Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid.

That's right. You'd better be scared—and you'd better be prepared to give up everything to get Obama re-elected. Ryan is an Ayn Rand fanatic and he has an evil vision for America that threatens to roll back every single progressive gain in our history. The only way to avert complete disaster is to silence every conceivable criticism of Obama and the Democrats, ignore everything they've done for the past four years, forget about everything going on around us, and go all-out to campaign to stop Romney/Ryan from winning in November.

Well, that's what Obama and the Democrats want you to think, anyway. But how much of it should we actually take seriously?

Now, don't get me wrong. I do think that Paul Ryan is awful. I have nothing but scorn for everything he stands for—more on that in a minute. But why does that admission mean that I should give the Democrats a free-pass, drink the Kool-Aid and engage in a long list of delusions—that Obama and the Democrats will fight the Right, that they'll pass progressive reforms, etc.?

If liberals are right to strongly oppose what Ryan stands for, they'd do well to oppose those same stands when—which is often—Obama and the Democrats take them. Let's do a little compare and contrast.

Here's a paraphrase of what Moveon.org has to say about Ryan in a Facebook meme that you may have seen:

• His economic plan would cost Americans 1 million jobs in the first year alone. 
• He'd slash and burn Medicare and Social Security.
• He'd cut taxes for the 1% and raise them for working-class and poor people. And meanwhile he'd give subsidies to big corporations.
• He's an anti-choice extremist. 
• He takes lots of money from the 1%. 
• He opposes LGBT equality. 

Now, of course, all of these measures serve the interests of the 1% at the expense of the rest of us. Broadly speaking they are strong stands in favor of austerity and maintaining existing forms of oppression.

But the bait-and-switch here is to insinuate—as Moveon.org surely intends to do—that Obama and the Democrats stand for the opposite of every one of these measures. If only it were true.

First of all, the Democrats and the Obama Whitehouse are highly tolerant of soaring unemployment for the 99%. The fact is that the Democrats are hypocrites on outsourcing and unemployment. Since 2008, Obama and the Democrats have presided over an economy enduring extremely high unemployment—especially high in communities of color—and they took no bold measures to do anything about it except a weak-sauce stimulus package which, besides being weighted heavily in the direction of corporate tax breaks, had already run out of steam by mid 2010. It was like getting a band-aid for a broken limb.

Or take Social Security and Medicare. According to Obama himself, "Democrats do not receive enough credit for their willingness to accept cuts in Medicare and Social Security". Or consider that Obama's failed "grand bargain" in 2009 included a willingness to simply take Medicare away from 65 and 66 year old Americans. Or consider that Obamacare includes a series of cuts to Medicare totalling nearly $500 billion over the course of several years. Or consider that Obama himself—and other high-ranking Democrats—have on more than one occasion broached the idea of privatizing Social Security. A staunch defender of Medicare and Social Security Obama is not. Both Obama and Ryan are of one mind about austerity—their only disagreement is about how deep to cut the social safety net. 

Or take the issue of tax breaks for the rich. As everyone knows, Obama campaigned in 2008 promising to let the Bush tax cuts expire for the rich. But as President he and the congressional Democrats warmly embraced those tax breaks and extended them--making them the Obama Tax Cuts for the rich. Of course, liberals haven't bothered to rename them. It is well-known that raising the marginal tax rate on the 1% would be both highly popular and an easy way of saving public sector jobs and staving off the push for austerity. But the Democrats and Obama have no intention of doing any such thing.

Why not? One reason is that the Democrats—like Ryan and Romney—take loads of money from the 1%, if they're not outright members of the 1% themselves. Recall that in 2008, the Democrats pulled in the lion's share of corporate campaign donations—they were, as the LA Times put it, "Wall Street's Darlings". As is well-known, the 1% hedges its bets and always gives enormous sums to both parties. There's a lot of alarmist nonsense floating around in liberal circles these days about how Super-PAC's are funnelling lots of money to Republicans—as if the Democrats are some kind of grassroots underdog that operates on online donations or something. The fact is that the ruling class spends enormous sums on the campaigns of both parties, and the politics of both parties reflects that fact. It takes considerable chutzpah to uncritically support the Democratic Party, on the one hand, and complain hysterically about the corporate money accepted by Republicans on the other.

Now, it is true that Obama and some Democrats are not the out-in-the-open anti-choice, homophobic extremists that the Republicans are. But that doesn't mean that they are allies in the fight for women's rights and LGBT equality. At best, they slowly erode gains on those fronts and compromise with the Right. At worst, they propose many of the same policies as the Right—think of the Stupak amendment, for example. But we can't afford to passively support an entity which barely holds the line, at best, and pushes things backwards at worst. The only time that the Democrats move at all on women's rights or LGBT equality is when movements pressure them to act. We should devote all of our time, money, resources and political energies to those movements—not the Democrats—if we want to carry those struggles forward.

And think of all the things that MoveOn.org meme didn't mention. They might have said that Ryan also supports war and imperialism abroad. But, of course, so does Obama. They might have also said that he supports the destruction of the environment, offshore drilling, and the appointment of high-ranking corporate polluters to regulatory positions in government. But, then, so does Obama. To this we could add other abominations such as the "War on Drugs", the New Jim Crow, the mass deportation of Latin@s, corporatized education policy, keeping Gitmo open for business, and all the rest. And, of course, Obama supports all those things as well. It doesn't do any good to pretend that this isn't so.

So, where does this leave us? We need to build the social movements, participate in the struggles of the 99% and be part of constructing a new Left that can actually fight for our interests. This isn't a new idea. It's how every single major progressive gain was won. Again and again we've seen that the Democrats are a political black hole. They suffocate struggles rather than carry them forward. They take and take and give nothing back in return. The time to cut them loose is now.

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More on the Non-Political Character of the Presidential Race

If you read the section titled "politics" in the New York Times, the so-called "paper of record", you would be hard pressed to find anything remotely political. What you find, more often than not, is strategizing, instrumental tactical arguments and an intense focus on efficient means to electing some given candidate. You find inane debates focused intensely on the public relations management strategies employed by the campaigns of different candidates. You find talk of "branding", marketing, the manufacturing of "narratives", and so on.

What you won't find is anything remotely political.

Why is that? One simplistic, but nonetheless perspicuous explanation is given by Marx and Engels in the Manifesto: "The bourgeoisie has... since the establishment of Modern Industry and of the world market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie."

Accordingly, what gets discussed in the halls of power by politicians, by and large, are matters of common concern to the ruling class as a whole. This is as true of domestic policy as it is of foreign policy. Political discussions in Washington tend to presuppose, as a condition of legitimacy, that the basic goal of government is something like "economic growth", i.e. creating favorable conditions for capital accumulation. If ruling class profits are down, that's bad; if they're up that's good. Whatever else happens only matters to the extent that it affects this basic goal. The need to secure legitimation and political stability leads Democrats and Republicans to give this basic function a populist gloss, e.g. "what's good for GM is good for America", "rising tides lift all boats", "increasing wealth at the top trickles down to the bottom", "growth creates jobs", etc.

The debates among politicians, then, largely center around how best to administer growth from above. But even this non-political administrative debate is extremely narrow. These debates 100% exclude, for example, the Keynesian wisdom of mainstream, globally renowned economists at a number of elite institutions: Nouriel Roubini, Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman, and many others. All of these folks largely accept the administrative perspective above, but argue for policies very different from those considered in Washington, e.g. a new, considerably larger public stimulus package, a massive public works program that puts people to work rebuilding infrastructure, a steep increase in the marginal rate of taxation, increased spending on health and education, and so on. For these folks, the way out of the crisis is to stimulate demand by avoiding austerity and increasing the purchasing power of the working majority. These aren't radical ideas. These were commonplace ruling class policies in the postwar (i.e. pre-neoliberal) period. What's more, all of these economists accept capitalism more or less as it is, but propose different ways of getting it running again. Yet, even these ideas aren't given a moment's notice in Washington.

