My last blog post declared the death of mainline
Protestantism. Now in my next grandiose move I’ll do the same for politics,
specifically the Democratic Party and the idea of a middle way as a pathway to
a better society.
I’ve always understood myself to adhere to left wing
politics. Not sure I have a legitimate claim to that or not. When I
was younger I flirted with left wing parties and had solid associations with
people in them, but never joined one. At the end of the day each
seemed enveloped by its own pathos of irrelevance. Increasingly I
put my mental energy into the Democratic Party, but more importantly, towards
institutionalism. It would be through realistic politics—finding common ground
with market-based forces as long as there was also room for some humanity,
supporting lots of people and positions that were OK but at least not
evil. The catchphrase is lesser of two evils, but I do think that in
many cases the compromise and compromised position was not necessarily evil,
just moderate, a partial solution, uncommitted.
This approach was always troubled. After 12 years of Reagan
and Bush, the Clinton-Gore victory was welcome, Clintonism firmly embraced
neoliberal governance. NAFTA, welfare reform, the 1994 crime
bill. Refusal to push for single payer healthcare. It’s
not unreasonable as seeing all of the administrations since 1988 as
continuations of Reagan. Those policy compromises, that worked to provide some
relief from the awful administrations that would otherwise have been in place,
were a thing that happened in the years that led up to where we are
today. A majority voted for authoritarianism. All those compromises
have nothing to show for them, and show no signs of building support for this
party.
The media is filled with pieces on what the Democratic Party
needs to do to regain strength and relevance, but I don’t see why we should
care about the preservation of the party. I'm ready now to agree with
Hardy and Negri:
"For well over a century now reformism is posed as the
only reasonable and effective path according to the supposed political realism
of the official and socialist Left. Realism dictates, according to them,
accommodating to capitalist rule, that is, participating in government,
respecting capitalist wages, work conditions, and social well-being can be
slowly but surely improved. This realism has turned out to be entirely
unrealistic. Reformism in this form has proven to be impossible and social benefits
it promises are an illusion." Assembly p. 251
If you think of the time since Carter (may he rest in
peace--his death was announced today) as the key period for reformism, few of
the goals one would hope for from some clever compromise have been
realized. Our society is more unequal, more brutal. Our wars
pervasive. Deaths of misery abound.
So who really cares about the future of the Democratic
Party. It is true that our political system (particularly in the US, but to
some extent in the UK and Germany) has certain game theory qualities that favor
organization in the political sphere around two poles. For the time being the
Democratic Party is the primary vehicle for someone other than an authoritarian
to run for office. But there’s no good reason after what we’ve seen the last 50
years to think that the Democrats can come back to power rejuvenated and
recommitted to broad social goals. If anything, in the US we are devolving to a
single party, or one where the parties are factions of the authoritarian
force. In Tennessee, outside of some city offices, there is nothing
other than Republicans devoted to installing their form of contemporary
Christian authoritarian order as far as possible. It's becoming increasingly
clear that electoral politics offers little role for people with convictions
like mine. It is great to have people like Aftyn Behn in the legislature,
but their role is more as witness than legislator.
You could hold to the idea of blue dots, like Nashville, but
I'm not sure they are long for the world. I think even cities will start to get
taken over by authoritarian entertainers. Nashville certainly has that
potential. There's a strong current here that looks much like our suburban and
collar counties, but with more stylish haircuts and taste in cocktails. Once
upon a time the arrival of a technology HQ here would be bringing an influx of
west coast people with "blue" ideas, but increasingly it means an
influx of the tech bros that are powering Trump. The fact this HQ is
Oracle probably doesn't help. I would not be surprised if Freddie O'Connell is
Nashville's last Democratic mayor. I think he'll be able to win the
customary second term of an incumbent mayor, but the end of that term puts us
in 2031 and I think all of the city will be primed to get behind an
entertaining person with a podcast. There's a number of these types who tried
to run in various elections last cycle but got disqualified for residency
issues. They've got 6 years to get that stuff lined up.
Part of my issue with reformism and centrism is the fallacy
of defining political forces spatially. We discuss politics in terms of
left and right--positions at either end of a two-dimensional line, with
the center lying in between. Some people elaborate on this and trade the line
for a circle, with left and right stretching all the way around and meeting at
a second center. Or every position on the circle is a center. It's
confusing really.
The weakness of this metaphor became apparent when I was
doing some grad courses in political science. Scholars were able to use
voting patterns to determine things like movement of the parties towards the
extremes or towards the center. The way they did this was by tracking
votes, and characterizing them as either left wing or right wing
positions. But how something ended up as a position for one group or the
other really came down to whether one party or the other supported it.
There was no underlying theory of why something could be characterized that
way. An example might be gun rights. We take it as a common place that
lack of controls on gun ownership is a right-wing position. But you can
imagine an environment in which the "opposite" is true. If there were
a strong move for groups that wanted to overthrow authoritarian or racist
regimes to get guns in their hands, gun control would be a right-wing
priority.
The spatial model also implies homogeneity of value.
Anyone 3 clicks (whatever that is) left of center would in essence be the
same. But in fact that position on the continuum will be occupied by
people or groups with really different commitments.
So the whole idea that there is a center to balance around is
suspect. Life is networked, multi-dimensional. There are centers of
gravity in these networks, places where power accretes. Those political
positions are better characterized by things like views about authority.
Or borrowing from Hardt and Negri's Assembly, whether you put priority on the
social production of value and the central role of the Common in human and
planetary well-being.
In this context, why compromise. Go for it. Push
for what you and a group of people you trust as humans agree would make life
better.
For years, my step-daughter and I have talked about politics, usually when driving. She pushed hard with questions that seemed well-meaning but naïve. Why aren’t people given the things they need, like food, housing, clothes. I would argue for realism, that public provision of all of this would require more in taxes than anyone could stand, and it would require an unworkable bureaucracy that would in the end screw it all up. Or she would ask why businesses insist on paying workers (like her and her coworkers) so little when they could afford to pay more, why they insist on hoarding profits. I would try to explain how difficult it is to make a profit, and the need to give people who take on the risk of starting a business the chance to make some profit. But now, maybe the answer to each of her challenges and questions is why not. Let’s find people who want to start on each of those things.
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