The Dark Future of the USA
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Consortium, a leftist progressive website, uses Ron Paul right libertarian website to criticise the American propaganda.
Unable to Produce Evidence, State Dept. Spox Hits Reporter With Russia Smear
It reminded me that the Socialist Standard wrote of this trend several years ago
ZJW says that an emphasis on the defense of democracy results in rallying behind the Democratic Party. ‘Rallying’ would obscure the need for socialism and so is unacceptable to us as socialists. However, our view of whether democracy is endangered, how and to what extent, should be based on study of the actual situation, NOT on what we fear would be the political result of acknowledging the danger to democracy.
‘Rallying’ is a possible political result of emphasizing the danger to democracy, but I do not think it is the inevitable result. We need not make the defense of democracy our SOLE emphasis. Equally important is to explain how the Democrats’ capitalism-as-usual constantly generates the conditions that enable threats to democracy to arise and to make people aware of the socialist alternative. Doing that hardly amounts to ‘rallying behind the Democratic Party.’
Chomsky’s position makes sense to me. He advocates tactical voting as something imposed by the situation but at the same time exposes the truth about the capitalist nature of both parties.
For myself, this is a difficult issue to address and relates to a wider problem we face, which is how to acquire a voice and an audience.
We can reflect in our own language and socialist perspective the need as seen by Chomsky and other progressives such as Andrew Kliman that we have to defend what limited liberty working people possess and be able to reach out to others because a real threat to democracy in present times across the USA resonates.
Some may consider it an imaginary threat, that it is scare-mongering, the in due course a more moderate position will be adopted by the American public and prevail. Such optimism may eventual turn out to be correct, but I think we need to organise ourselves in the worst-case scenario that such does not transpire but instead develops into further political extremism.
I don’t think it will be fruitful to stand aloof from the pressures upon working people.
But the danger is always that our position is subsumed by those who only desire to advance the Democratic Party agenda, however, that has always remained a risk when we critique capitalism and reformists cherry-pick the criticism we make and ignore the context.
Does it mean presenting the lesser evil case as policy? I don’t think so. But it does mean identifying distinctions between the conservatives and liberals in the USA and the seriousness of the polarisation between them in many US states.
Also, we must reference that it isn’t merely political democracy that faces a conservative onslaught but economic democracy being undermined also by attacks on unions.
Andrew Killman wrote a book indicating that the problem of the USA is Donald Trump, he should have known that the real problem is capitalism, due to his wrong stands there was a split within the Marxist Humanist movement. Noam Chomsky spend four years attacking USA imperialism and during election time he asks workers to vote for the Democratic Party and the LIbertarian, he calls himself an anarchist and he has spent a great deal of time defending the leaders of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, and James Petra and Noamk Klein is the same case
Does it really matter if we are correct in our analysis and all others wrong if nobody ever hears us much less listens to us?
Don’t we have to go to where there exists a potentially receptive audience?
Or do we continue to talk to the already converted and those are not in any great number?
We have to face a harsh reality. We are not growing. We are not recruiting. We are an organisation of ageing members. As things are going the WSM will disappear, exactly in the same way as the SLP.
It is not because we are doing things wrong. But a question of could we do it better?
Our case has always been that it will not be the proselytising by ourselves to convince workers of the merits of socialism although it is invaluable in hastening the transformation of society but that capitalist contradictions and the class struggle will educate working people to the necessity of revolution. And unfortunately, we have been waiting for over a century for that to occur. If the WSM does not exist, class conflict still continues regardless and the resolution remains the same – a new non-capitalist society, whatever it may be called or described as.
Sure, we have been handicapped by labourism and Bolshevism side-tracking but when those were on the rise, so was our listeners.
Do the environmental or anti-war or social justice movements offering a substitute that we can communicate effectively with?
I have no answer, i have no magic wand or silver bullet solution. I do have questions, though. If the mountain won’t come to Mohammed, then we need to go to the mountain. It may mean entering the swamp of reformism to condemn it and accept the risk that we may sink deeper into it. We avoided that fate by ensuring we managed avoid getting stuck in the quagmire but we have failed to connect with the sentiments and emotions of our fellow worker and the socialist movement is a combination of both heart and head .