By and large, Democrats and Republicans agree that the only viable way forward in the short term is austerity for the working majority. They disagree, of course, about how deep the cuts should go. But they are in firm, uncompromising agreement on the "need" to make deep cuts of some kind to public programs ranging from public transportation, roads and infrastructure, to health care, education and so on. At the same time they agree on the "need" to bail out the banks, to subsidize corporate profits through quantitative easing, to grant large tax breaks to the 1%, and so on. Their approach could be summed up as follows: austerity for the 99%, prosperity for the 1%. Of course, some Republicans talk as if they oppose the bailouts on principled, neoliberal grounds. But the truth is that these initiatives, begun under Bush and continued by Obama, already have their rubber stamp.

Anyone who, like Ron Paul, still genuinely believes in the viability of the neoliberal medicine of "small government" and "structural adjustment", so popular with elites in the 1980s and 90s, is simply deluded. They naively identify with ruling class window-dressing without realizing that that's what it is. Rather than drawing the obvious conclusion that capitalism is a highly unstable system which, when freed from even modest regulatory and counter-cyclical measures, periodically generates devastating crises, these bone-headed "free" market fundamentalists perversely draw the opposite conclusion: all of that neoliberal stuff really does work, it's just that there weren't enough tax breaks for the rich, not enough deregulation, not enough austerity, and so on. There are, of course, a number of people of this persuasion in the Republican Party (many of whom voted against TARP the first time around). But, as I say above, the national leadership of the GOP understands full well that this is mostly just talk. There is no reason to think that corporate welfare, quantitative easing, bailouts, tax breaks for the 1% and so on would end under a GOP-controlled government. As staunch advocates of the capitalist system, they realize that its stability depends for dear life on these sorts of policies.

This is all a way of saying that politics and government have been almost entirely disconnected from one another in the contemporary US. What goes on in government is largely administrative: how can we best manage the common affairs of the ruling class by promoting polices that achieve high levels of accumulation?

In a democratic society, the people would be sovereign. They would be able to have a voice in determining what goals society undertakes. But in our society, we have no say over goals. We have no voice in determining what the basic priorities of our society will be. The goals are fixed in advance, and we are asked to get worked up over various means of achieving these ready-made goals. And, what's worse, we aren't even given the full spectrum of reasonable means. As I say, the broad consensus among mainstream Keynesian economists at schools like Harvard, Princeton and Columbia doesn't even register as a possibility in Washington. So as if being locked inside the iron cage of instrumental rationality wasn't bad enough, we don't even get the freedom to exercise it fully!

Yet, despite the thoroughly non-political, administrative and fundamentally undemocratic character of our electoral system and our State, we are encouraged by the media to think that this election is the most important one of our lifetimes. We are bombarded, everywhere we turn, with the injunction to tune in and participate in the inane chatter about what's going on with the election. It is assumed that this process is the essence of politics, it is assumed that this it is a hugely significant event that warrants 24-hour television coverage. But those assumptions are not harmless. They are highly damaging and deeply conservative. They are, in effect, suffocatingly anti-political.

The media, of course, positions itself as a populist force that merely "gives the people what they want". But that is nonsense. This top-down argument assumes that what's going on in, say, the Republican debates actually reflects the genuine interests and concerns of real people. It grafts the priorities, framing and rhetoric of those approved candidates onto real people. It imposes the TV chatter about a given set of political candidates and organizations onto the people. But why should we think that entire top-down procedure is legitimate? A far more sensible procedure, would be to start with ordinary people, in complete and total abstraction from their relationship to the electoral system, and see whether or not the system actually has anything to do with their interests and concerns. Of course, this bottom-up procedure, though far from perfect, is non-existent in the for-profit media industry. The interests of ordinary people only become intelligible to the media to the extent that they fit within pre-existing rhetoric and ideology. Rather than demanding that a political party actually earn its significance and legitimacy from speaking to the needs and interests of the people, the media antecedently grants significance and legitimacy to the Republicans and Democrats because they are the status quo. They are given a free pass each election cycle and it is assumed that the population could have no needs or interests in excess of what those two parties offer. No remainder is possible, therefore no discontent with the two-party system is possible.

Though common sense tells us that they are everywhere, these contradictions between the whole political system and the interests and concerns of ordinary people are rarely visible in the mainstream media. And even when these contradictions are there implicitly, that is, when a poll reveals that super-majorities of Americans favor single-payer, they are almost never explicitly discussed. No mention is made of the fact that the political system simply doesn't register this pro-health care sentiment. Instead, it conflates what people want with what's on offer from the two-party duopoly. It's almost as if the media operates as though it's logically impossible to register discontent with the system itself, rather than with this or that politician within it.

Some readers may think that I am too extreme in firmly rejecting the 2012 elections as a genuinely political event. But I challenge them to defend a system that makes it impossible to articulate the jarring contradiction between the daily experiences of the 99% and the priorities in Washington. I challenge them to defend a discourse that robs us of the very language with which to articulate our own oppression. I challenge them to give us reason to accept the legitimacy of a system that has nothing whatsoever to do with giving the 99% a voice in determining its own conditions of life. I challenge them to explain why we should accept a list of pre-approved candidates who all, in any case, stand for the pre-determined goal of maximizing capital accumulation.

At this point, the more intensely we are asked to focus on the (ultimately marginal) differences between this or that Republican or Democrat, the more we obscure the underlying issues and foreclose the possibility of any real change.

If we are to achieve even the most modest reforms in the here and now, we have to be prepared to struggle independently of the electoral system. We have to stand up and fight alongside all those resisting foreclosure, school closures, layoffs, wage cuts, furlough days, student loan default, pension "reforms", and so on. We have to stand up, against the two parties of the 1%, and fight for the 99% because nobody else but us is going to do it.

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The 2012 Elections Are Not Political

If, as Alain Badiou puts it, politics has to do with "collective action, organized by certain principles, that aims to unfold the consequences of a new possibility which is currently repressed" by the status quo, then it is clear that our existing electoral system is an essentially apolitical procedure. Rather than offering us the possibility to changing things, the election accepts things as they are and asks us to adjust our expectations.

Rather than giving the people a genuine voice, it silences them and encourages them to sit down passively and choose between tweedle dee and tweedle dum. Rather than allowing the 99% to have a say in decisions of momentous importance that affect everyone, we are told to join in supporting one or other of a list of approved candidates who all share the basic aim of furthering the interests of the 1%.

At this point, the 2012 elections aren't even political--they fail to even register as an instance of democratic self-governance. They don't provide us with an avenue to change things. They don't even offer us an opportunity to discuss what's wrong with our society. The elections are a little more than a cynical performance, already scripted from above, which shoehorns us into certain courses of action we did not choose.

Now, some left-liberals will strongly disagree here. They may acknowledge that the analysis is basically correct. But they'll argue that the Republican candidates are substantially worse than Obama. And they'll talk about how Obama has done the best job possible under the conditions: he passed a stimulus bill in 2009 that had good elements, he fought for health care reform and "succeeded" in a way that no other past Democrat was able to do, he "ended" the war in Iraq, he has a great plan for jobs, etc.. They'll concede, of course, that it would have been better if Obama had passed single-payer, if the stimulus had been bigger, etc. But they will counter that we must, nonetheless, loudly and publicly support Obama in 2012. Because to fail to do so would be to let the "best be the enemy of the good".

Let's leave aside the lowly Republicans since liberals and radicals can agree on their reactionary character. What about Obama and the Democrats? All things considered, does the balance of "good" that they've accomplished outweigh the bad?

Context is needed here. The economic meltdown that began in 2007 was threatening to drag down the entire global economy in late 2008. The crisis had origins in the speculative activities of the financial sector, most of them enthusiastically encouraged by the Clinton Administration in the 90s. Profit-hungry financial institutions had systematically engaged in a huge orgy of reckless speculation that left them holding massive heaps of toxic assets in 2007. The whole system seemed on the verge of collapse. In October of 2008, Henry Paulson (Bush's secretary of the treasury) stepped in with a hastily thrown-together bailout plan that aimed to inject the nine biggest banks--all in dire straits--with billions of dollars. Paulson's plan was pieced together through behind the scenes negotiations with the CEO's of the nine largest banks. The Treasury didn't ask for anything in return for this massive $700bn bailout and, predictably, the financial sector did not resume lending and did not give relief to homeowners facing foreclosure. Instead they dolled out massive bonuses to themselves, invested offshore, etc.

