-1972 period.  

      We intellectuals and activists of the Left have the duty to offer an alternative understanding of national and international issues to our people, thus tapping into what Shivani has described as the unarticulated frustrations of our people.  Drawing upon the historic popular struggles in the United States, and also learning from revolutions in other lands, we have the capacity to formulate a progressive alternative that is more advanced and developed than that offered by Sanders.  A more comprehensive historical and global understanding, tied to concrete popular needs and to political action, could be more attractive to our people that what Sanders has offered, and it could eclipse the potential for fascism that Trump represents. This is the challenge and the duty that we intellectuals and activists of the Left confront in the years ahead.

     Please take a look at an earlier post, “Presidential primaries in USA” 8/25/2015.  I maintained that the unexpected success of Sanders and Trump in the presidential primaries is an indication that the people of the United States are not satisfied with the two mainstream political parties and established politicians.  And I argued that the emergence of Sanders and Trump suggests that intellectuals and activists should reflect on the possibility of an alternative political party of the Left, giving consideration to the characteristics that such an alternative political party ought to have.


​Key words: neoliberalism, presidential elections, Clinton, Sanders, Trump, Shivani
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Neoliberalism, multiculturalism & identity politics

6/17/2016

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Posted June 24, 2016  

​     In “This Is Our Neoliberal Nightmare: Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and Why the Market and the Wealthy Win Every Time” (Alternet, June 8, 2016), Asin Shivani sees neoliberalism as promoting multiculturalism and identity politics, in a form that severs identity politics from a class foundation.  He considers multiculturalism to be the dark side of neoliberal ideology, implying a form of exclusion and intolerance: “This is the dark side of neoliberalism’s ideological arm (a multiculturalism founded on human beings as capital), which is why this project has become increasingly associated with suppression of free speech and intolerance of those who refuse to go along with the kind of identity politics neoliberalism promotes.”  He maintains that neoliberal multiculturalism ostracizes and excludes working-class whites who are uncomfortable with neoliberal conversion of the self into a market commodity, and that such alienated working-class whites form the basis of support for Trump.  He writes that from the neoliberal point of view, “those who fail to come within the purview of neoliberalism should be rigorously ostracized, punished, and excluded.”  And further: “It is not surprising to find neoliberal multiculturalists—comfortably established in the academy—likewise demonizing, or othering, not Muslims, Mexicans, or African Americans, but working-class whites (the quintessential Trump proletariat) who have a difficult time accepting the fluidity of self-definition that goes well with neoliberalism, something that we might call the market capitalization of the self.”  He views neoliberal multiculturalism as an elitist discourse that reinforces the neoliberal glorification of the market: “neoliberal multiculturalism, operating in the academy, is so insidious, because at the elite level it functions to validate market discourse, it does not step outside it.”

     Thus, Shivani suggests that the progressive discourse that emerged during the 1960s has evolved into a pejorative dismissal of the white-working class, invoking a language that is exclusive and that offends, alienating working-class whites from progressive causes, even as the progressive message seeks to speak on their behalf.  At the same time, it is a discourse that does not really offer an alternative to neoliberal policy and philosophy.  

     Shivani writes in a tone that appears to not appreciate that multiculturalism emerged as a progressive response to the systemic exclusion of ethnic and cultural minorities.  Nevertheless, I think he points to a problem with the progressive discourse.  The Left seeks to promote a nation characterized by cultural pluralism, in which racial and ethnic groups with distinct cultures, languages and identities have social and political space; and rightly so.  But the Left does so in a way that fosters white resentment.  This suggests the need for a reconstruction of the discourse of the Left.  

      Please see various posts in the category Race in the United States: “Black community control” 5/10/2015; “The unresolved issue of race in the USA” 6/23/2015; “The abandonment of the black lower class” 6/24/2015; “On racism and affirmative action” 6/26/2015; “The need for a popular coalition” 6/27/2015; “Race and Revolution” 1/19/2016; and “Race, the university and revolution” 1/25/2016.  The posts explain and affirm the historic goals of the African-American movement.  At the same time, they suggest strategies and a discourse with respect to race that is oriented to building a popular coalition.

     We intellectuals and activists of the Left need to return to our roots in popular movements, recalling the discourses of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, and seeking to forge a popular coalition based on an inclusive calling of all our people.


Key words: neoliberalism, multiculturalism, identity politics, Shivani
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The future of neoliberalism

6/16/2016

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Posted June 27, 2016 

     We have seen that Asin Shivani’s, in “This Is Our Neoliberal Nightmare: Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and Why the Market and the Wealthy Win Every Time” (Alternet, June 8, 2016), sees the candidacy of Hillary Clinton as the full expression of neoliberalism, understood as the reshaping of everything in accordance with market principles.  In contrast, Bernie Sanders (like Ralph Nader and Howard Dean before him) formulates a humane alternative to neoliberalism, whereas the discourse of Donald Trump suggests an authoritarian alternative (“Neoliberalism and presidential elections” 6/23/2016).  