Apologies for the rambling response but our isolation frustrates me.
Billionaire investor Ray Dalio, the founder and co-chief investor of Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund, with nearly $150 billion in assets under management, said that the US appears to be on the path to “some form of civil war”, arguing that the combination of financial burdens, such as large deficits, high taxes and inflation, and large wealth and value gaps in a nation “leads to some sort of fighting for control.”
He also argued that the country is witnessing greater amounts of populism and extremism, and outlined what he believes is a path to civil war through the lens of historical examples. A big divide, he said, is the gap between right-wing and left-wing politics, where both “sides” are “unwilling to compromise.”
First, he said, extremists become the majority and respecting the rule of law becomes secondary to winning at all costs. Them, he argued, both moderates and the ability to compromise become diluted, leading to civil wars… the current financial conditions and irreconcilable differences in desires and values are consistent with the ingredients leading to some form of civil war.”
Being a billionaire doesn’t give him any more credibility than either you or I, but he does bring into the debate economics rather than the pure identity politics that the media portrays as the problem.
More than 100 far-right candidates are running for political office across the country as Republicans this year according to the Anti-Defamation League
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/02/republicans-100-far-right-candidates-2022
…they are also part of a wave within the Republican party that is no longer fringe but increasingly represents a powerful – even dominant – wing in the party.
“The real danger is not just the wave of extreme candidates, it’s their embrace, their mainstreaming by the Republican party,” said Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard University and the co-author of How Democracies Die. “The United States has always had nutty, extremist, authoritarian politicians around the fringe. What is new and really dangerous for democracy is that they’re increasingly running as Republican candidates.”
He can sound a bit ‘nutty’ himelf to my ears.
This book seeks to explain why some contemporary Latin American labor-based parties adapted successfully to the challenges of neoliberalism and working class decline. It argues that loosely structured party organizations tend to be more flexible… Google Books
May the blurb doesn’t explain adequately.
“working class decline. ”First, he said, extremists become the majority and respecting the rule of law becomes secondary to winning at all costs.
If extremists become the majority there’s not much that can be done about it. They will get their way. The real problem is why they would become the majority. The main reason will be the failure of democratic reformists to solve the problems capitalism creates, providing the opportunity for extremists to say that democracy not capitalism is the cause of these problems. This suggests that the answer is not to join and promote the democratic reformists. That won’t stop the rise of extremists. The democratic reformists are not the lesser evil. They are part of the evil. Their tactics and failures fuel extremism. Socialists cannot support or vote for them. We must insist that the only way out is socialism and promote that and only that.
Do we have to twist or abandon our long-standing principles in order to increase our membership?
The failure of the SLP of America was due to his reformist stand like most of the other leftwing organizations, and they twisted most of the basic socialist principles. The DSA might have a large membership but they are reformist up to the core
ALB The main reason will be the failure of democratic reformists to solve the problems capitalism creates, providing the opportunity for extremists to say that democracy not capitalism is the cause of these problems.
I think this is exactly the strategy of the Republicans, to ensure that even the mildest of reforms by Biden such as Build Back Better, are guaranteed not to be enacted, despite the many actual material benefits to their actual constituents with infrastructure investments.
Just as the Trotskyists look forward to economic collapse with another recession hoping to recruit, the same can be said about the Republicans hoping for the bubble to burst while Biden is in office.
We will see that in the Midterms, the lack of any substantive reforms by Biden will lose the Democratic votes and control of both houses will fall to the Republicans who will then begin to move their own reactionary agenda forward.
I have not even contemplated the 2024 possibility of Trump’s return.(or if not him, someone equally a demagogue and populist)
Biden will have to use his presidential executive powers to veto many of them and this will reinforce the conservative perception that he has assumed dictatorial authority.
Authentic grassroots working-class resistance similar to BLM protests will be described as mobs and rioters.
The unofficial militias will be deputized by Republican state governments.
Strikes to recover economic losses because of the pandemic will be treated as union intimidation and outlawed even more than now.
Thus, as you say the extremists will declare that democracy has failed them.
We will face a question on how we protect the limited bourgeois democracy that presently prevails in the United States. And our fellow workers will be expecting an analysis and strategy that involves more than the “socialism or barbarism” option. What it should be, is very much a work in process for myself, at least.