Now, $700bn is a lot of money. But the actual bailout figure stands closer to $3.3 Trillion. And add to this "quantitative easing", i.e. the practice of printing money to lend to the banks at interest rates close to zero. The banks, of course, don't use this cheap credit to invest in production or lend to small businesses. They don't help restructure mortgages and create jobs. Instead, they use it to buy up US government bonds (which give them a return of 4-5%) or high-grade consumer debt (which pays as much as 12-18%). This is what explains the record-high profits reported by the financial sector in 2009 and 2010--despite soaring unemployment, low growth, and general economic misery for the 99%. Through quantitative easing, the Federal Government has been, in effect, heavily subsidizing their profits by giving them huge piles of cash at low interest rates which are used to by government bonds that pay higher interest rates. Add all of this up over the period of 2007-2010 (including the TARP bailout) and you get a figure of $3.3 Trillion given away to the US ruling class--i.e. the group who led us into this crisis to begin with.

To sum up, the response of the State in the US was to shift massive amounts of private debt onto public rolls, thereby enabling the ruling class to resume profitability in the short run.

Now, this policy began under Bush with Henry Paulson. But it was continued, consolidated and extended under Obama at a time when the Democratic Party had a super-majority in the Senate and crushing majorities in the House.

Of course, once the public absorbed such a massive amount of private debt, it threatens the solvency of the government itself. Obama and the Democrats have a simple solution here: let's make deep cuts to basic social programs and force the 99% to foot the bill for the bailout of the banks. In order to erase the massive amounts of public debt that were incurred through a bailout of the ruling class, we should force the 99% to pay for it through cuts, layoffs, and austerity. The Republicans, of course, agree wholeheartedly with this solution. Their only disagreement concerns how deep to cut and where to stick the scalpel.

Predictably, the news media exaggerates this disagreement and tries to make it appear that the overblown sabre-rattling between Democrats and Republicans evinces serious differences in "political philosophies". This leads confused idiots to step in and call for "reconciliation", "dialogue" and "post-partisan civility", thereby giving a vigorous defense of the status quo while purporting to criticize it. Of course, the idea that the Dems and Republicans sharply disagree over fundamental matters couldn't be more false. They disagree over minutiae. They agree 100% on the idea that the government should bailout the banks, subsidize their profits, and then force the majority of the population to pay for it with unemployment and reduced living standards.

Obama himself, of course, has lead efforts to slice and dice working class living standards through austerity. He hasn't just been pulled along for the ride. He pieced together the "Bipartisan Commission on Deficit Reduction" which had such great recommendations as raising the age limit for Social Security, cutting Medicare and reducing the marginal rate of taxation on the 1%. What's more, Obama's "deficit deal" with Republicans ended with pledge to cut more than $4 Trillion in spending--the biggest austerity plan in history--in order to pay for the give-aways to Wall Street. Obama has even offered up cuts to Social Security as a bargaining chip with the Republicans. Along the way, he has defended a pay freeze for Federal workers, given massive tax breaks to the wealthy, and chastised us for getting upset about the massive bonuses given out on Wall Street.

But what about Obama's stimulus bill from 2009? Didn't that do a lot of good? Here I basically agree with many liberal economists (e.g. Krugman and Stliglitz) who argued repeatedly that the Obama stimulus was far too small and included too little spending and too many tax breaks. This has been proven true over and over again (although I disagree with Krugman and others that a Keynesian stimulus would have resolved the contradictions that produced the crisis in the first place). After the extremely brief economic boost that the 2009 stimulus spending made possible, unemployment began soaring again as municipal and state budgets plummeted. And the tax-breaks in the bill have done virtually nothing to boost demand--if anything all they've done is drain public finances of much-needed funds (thereby exacerbating crisis by priming the pumps for public layoffs and austerity). The economic crisis continues unabated and it shows no signs of letting up in 2012.

In stark contrast, Obama need not have continued the Paulson bailout, he need not have subsidized the profits of Wall Street, he need not have extended the Bush tax breaks, and he need not have lead the charge to force austerity on the 99%. He could have nationalized failing banks, raised taxes on the 1% (or at least demanded that they pay what they already owe), spent money rebuilding infrastructure thereby creating jobs, forgiven household debt rather than ruling class debt, and so forth. Obama could have forgiven the massive amounts of debt held by students who can't find jobs because of the bad economy that was wrecked by bailout-recipient bankers. At the very least, he could give students the same interest rates on their loans that he's giving to the ruling class, who pay interest rates near zero. He and the Democrats could have decided to stop spending billions more on war and occupation. They could have used that money to give us single-payer. But they did none of it.

Instead, they decided to more or less exactly what we could've expected a Republican regime to have done. Obama, from the very beginning, has surrounded himself with forces drawn directly from the 1%. When it was revealed that GE paid no taxes last year, Obama appointed a high-ranking official from GE to be his "jobs czar". To be sure, the public legitimacy of the Democrats depends on convincing their "base" that they actually believe in things like Medicare and Social Security. So it is possible that the Republicans might have been more assertive in attacking those programs than the Democrats have been. Or maybe not. The Republicans understand as well as the Democrats that Medicare and SS are extremely popular and are difficult to attack directly. The difference between the two parties is minuscule when set across the backdrop of everything they agree on. This makes it obvious that we're going to have to fight if we want to win even modest reforms.

And what of the crown jewel of Obama's "legislative achievements", the so-called healthcare reform bill? First off, it is hardly reasonable to call it a "reform". It's not even much of an adjustment. Aside from snatching low-hanging fruit by nominally opposing recision and denial of care on the basis of "pre-existing conditions", the bill made things considerably worse for the 99%. It consolidated and further institutionalized the role of the for-profit health insurance industry in the US health care system. It provided subsidies to these goons at the same time that it cuts funding for Medicare under the banner of "efficiency". Worse still, it includes an individual mandate which forces citizens to purchase a product from one of these for-profit parasites, without a public option. The plan also solidifies the tie between health care and job benefits--contributing to job-lock and punishing the unemployed. The health care crisis continues unabated as the for-profit health care industry continues to reap big profits on the backs of ordinary Americans. And let's not forget that Max Baucus (D-Montana), who oversaw the committee that wrote the bill, was the #1 recipient (in all of Congress) of campaign contributions from the health insurance industry in 2008.

By any reasonable measure, Obama and the Democrats have done far more harm than good. They have fought tooth and nail to lower the living standards of working Americans to finance a ruling-class bailout. They have attacked teachers, called in the cops to brutalize Occupy protesters, and deported more immigrants than Bush did. They have expanded wars and drone attacks. They have kept Guantanamo open for business. They insulated BP from any liability for one of the worst environmental catastrophes in recent memory. They have placed Pell Grants and Stafford Loans on the chopping block. They have made cuts to Medicare and other vital social programs. They have made attacks on civil liberties that would make John Ashcroft blush. They are a menace to the 99% and staunch allies of the 1%.

As the Occupy movement has decisively shown us, we can and must ask for more than what the lowly Democrats are able to offer us. We do not need to profoundly scale back our demands. Neither should we sit back passively in hopes that Democrat politicians will do the right thing when we know they won't. And what's more--we have to organize ourselves to resist the attacks that Democrats--just as much as Republicans--are launching against us. We have to stand up together and build collective struggles capable of exerting pressure on the entire system. Rather than buying the lie that the 2012 elections are the most important thing on the horizon right now we have to be clear: they are not political at all. They are a charade. Politics right now is on the streets, at mass demonstrations, on the picket lines, in workplaces and schools, in rooms where powerful figures are getting mic-checked, at GA's held by Occupy movements around the country.

The 2012 elections, on the other hand, are nothing but a mass of confusion, disorientation and cynicism meant to convince us to forget everything that's happened since the Occupy movement burst on the scene. They are nothing more than a way of making our broken system appear as if it enjoys democratic legitimacy. It is meant to corral us back into the "proper channels" that are neatly organized to insulate the power of the 1% from any challenge from below. The 2012 elections offer us neither a voice nor a genuine choice: they offer us two different avenues to place a stamp of legitimacy on the bailouts, on austerity, on repression, on war and occupation. As such the elections are not political: they are merely an occasion to choose which hack is going to misrepresent us for the next 2-4 yrs.