     Shivani would like us to consider what will happen after the Sanders campaign: “It is existentially imperative to ponder what happens beyond Sanders, because neoliberalism has its end-game in sight, letting inequality continue to escalate past the crash point (meaning the point where the economy works for most people), past any tolerable degradation of the planet (which is being reconceptualized in the shape of the market).”  He believes that a much will depend on the extent to which the people will be capable of thinking outside the neoliberal perspective.  He writes: “What remains to be seen is the extent to which the millennial generation might be capable of thinking outside the neoliberal paradigm, i.e., they don’t just want more of what neoliberal promises to give them yet fails to deliver, but want things that neoliberalism does not or cannot promise. On this rests the near-term future of the neoliberal project.”  He asks: “to what extent will Americans continue to believe that the self must be entrepreneurially leveraged toward maximum market gains, molded into mobile human capital ever ready to serve the highest bidder?”

      I believe that in reflecting on the future of neoliberalism, we must begin with consciousness of the fact that neoliberal policy and philosophy is unsustainable in the long term.  This is the conclusion to which we arrive if we understand what neoliberalism is and how it came to be.  Neoliberalism emerged in the 1970s as a desperate response by a global elite that was experiencing stagnating profits and was losing political control of the world-system.  The neoliberal project is a war against the formerly colonized nations as well as the popular sectors of all regions, developed in response to the unresolved contradictions of the world-system, particularly the contradiction implied by the fact that it must expand by conquering new lands and peoples on a planet with finite limits.  It was intended to restore profit margins and to reestablish political control.  Its benefits to the elite were short-term.  In the long run, it has functioned to deepen the economic financial, political, and ecological crisis of the system. Placing the market and profits above all else, it can resolve none of the problems that humanity confronts, such as climate change and other symptoms of ecological imbalance, high levels of poverty in vast regions of the world, uncontrolled migration, criminal gangs, trafficking in drugs and persons, and the delegitimation of the political system of representative democracy.  The neoliberal czars can only conceive of wars, the imposition of policies, and economic sanctions, cynically proclaiming that its actions in defense of its particular interests are defending democracy in the world.  Neoliberalism has resolved nothing, and it cannot.  It can only lead to either a continuing spiral of disorder and chaos, including the possibility for the extinction of the human species; or to the continuing mobilization of the people in the construction from below of an alternative, more just, democratic and sustainable world-system.  Either scenario would involve the end of the neoliberal project, which seeks to preserve the exploitative structures of the neocolonial world-system through aggressive actions against the governments and peoples of the world (“What are the origins of neoliberalism?” 6/17/2016). 

     Fully exposing the unsustainability of the neoliberal project necessarily would involve delegitimizing the global elites who have created and defended it, including the directors of corporations and their representatives in the executive and legislative branches of governments, the conservative think tanks, and the mainstream mass media.  All who have forged careers in these institutions have fostered and have benefitted from the neoliberal project, and their immoral conduct would stand exposed by a thorough analysis of the neoliberal project.  

     Our people must come to understand not only that the neoliberal project will resolve none of the problems that humanity confronts, for it was not intended to do so; but also that those who occupy positions of leadership and responsibility, who have formulated and implemented the neoliberal project, have demonstrated their moral and intellectual unpreparedness to lead the nation in this time of global crisis.  Such “leaders” must be cast aside by the people; and others with alternative life trajectories, dedicated to understanding the true and doing the right, must be lifted up by the people to occupy positions of responsibility in the institutions of the nation

      How can the people come to such an understanding, which implies recognition of themselves as a revolutionary subject, seeking to place their delegates in power, replacing those who have represented the particular short-term interests of the powerful?  We can be assured that the people will not come to understand it by themselves, without help.  They tend to live in the world of day-to-day concrete problems, and they are manipulated and confused by an educational system that fragments and news reporting that ideologically distorts.  Thus, it must be the role of the intellectual to formulate the comprehensive historical and global understanding that the people need to grasp in order to liberate themselves from domination.

     Accordingly, intellectuals and activists must liberate themselves from the pervasive ideological distortions, attaining their liberation through sustained encounter with the movements that have been formed by the peoples of the world.  Intellectuals and activists must work together to present an alternative to the people, explaining to the people the sources of their rejection and exclusion, and calling them to act in their own defense.

      Sanders points in the right direction, but his humanist discourse is not enough.  More of an historical and global analysis, beyond what he has offered, is needed, including an anti-imperialist component. Moreover, what is needed is not a presidential candidate, but an alternative political party that educates and organizes the people and that seeks to capture, as a long term plan, the executive and legislative branches of the government.  For a fuller formulation of the characteristics of a future revolutionary party of the people, see “Presidential primaries in USA” 8/25/2015.


​Key words: neoliberalism, Clinton, Sanders, Trump, Shivani, third party, revolution
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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. 
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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
3 Comments

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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    Author: Charles McKelvey

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

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