Sorry, ALB, but my pessimistic dark dystopian scenario has surfaced yet again. I think I read Jack London’s Iron Heel too early in my political development.
I haven’t even begun with existential threats to civilisation such as climate change or global war.
MS, what killed off the SLP, the IWW and the Debsian SPA?
They all were growing movements. They were real threats such as shown with the 1919 general strikes…then came State Repression.
First, the Palmer Raids, then the Red scare-mongering of the Bolshevik threat.
Later the final nails were put into the 1930s CIO union militancy with FDR’s New Deal.
Labourism and Leninism were the dead-end side-tracks for the working class.
Can we avoid repetition?
If the enemies of democracy are organizing to destroy it — Alan has drawn attention to some of the methods they are using — and we could do something to help defend it and choose not to, then however we may justify that choice objectively we are supporting the anti-democratic reaction. That is the logic of the situation in which we find ourselves here in the US, very much against our will.
The real process that maintains and fosters a social environment in which the movement for socialism is able to grow and develop is the struggle to defend and extend democracy. That is because the logical end point of the extension of democracy is a fully democratic society, in which democracy also applies to control over the means of production. i.e., social democracy or socialism.
The conservatives have their world all topsy-turvey and many believe in the irrational claims.
On Fridays’s Discord I mentioned the conspiracy theory held by the conservatives that the FBI, the Justice Department, even the judges, plus all the Democratic politicians and their policies have been captured by the influence of Left.
Even Abbott, Republican Texas governor was booed as being a RINO (Republican In Name Only) at a rally and the only way he could silence it was to repeatedly praise Trump.
Trump has tapped into this.
“These prosecutors are vicious, horrible people. They’re racists and they’re very sick, they’re mentally sick,” Trump said, before warning his audience: “In reality, they’re not after me. They’re after you.”
Trump, is using the politics of white grievance that Black people and other minorities are taking power, and that they will exact revenge on white people.
Many average normal conservatives accept the White Replacement Theory being promoted by white supremacists.
Republicans are changing electoral rules, re-drawing voting district boundaries, closing and re-locating election centres, all aimed at handicapping minorities from exercising their franchise.
When 2022 and 2024 result in Republican victories, the “insurrectionists” won’t be Trump supporters invading the Capitol but those genuinely deprived of their democratic rights.
And that will confirm and reinforce the white conservatives view of being the victims.
We have to find a political message that is not one of the lesser evil, but which acknowledges the real threat of losing the power of the vote.
The electoral system is the US has always been flawed, even corrupt, from a democratic standpoint, with gerrymandering, partisan election officials, problems with voter registration, siting of polling stations, etc. I don’t know if it is getting worse or if it is this applies across the whole country. Part of the problem is that the two main parties are electoral machines concerned with winning at all costs.
I don’t think the Republicans are out to destroy the electoral system, just to play it in their favour. That’s not democratic but it’s not the same thing as destroying political democracy.
Obviously socialists are concerned about political democracy. We want it to exist as a means for a socialist majority to win power and effect the revolution from capitalism to socialism more or less peacefully. We are also concerned that formal democratic procedures should be supported by a democratic culture.
If political democracy is under threat naturally we protest and always have done but what else can we do?
The policy of forming a “united front” with others who are not socialists but who favour political democracy doesn’t work and doesn’t advance our cause of socialism (which is why we exist). So we can’t do that, even less vote for them or tell others to, as Chomsky, Kliman and others advocate. The most we could do without compromising our socialist integrity would be to vote for or against some measure if it was put to a referendum.
The “united front with non-socialists” policy doesn’t work because it involves support for capitalism which creates the problems which lead some to blame democracy for them.
For instance at a lesser level, if the Republicans make gains in November this will be because some who voted for the Democrats two years ago either don’t vote or change to voting for the Republicans. Why would they do that? Because, I suggest, the Democrats have failed to solve the problems they face.
Ok I am not on the spot but I don’t think the admittedly flawed political democracy in the US is under threat of destruction. There is a fringe of raving rightists who want to destroy it but I don’t think that either the Republican leaders or the vast majority of those who vote for them want this. So we are talking hypotheticals here.
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