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Left Talking Points on Ron Paul

"Ron Paul 2012" signs are seen at Occupy-related events from time to time. This seems to happen more in the South. By and large, these forces seem marginal and have little hope of achieving wider influence in the Occupy movement, given the movement's basic politics (i.e. class-conscious, anti-austerity, anti-racist, radically democratic, generally skeptical of the two-party system, critical of capitalism, etc.). Still, there are many newly politicized folks who have questions about the relationship between Ron Paul-style right-wing politics and the movement. This is by no means a central question facing the movement today. But, to the extent that there are questions of this kind arising in certain local contexts, the following may be useful. Here are a couple of suggested talking points that the Left can draw on in clarifying the politics of Ron Paul:

1. Paul is out of touch. Occupy stands for taxing the 1%, resisting all cuts and austerity, reigning in the unchecked economic and political power of the financial sector, among other things. In sharp contrast, Ron Paul's position is that the 1% are over-taxed, that we need even more cuts and austerity, and that big banks and corporations are over-regulated. This is not a marginal political disagreement. This is a fundamental divide between those who genuinely want to stand up and fight for the interests of the 99%, on the one hand, and those who want to cede even more power to the system—capitalism—that empowers and enriches the 1% on the other.
   
2. Paul stands for the two-party system. Occupy is a grassroots social movement that has taken to the streets in order to challenge the political and economic dominance of the 1%. It has used general strikes, direct actions, mass marches, speak outs, and general assemblies as its tools. It has empowered millions of ordinary people to stand up and fight for their own interests. It has not begged for crumbs from above, it has not placed its faith in leaders on high, nor has it confined itself to pandering to the existing political system. At its best, it has been fiercely independent of our broken electoral system and the two-party straight jacket. But Ron Paul is operating 100% within that broken system, as a candidate for Palin and Perry's Republican Party—with whom he votes more than 80% of the time. Those who support him in this journey miss the entire point of Occupy, which is to empower people themselves—not high and mighty leaders—to fight for their own liberation. We do the work in this society, we make it run. The 1% doesn't pick up their own garbage, they don't pilot their own private jets, and they don't produce the necessities of life they need to survive. The 99% produces all of it—and when we stop doing what we do the system grinds to a halt. That's all the power we need to topple the system that enriches the 1%.
   
3. Paul's politics are racist. This is not a moral judgment about his character (that is another matter). This is about politics. For example, his position on the Civil War is that it was unjust because it infringed upon the "legitimate property rights" of slave owners. Instead, he claims, the Federal Government should have compensated slave owners for their lost "property". Paul is also a staunch opponent of the Civil Rights Act which, he claims, is an unjust incursion on the right of big business to discriminate against blacks. Noticing a trend? Paul doesn't, at the end of the day, really care about freedom and liberation for all--he cares about the property and privileges of business owners. Paul has also made numerous racist anti-black public comments, and he put out a newsletter, The Ron Paul Political Report, which regularly printed far-Right racist commentary. Don't take my word for it, read the newsletters for yourself (see here). Even Paul's most calculated and measured remarks on race evince colorblind racism. Paul is also a staunch defender of draconian, xenophobic anti-immigrant laws. Paul also regularly refers to undocumented people as "aliens". The Occupy movement, in contrast, stands in uncompromising solidarity with black people and immigrants in their struggle for freedom and equality. Tolerating Ron Paul's politics in the movement is an insult to working-class people of color who are being hit harder than anyone else by the global economic crisis.
   
4. Paul is anti-education. Occupy has challenged the profiteers who are hijacking public education and lining their pockets on the backs of heavily indebted students. The movement has called for a moratorium on student debt and free, quality public education for all. But Ron Paul, like most of his Republican brethren, fiercely opposes the stands that Occupy has taken on these issues. He stands for abolishing the Department of Education and slashing education spending. He stands for cutting all Pell Grants, all Stafford Loans, indeed all public financial aid, since these programs "discriminate" against the wealthy. He is for privatizing and corporatizing public education. He stands against teachers and opposes their right to collectively bargain. He claims that education is not a right, but a commodity that should be bought and sold for a profit in the marketplace. His position on health care is the same: health care is not a right, but a luxury commodity that should be sold by private corporations for profit. In other words: if you can't afford to buy it, well fuck you. Capitalist property relations matter more than human life.
   
5. Paul is anti-choice and homophobic. Paul has attempted to ban abortion at the federal level (see the Sanctity of Life Act). Paul also wrote a bill called the "Family Protection Act" that starts with talk of abolishing the Department of Education and ends with a proposal to "prohibit the expenditure of Federal funds to any organization which presents male or female homosexuality as an acceptable alternative life style or which suggest that it can be an acceptable life style." In 1990, a Ron Paul Political Report newsletter complained about President George H.W. Bush's decision to sign a hate crimes bill and invite "the heads of homosexual lobbying groups to the White House for the ceremony," adding, "I miss the closet." "Homosexuals," it said, "not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities." Comments of this ilk abound in the Ron Paul Political Report.
6. Ron Paul will not end the wars. Only a movement will end war—in particular a mass movement from below that has the power to challenge capitalism, the political and economic system that produces war and imperialism in the first place. Moreover, the mere fact that Paul is against the wars doesn't entail that he deserves the support of Occupy. Pat Buchanan and David Duke are also against the wars. So are the editors of the hard-Right journal The American Conservative. But none of those bigoted reactionaries deserve an ounce of support from Occupy, and neither does Paul. Furthermore, isolationist nationalism--Paul's basic foreign policy—has no place in a movement that is global and fiercely internationalist. Occupy stands in solidarity with the global 99% in its struggle against the global system—capitalism—that holds it in contempt. We oppose war and imperialism not because they violate the principles of right-wing isolationism, we oppose them because they oppress and brutalize our sisters and brothers in the global 99%.

There are plenty of other things to say here. But these points really make clear how wide the gulf is between Ron Paul conservatism and the radicalism of Occupy. Readers interested in more detailed refutations of the sort of politics pedaled by Paul and other so-called "libertarians" should consult the following: why the wealth of the rich is illegitimate (1, 2, 3); capitalist property rights vs. freedom (here and here); how "libertarians" oppose liberty (here and here); the "free" market as illusion (here). For a socialist analysis of how power works in our society, see here.

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More on Obama's Faux Left Turn

Matt Taibbi hits the nail on the head:

Hearing Obama talk about jobs and shared prosperity yesterday reminded me that we are back in campaign mode, and Barack Obama has started doing again what he does best--play the part of a progressive. He's good at it. It sounds like he has a natural affinity for union workers and ordinary people when he makes these speeches. But his policies are crafted by representatives of corporate/financial America, who happen to entirely make up his inner circle.

I saw this in Lance Selfa's excellent piece on SW.org this morning, "Is Obama a Class Warrior?" which you can read here.

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It's impossible to deny the obvious...

"...which is that we are not now and have never been on the road to recovery." That's what Krugman is saying in his most recent Op/Ed.

Now, he's certainly right that "we are not now and have never been on the road to recovery." That's true. But is it impossible to deny this obvious fact? Of course not. Obama and the Democrats will continue to do it right up until election day in 2012. And large portions of the liberal left will be prodded into plugging fallacious narratives about "green shoots" and "recovery" and the like in order to advertise Obama's "accomplishments" during the campaign.

Readers of Krugman's column will by now have noticed a couple of frustrating trends. First of all, the guy repeats himself quite a lot. Part of that's not his fault. The economy really does suck, Washington really is worsening the crisis by holding tightly to neoliberal orthodoxy, austerity really is awful, etc. He's right that Washington cares about all the wrong things. That's not changing, so neither should critical commentary. I can't blame him for being repetitious in this sense.

But there are other repetitious features of Krugman's work that are less excusable. His perpetual surprise at the "excessive compromise" and "betrayals" of the Democrats (and Obama in particular) lacks rational grounding. Didn't Einstein say something about doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results... The fact is that Krugman, while his solidly liberal critique of existing policy is commendable, has nothing to say about how we can get out of this mess. He doesn't appear to have any views about how social change happens. He doesn't have a critical analysis of the electoral mechanism in our society and how it forecloses the possibility of real change. He doesn't have any perspectives on the role of social movements. Although his work sometimes shows brief glimpses of an analysis of class power, he doesn't follow through on these questions enough to understand why it is that the Democrats are flipping the bird at liberals. For the most part, he just seems perplexed that the Democrats aren't listening to his good ideas.

But the problem isn't that Obama and the Democrats are simply ensnared by "bad ideas". Neither is the problem that they are "cowards" or poor bargaining strategists. The certainly aren't cowardly when it comes to ridiculing and chastising the Left. They certainly weren't timid when it came to saying at onset of the health care "debates" that single-payer was absolutely off the table.

In order to understand the Demcorats' political trajectory as a party, one needs both a historical analysis of role of the Democrats have played at different points in time, as well as an analysis of the role that corporate-backed political parties play in a capitalist system. We get neither from Krugman.

For an excellent historical analysis of the role the Democrats have played, their relation to left-wing social movements, and so on, I highly recommend Robert Brenner's New Left Review article "Structure or Conjuncture?". Lee Sustar's The Democrats: A Critical History is also worth noting. But any critical study of a progressive social movement in relation to the DP will suffice, because the pattern is always the same. The Democrats (or Republicans, as the case may be, historically speaking), pressured by unrest and militancy from below, enact policies meant to quell social unrest and co-opt militant forces into the "official" political realm. The following co-optation typically leads to the terminal decline and passification of the movement in question and, with it, the hopes for deepening the process of reform. It's for this reason that many on the Left refer to the Democratic Party as the "graveyard of social movements".

For an excellent analysis of the role of the state in capitalist society, there are several sources of good, quick information. The basic point is this: regardless of which party is in power, the state is structurally dependent on the capitalist class. What that means is that the state relies upon capitalists to invest, employ people, grow the economy, produce necessary goods, and, importantly, to accumulate profits which can then be taxed to fund the state's activities. When the capitalist class isn't accumulating profits, they don't invest, jobs are lost, tax revenues plummet, and a political and economic crisis ensues. For this reason, state officials are compelled to do what they can to make sure the capitalist class is happy. Making the ruling class happy means creating a "good business climate", or putting in place "pro growth" policies aimed at creating the conditions for the maximal accumulation of profits. Call this the imperative of accumulation. Left to it's own devices, the system tends to encourage state officials to fulfill this function to the detriment of other functions (e.g. looking after the well-being of citizens).

But, as history makes clear, sometimes the imperative of accumulation comes into conflict with what we might call the imperative of legitimation. No society can reproduce itself over time unless it manages to convince a large portion of its citizens that it is legitimate. But when the imperatives of accumulation compel governments to, say, slash social spending and bail out banks, this creates legitimation problems. A contradiction between accumulation and legitimation arises. Governments will attempt to solve this in any number of ways. The main strategies we've seen thus far as "budget cut fatalism" and "deficit fear mongering". Both of these arguments aim to convince citizens, against their better judgment, that the policies meant to re-establish the accumulation process are, in fact, legitimate (in the interests of society as a whole).

Notice that I haven't even mentioned the problems raised by the colonization of state officials by big business. That is a serious problem, and, of course, public financing of elections would be a small step toward reducing the efficacy of some of the more common ways that politicians are bought off. But the problems go deeper than campaign financing and lobbying. There are fundamental problems here that have to do with the ways in which large amounts of social/economic power are concentrated in the hands of a small class that has a monopoly on the control and ownership of the means of production. A truly democratic society wouldn't be one in which democratic bodies were subordinated to a powerful economic class that owns the basic structure of society. Nor would a truly democratic society be one in which citizens are subordinated to the inhuman systemic imperatives of accumulation for accumulation's sake. A genuinely democratic society -that is, a socialist society- would be one in which the basic structure of society was under the democratic control of citizens. It would be one in which the operations of the economic system were subordinated to the needs of human beings, rather than the other way around.

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The Ideological Function of Bogeymen

We're resting on the edge of total Armageddon. Everything of value hangs in the balance. In order to "protect the American way of life", we have to do something, anything, quickly. This is no time for politics. No, we need to set all of that aside for "higher ends". We need "effective" solutions that will enable us to swiftly do what's "best for America". Hurry! Time is running out! Don't think, don't talk. Just act!

Now just reflect on the character of this absurd narrative. How many times since you've been alive have you been subjected to it in one form or another? What function does it serve? I can count at least three obvious examples, which I'll discuss in turn.

There is, first of all, the hurried run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. In a post-9/11 media landscape absolutely saturated with images of nuclear destruction, weapons of mass destruction, chemical warfare and the like, we were forcefully prodded into hastily, unreflectively endorsing a pre-emptive attack on Iraq. If you so much as stopped to ask questions regarding feasibility, you were branded as naive or, worse, as seeking to aid the "dark forces" working to obliterate us any moment. Importantly, the fear-mongering had a strongly anti-political streak running through it. If you so much as suggested that politics had anything to do with what was going on, you were excoriated for having done something vulgar and "divisive". This, we were constantly told, was supposed to a "time to set politics aside and do what's best for the 'Nation'". In other words: stop thinking critically, don't pay any attention to politics, economic interests, relations of power, or the like. Just buy into a bunch of meaningless jingoistic group-think. Of course, it is supposed to be the case that we know better these days. This whole debacle has been widely commented on, and it is now more or less commonplace, even within the ranks of the still bellicose Democratic Party, to say that the arguments for invasion were more or less groundless fear-mongering.

The second example that comes to mind is more recent and has been less widely commented upon. It is the financial meltdown in 2007-08 and the bailout that quickly followed. As Slavoj Zizek has astutely noted, the refrain at the time was "don't just talk- do something!", but, in fact, we should have done precisely the opposite: stopped to reflect and talk about how we got into this mess in the first place. Given that any sober answer to that question reflects rather poorly on capitalism and, accordingly, on the ruling classes who have a firm stake in its continued existence, this discussion was never had within the halls of power nor within the corporate media. So instead we were subjected to a scare campaign that reeked of same fear-mongering that characterized the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. We were told, just as before, that civilization would collapse if we didn't something quick. And, most importantly, we were constantly lectured about why this was "not a time for politics". Rather than living in a society divided along class lines, we were suddenly all living in a harmonious, egalitarian community known as the "the Nation". Within the confines of "the Nation", all of us, from Donald Rumsfeld to high-school janitors, supposedly had the same basic interests. Thus, any appeal to "politics" was nothing more than an attempt to divide "the Nation" and to give in to "partisan bickering". And, of course, such "bickering" did nothing more than block the noble efforts of the heads of both corporate parties to do "what's best for America". It was in this context that the massive bailout, the largest of its kind in the history of the world, was pushed through by way of back-room, midnight deals. We now know that it was a massive conversion of private losses into public losses, thus priming the pumps for record-breaking profits. The terms of the deal were so lopsided in favor of industry that it even upset the likes of the Economist and the Financial Times. Although I have my issues with his work, Michael Moore's documentary Capitalism: A Love Story does a remarkably good job of chronicling this whole process by stringing together news clips.

Well, now we have a third example of a noble "defensive struggle" against a bloodthirsty Bogeyman. Holding the threat of a default over our heads, we were made to think that the coming historic assault on US living standards was unavoidable. Even worse, the Bogeyman of the national debt has even led left-liberals to celebrate the arrival of the harsh, punishing axe of austerity.

We do well not to forget that the US is already undergoing structural adjustment at the municipal, county and state levels, as millions continue to endure deep cuts to education, infrastructure, health care, social services, public transit and the like. But although austerity has been all the rage -among Republican and Democrats alike- at the city and state level, it has yet to make it's definitive debut at the Federal level. That is what this "debt debate" was really all about. It is about finding a way to push through and legitimate Federal-level austerity, or, if you like, Federal-level structural adjustment that will exacerbate the state-level crises considerably.

As we know from countless historical examples, structural adjustment is never popular with the masses. It always provokes resistance from ordinary people, for the simple reason that it means unemployment, wage cuts, elimination of vital social services, axing public transit, privatization of public wealth, and the destruction of public social institutions (e.g. schools, libraries, arts organizations, and the like). In short, "structural adjustment" means taking an axe to the living standards of ordinary people in order to create a "good business climate", i.e. conditions maximally favorable to the highest possible accumulation of short-term profits. For this reason, structural adjustment, in every single case, had to be imposed from above on an unwilling populace.

Given the unpopular nature of cuts to popular social programs, the overlapping milieu of ruling class and political elite was in the position of having to find some way to make these policies appear to be legitimate. This was especially pressing for the Democrats who, on the face of it at least, are supposed to be a political formation that stands up for the interests of ordinary Americans.

Enter here the language of impending crisis and Armageddon. Enter the anti-political distortions that purge all discussions of substance. Enter the vapid, apolitical discourse of "bipartisanship", "consensus", and the like. The result: we now supposed to celebrate the axe coming down on us as a historic example of "compromise", of "putting politics aside for the greater good of all". What should have been a disaster is now a triumph. It's not just that criticism of austerity is silence in the short-term: now we are supposed to enjoy and celebrate our own oppression. As a fellow left blogger put it: "they want you scared so you'll back down".

This may have staved off discontent in the short-run (or, maybe it hasn't... still too early to tell). But this is no long-term legitimation strategy for a policy cocktail that will devastate the lives of millions of Americans by eroding our living standards for years to come. Public transit is facing huge cuts amidst an environmental and energy crisis. Foreclosures continue amidst massive mortgage bank profits, public sector layoffs, furloughs, and wage-cuts continue as the rich enjoy obscenely low levels of taxation. Schools are being closed, university departments decimated, teachers harassed, tuition increased, and scholarships cut. Our domestic infrastructure continues to crumble at the very same time that the US continues to spend billions blowing up buildings and people in foreign countries. This is no recipe for long-term stability. People will stand up and resist this at some point- Wisconsin was only a warning shot in what is likely to be a protracted period of political and economic struggle. The burning questions for the Left (not the faux-Left apologists for the Democrats, but the real Left, the independent, grassroots Left of Debs and Hampton) then become: How can we prepare ourselves for these struggles? How can we participate in existing struggles at the same time that we initiate new ones? How can our side win? How can we learn from recent and past defeats? What kinds of organization do we need?

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Wait for it

Neither of the two pro-business parties, Republican or Democrat, will allow the US to default. They are playing a game of chicken. But, from the sounds of it, they are close to arriving at some sort of "deal". The present "deal" includes a punishing, cruel $3 trillion cut (of historic proportions) to the living standard of the majority of Americans. That means cuts to education, cuts to scholarships, cuts to health care, cuts to pensions, massive cuts to public transportation, cuts to unemployment insurance, cuts to the arts, cuts to cutting edge scientific research. It will mean worse infrastructure, canceling desperately needed maintenance on our country's bridges and roads, massive layoffs and severe pay-cuts for public sector workers, worse sanitation services, worse libraries, worse public parks. It means that Obama and the Democrats will sign off on all of this as their own. (The beauty of it for Obama and friends, of course, is that they can push through austerity while externalizing culpability by claiming that "Republicans made us do it", thus pacifying liberal discontent with the slashing and burning of the very policies and programs for which the Democrats have any "progressive" credentials at all).

But I'm telling you: just wait for it. When the "deal" is struck, we will be barraged by a celebratory chorus about how the Republicans and Democrats "put partisanship aside" and "did what was best for the whole country". We will hear endless praise for the "reaching across the aisle" to "compromise", to "come together as one", etc. etc.

We won't hear a word, however, about what the two parties came together to do. We won't hear a word about how this will represent the largest cut to public services in the history of the world. We won't hear a word about the fallout of this harsh plan of austerity for the majority of ordinary Americans. We won't hear a word about all of the consequences of the two parties' long-standing, unchallenged, stable agreement on the "need" for austerity, on the "need" to continue funding wars and occupations, on the "need" to extend to the Bush tax breaks for the richest of the rich.

But, you know, hip hip hooray that they "came together" and "put partisan bickering" aside or whatever. That warms my fucking heart.

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"An Elaborate Charade"

I love it. Read this Al-Jazeera article re: the innane, puke-worthy debt-ceiling pissing match being waged between ruling class politicians over marginalia. The headline is great: "The nonsense battle over the debt ceiling". And the sub-headline hits the nail on the head: this "debate" presupposes a deep bi-partisan commitment to austerity. To be honest, I haven't been reading any of the articles about this whole mess. I glance at headlines, but that's it. I can't be bothered to wade that deeply into shit that isn't about me. Austerity, which both Obama and Boehner strongly support, does affect me. But this quibbling over marginalia, against a backdrop of massive consensus, has nothing to do with me. It is not a substantive disagreement, nor is it a serious clash between left and right. It is a game of chicken played between the rich and powerful; I, and the vast majority of Americans, stand to gain nothing no matter how the chips fall. It is a ruling class tiff over issues internal to right-wing politics (e.g. how much should we cut the living standards of average Americans? how badly should we destroy education and public transit infrastructure?). Neither of them will allow the US to default- that is the train approaching that will crush them both. The "debate" is over who will jump out of the way first. Frankly, I would rather boycott the whole rotten business than join in the media-manufactured chorus about how "we" all should just try to "get along" and "do the right thing for America." I'm more interested in grass-roots struggle than the life and times of the rich and powerful.

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Jacobin: On "Dancing on Liberalism’s Grave"

I just noticed that the new issue of Jacobin is out. It's well worth reading. There is an excellent article by Richard Seymour (previously posted on his blog Lenin's Tomb) entitled "How can the Left Can Win?". Lars T. Lih has a piece as does Paul Le Blanc. There's also a piece by Zizek and a response. I also just finished reading an extremely interesting piece about radical political economy, Marxism and neoclassical economics. Check it out.

I should like to say something about this issue's editorial "Dancing on Liberalism's Grave". It ends with a cautionary note to the Left:

Radicals must avoid submerging our identities into an insipid and ahistorical “progressivism”; we must remain firmly anchored to the socialist tradition and never shy away from the ruthless critique of liberalism. But socialists should also be wary of slipping into a rhetorical posture of unrestrained invective that only cements the Left’s marginal status in American political life. Don’t dance on liberalism’s grave. There’s nothing to celebrate.

I couldn't agree more with this particular set of claims. I, too, agree that we should reject ahistorical "progressivism" and remain firmly rooted in the socialist tradition. Neither should the Left shy away from the ruthless critique of liberalism. And, it is also true that the Left should avoid sectarian Schadenfreude in the context of the demise of reformist liberalism.

But, having conceded this much, I would like to take issue with the way that the Left is carved up by the authors of the editorial. In their estimation, the Left has "traditionally" responded in two ways to the decline of liberal reformism: by adopting a politically tepid, fiercely dogmatic lesser-evilism meant to roll back the rise of the Right, on the one hand, or by taking a cynical, sectarian delight in the implosion of liberalism on the other. "Traditionally" seems a bit misplaced here, since the authors seem only to have in mind the demise of postwar liberal reformism in the US in the 1960s and 70s. It's not clear that their analysis helps us make sense of previous epochs of reaction and revolt (e.g. the 1920s, on the one hand, and the explosion of left radicalism in the 1930s, on the other). But this is a side note: let's stick with the period that interests them, i.e. the upheavals of the late 60s and early 70s during which postwar liberalism died a painful death as a hard-nosed neoliberalism was born.

The suggestion in the brief editorial is that we should follow Harrington's lead and avoid sectarian Left celebration when liberal reformism slides into crisis. I agree with that much. But Harrington is suggesting more than that. He's putting forward a particular view about the relationship between the socialist left and liberal reformism (specifically electoralism, of a Democratic Party-centered variety). So far as I can gather from the editorial, Harrington's view was something like the following. The revival of the (socialist) Left requires, as a pre-requisite, a healthy and revived liberal reform movement. This, in turn, implies the following: in order for this pre-requisite to be fulfilled, the socialist Left should play a role in reviving liberal reformist organization (especially those committed to electoral campaigns).

I should like to offer two points of criticism here. First, I think the "pre-requisite" view is mistaken. Often, healthy liberal reform movements grow out of (and co-opt) left radicalism and struggle. The New Deal is unthinkable without the explosion of labor militancy in the 1930s. And the period of Keynesian reformism that followed WWII was, in part, a way of stabilizing US capitalism politically and economically in response to the upheavals of the 1930s. Moreover, the explosive radicalism of the 1930s (which, in my view, should be more of a touchstone for the Left than the 1960s) was not lifted up by a buoyant reformist liberalism. It was built through patient grass-roots organizing during periods (e.g. the 1920s in the US) in which the Left evinced many of the outward signs of being dead (compared to the recent past). To require that the socialist Left tether its project to the ephemeral swells of electoralism is a sure recipe for political confusion, co-optation, irrelevance and defeat. (Footnote: I think Robert Brenner's piece in New Left Review a few years back titled "Structure of Conjuncture?" does an excellent job of giving a solid historical account of what the electoral road is a dead end).

Which brings me to my second criticism. The Harrington approach, as is well known, places heavy emphasis on working within the electoral system and, worse still, working within the established two party duopoly. That this approach is deeply misguided is made obvious by the analysis offered in the early paragraphs of the editorial:

To say that the American “reform tradition” is in crisis is to underestimate the extent of the debacle, since unlike a crisis, no visible reason exists why the present trend – the gradual abandonment of hope that liberal achievements of the past can be extended or even preserved – cannot continue forever. The great counterexample, Obama’s health reform, proves the rule: passed only thanks to a once-in-a-generation Democratic supermajority and the approval of every major industry lobby it affected, it emerged as a painfully inadequate, jerry-rigged palliative, already languishing under the scalpel of austerity.

To be fair, the authors do chide those with otherwise "impeccable leftist credentials" who jumped aboard the "Obama phenomenon" in 2008. I'm with them in thinking that was a serious mistake. But their invocation of Harrington and their argument re: reformist liberalism seems at odds with this observation. Perhaps I am misreading the author's argument. But that I should be able to do so is already a partial failing on their part, since the Left (now, more than ever) needs to be as clear as the Spanish "indignados" have been in uncompromisingly rejecting electoralism. Before long, the 2012 election cycle will be in full swing and the Left will be pressured to join one of the two camps described by in the editorial: (1) the lesser-evilist defeatists who will tell us to forget everything that Obama has done, and (2) the (typically academic) cynics who throw their hands up and somehow manage to relish the rottenness of the whole enterprise. I propose that we pre-empt this by firmly rejecting the false choice between (1) and (2). The pressure will be much stronger to adopt (1), so the Left needs a clear critique of this option. It shouldn't be abstract, ultra-Left or sectarian. But it should be uncompromising in emphasizing that large scale left-wing social change is won when powerful, organized and independent social movements are forged that can force the Democrats (or the Republicans, as the case may be) leftward. Our models should be the labor movement of the 1930s and the Black Freedom struggle of the 1950s and 60s, not the dead ends of electoralism which, it should be emphasized, have never yielded any serious fruit in the form of reforms.

So, I agree with the authors that the demise of liberalism is, in itself, no cause for celebration. As a Marxist, I don't think that single-payer health care in a capitalist system is a water-tight solution to our health care crisis. But I would have fought tooth and nail for it had it been on the table- because, ethically, it would have drastically improved the well-being of millions and, politically, it would have certainly paved the way for more ambitious reforms and further growth of the Left. That the entire proposal was completely shut out by the Democrats and their ruling class backers is a tragedy, not a cause for celebration. But this tragedy is being felt well beyond the socialist left. The number of previously hopeful and presently disillusioned liberals is higher now than at any time in my lifetime- and it should be the job of the socialist Left in such times to offer a clear alternative. We shouldn't further muddy the waters by shackling ourselves to ultimately ineffective electoral efforts that reinforce the dialectic of disillusioned cynicism and dogmatic lesser-evilism.

The editorial makes no mention of Egypt, Tunisia, Greece or Spain. But those should be the watchwords of left-wing struggle in the present conjuncture. I'm with the "indignados" in Spain in thinking that the Left needs to offer a clear critique of the electoral mechanism itself. Harrington's Democratic Party tailism, while correct in dismissing ultra-left Schadenfreude, is not a viable way forward for the contemporary socialist Left.

One final remark: I'm also not sure that I agree with the suggestion in the editorial that:

The only true exception to liberalism’s demise concerns equal rights for ethnic, sexual, and other minorities – a principle won long ago at a cultural level but whose institutional consolidation is still incomplete and whose most recent advance was New York State’s legalization of gay marriage. On all other questions, the watchword is despair.

It's not yet clear what the authors take to have been "won long ago at the cultural level", but it certainly can't have been a decisive victory against racism, sexism, or lgbt oppression, since our culture (as well as our society writ large) is littered with all of these oppressive ideologies. To be sure, they are surely correct that the legalization of gay marriage in NY is a positive note on an otherwise bleak political horizon. And the emergence of phenomena like Slutwalk do suggest that sites of intensifying struggle are emerging on on the terrain of women's oppression. But if anything, the problems of structural racism and sexism are being exacerbated by the present crisis, as austerity and recession worsen the conditions for people of color, immigrants, and women. Anti-racist struggle, it seems to me, is perhaps at a lower point than that of class struggle simplicter.

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Fatalist Nonsense

WASHINGTON — No American president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt has won a second term in office when the unemployment rate on Election Day topped 7.2 percent. Seventeen months before the next election, it is increasingly clear that President Obama must defy that trend to keep his job. Roughly 9 percent of Americans who want to go to work cannot find an employer. Companies are firing fewer people, but hiring remains anemic. And the vast majority of economic forecasters, including the president’s own advisers, predict only modest progress by November 2012.

Read the rest here if you must.

Allow me to translate: There is presently very high unemployment in the US. Typically, in a two-party system the incumbent president does not win re-election under such conditions. But in order to win, Obama shouldn't actually try to solve the unemployment problem. In order to win re-election, Obama has only to select a public relations "narrative", some particular rhetorical strategy that pumps up the "enthusiasm" of the electorate.

Let me first say a bit about unemployment and then a bit about the conception of politics at work in this excerpt.

As is usually the case, unemployment is discussed as though it was just like the weather. Just as the shifting of temperatures and the movement of destructive storms are beyond our control... so is the unemployment rate. Human intervention in both meteorological and economic matters boils down to an apolitical process of scientific management from which we can expect no more than small successes. This is the image we're fed most of the time.

But this image assumes that capitalism is the only way to do things. Yet it is capitalism that is clearly the problem in this case. The same system that works people to the bone f0r poverty wages, casts them aside and denies them employment when it is no longer profitable. Human talents and capabilities go underdeveloped and unused when it isn't profitable for the ruling class. It's also the case that unemployment is a structurally necessary feature of the system, even during boom periods. But, as we know, capitalism is an unstable system in which devastating crises (with high unemployment) are frequent. Things don't have to be this way. Our society is one in which there are masses of capital, unused, sitting side by side masses of labor, which are unemployed, simply because it is not profitable for the ruling class to combine them at the present moment. The suffering and misery brought about by that fact is not inevitable. But set that to one side for a moment.

Even within the confines of capitalism there are obvious things that could be done to increase employment. Obama and the Democrats could have invested heavily in domestic infrastructure projects. They could have decided to fix crumbling bridges and roads, at the same time that new projects (e.g. increased rail services, new schools, new hospitals, etc.) were undertaken. This could have created millions of jobs. Another obvious measure would have been to use federal funds to close all of the budget shortfalls at the state and municipal levels. This would have forestalled countless layoffs and saved hundreds of thousands of jobs. Moreover, this would have kept public services running at full steam at a time when they are needed more than ever. All of this would, of course, also have propped up effective demand, thus keeping further jobs from being lost.

Of course, the article makes no mention of these options. It is assumed that the Democrat's program of union-busting and austerity is the only way forward. It is assumed that the only legitimate bone of contention between the allegedly "left" Democrats and the "right" Republicans is how much union-busting and austerity we should have. Moreover, it is dogmatically assumed that monetary policy (not fiscal policy) is the only way to deal with unemployment. If we read the article at face value, we come away thinking that Obama and the Democrats have done all they can to try to address the "elusive" natural disaster of high unemployment.

Let me now say a little bit about what I derisively call "PR politics" (better would be: "PR anti-politics"). The "analysis" offered by the paper of record comes across as though its an internal strategic memo from the Obama campaign. The basic line is this: "well, we don't really care about whether the interests or needs of the majority are taken into consideration... we just want to get re-elected... so how can we best pull that off?" That's fine for the narrow strategic discussion that goes on within a campaign. But it's preposterous when it is passed off as analysis in a public newspaper.

But this PR politics ideology is fed to us constantly by pundits and other experts. It's akin to the inane speculation about what sorts of strategies a particular coach will employ before a big game. We've been encouraged to internalize this conception of politics so often that many Americans would be forgiven for thinking that there was no alternative to PR electioneering.

By its own lights, our (broken) political system is supposed to work in the following way. Citizens are supposed to have preferences (e.g. a preference for being employed rather than being unemployed). They are then supposed to support only those candidates that best satisfy those preferences. Now, this picture of democracy has many flaws. But it's worth noting that the PR ideology pedaled by the media doesn't even live up to it. It completely reverses things. Instead of having extra-electoral preferences (e.g. for increasing employment opportunities) that are used to size-up candidates, citizens merely have brute party-based preferences for one or other of the two main corporate parties. This model of citizens erases any real interests or needs they might have which go unmet by the system. It assumes that citizens have a brute preference for one of the parties and then asks the narrow strategic question: how can we finagle a victory? Which PR tactics are most likely to produce the desired result (re-election)?

As I've argued elsewhere, this reversal takes what should be mere means and transforms them into ends-in-themselves. Rather than a putative means to achieving some reform, the push to elect Democrats gets pitched as an end-in-itself. This is absurd. But it should be noted that this ideology functions to stabilize the existing order in several respects. By occluding from political discussion the basic needs of ordinary people (most of which are not met by the system), this ideology forestalls criticism of the status quo. It robs us of the very language with which to articulate our own oppression in political terms. If politics just is a matter of electing one or other of the two main parties, then there can be no way of launching a politically-charged critique of the system itself. Suppose you say: "this political-economic system is unresponsive to my needs". The reply will then be: "politics doesn't truck in the language of needs. State your party preference and then we can talk politics (e.g. about which narratives or PR tactics are best, etc.)."

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Wisconsin, The Democrats, and Beyond

Let's be clear. The Democrats suffocated the struggle in Wisconsin and ultimately snuffed out opposition to Walker. They called for an end to the protests, an end to the occupations, and an end to the discussions about labor action. They told crowds of 100,000s to "lay down their placards" and to focus on electioneering efforts. The result of this strategy is on full display. Walker has got his way, and our side was defeated. The opposition has dwindled, and the energy of that uprising has dissipated. Had the movement maintained its independence from the Democrats and pushed on to ratchet up the pressure through job actions, things could very well have turned out differently.

But it's actually worse than just defeat in Wisconsin. Trade unionists are facing ruthless Wisconsin-like anti-union laws in several other states as well. And, though it has largely gone unnoticed by the moveon.org crowd, many of these states are run by Democratic governors. The crushing of unions is a bipartisan project.

The most obvious examples are New York, California and Illinois. These are well-known "blue" states, with solid "liberal credentials". That's supposed to be as good as it gets from an electioneering standpoint, right? From the moveon.org perspective, what could be better than a solidly Democratic state government, a Democratic governor, and two Democratic U.S. Senators?

In New York, Gov. Cuomo actually had the chutzpah to campaign on an anti-union, pro-austerity platform. He didn't even bother sugar-coating his conservative politics. And what did the liberals in New York do in the last election cycle? They gave Cuomo full support on the grounds that he was the "lesser evil". And hat about the public sector unions whom Cuomo promised he would face down and suppress in order to balance the budget? They gave him full support too. The utter bankruptcy of this political strategy is on full display for all to see.

Cuomo has allowed taxes on the richest New Yorkers to expire, while simultaneously pushing through punishing cuts to education and health care. Cuomo has also boldly placed public sector workers in the cross hairs. He wants more than $450 million in cuts to come from union workers. And he's promising to layoff more than 12,000 public workers at a time when jobs are scarce and public aid is being slashed. So much for the lesser evil as the only political option. If there was a large, highly organized and militant Left in New York, it would be possible to ratchet up pressure by way of protests and strikes. This is how such austerity measures have been defeated elsewhere in the world, and there is no reason why they couldn't be defeated here in a similar fashion. But to take this more oppositional perspective would require cutting the umbilical cord from the Democratic Party. It would mean being open to independent, grass-roots, social-movement-driven politics.

In Illinois things are similarly bleak. In the run-up to the 2010 elections, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) voted to endorse Democratic incumbent Pat Quinn for governor. Not everyone in the union thought this was a good idea. Reformers felt that the union should take a more independent, oppositional stance toward the Democratic governor given the attacks that were sure to come in the following year.

In IL, the Democrat-controlled General Assembly has just passed a Wisconsin-style bill (S.B. 7) that revokes the right of teachers to go on strike, undermines tenure, and works to generally silence the voice of teachers. This move by Illinois Democrats is right out of Scott Walker's playbook. Predictably, Quinn did not veto it. And even more predictably, Mayor-elect and former Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel strongly supported the measure. Say what you like about Rahm, at least he was frank enough to proclaim his hatred of teachers and his desire to revoke their union rights during his campaign for mayor. The same cannot be said for his former boss. And, as has been widely noted, it's important to point out that Rahm worked his connections to put tremendous amounts of pressure on the legislature to get the anti-union result he'd been hoping for. This bill has the grubby finger prints of the most powerful Illinois Democrats names all over it.

The bill itself is a real whopper. As a Chicago Public Schools (CPS) teacher recently told me, the bill effectively guts teachers' vacation time and opens the doors for an unpaid increase in their workday. Emanuel has been pushing hard to increase the school day in Chicago without paying teachers for the extra hours they will now be asked to work. Of course, as teachers frequently point out, they already do a hefty amount of unpaid labor in the form of lesson-planning and grading (which they perform in the private sphere, which is a big reason why it often goes unnoticed or unappreciated). Rather than increasing their obligation to perform unpaid labor, they should be compensated for the unpaid labor they're already performing! But that is the exact opposite position of the one that the Democrats in Illinois are taking. For the Democrats, the answer is to squeeze more work out of the teachers for less money. And in order to to do that effectively, the organs of voice and workplace democracy (i.e. unions) must be weakened enough that teachers have no way to contest these changes. As the Democrats who run the state are well aware, when there is even a small measure of democracy in the workplace, it is far more difficult to push workers around and screw them over. From a P.R. perspective, the Democrat strategy is to scapegoat teachers as "lazy public employees" and further tout the toxic ideology of "education reform" (i.e. privatization, union bashing, corporate-run charters as the answer to structural problems, etc.).

This post is already getting too long, but readers will have no difficulty finding information on Democrat Jerry Brown's aggressively conservative, pro-business, pro-austerity budget in California.

This is tough news to stomach. But there's going to be a fightback. Teachers in IL understand that there must be a fightback -they've got no choice but to fight for their lives right now. And fighting back in this context means fighting against the regressive, corporate-friendly policies of the Democrats. It means using independent community organization and trade unions to leverage people power against the entrenched conservatism and inertia of the Democratic Party machine. It certainly doesn't mean rolling over and accepting the status quo as "the best we could possibly hope for" on the grounds that the Republicans would be worse. That cynical, do-nothing strategy has shown itself to be bankrupt time and time again. What we need is to build the independent Left, build the existing movements, and kickstart new ones.

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