While left ideals are excellent, and left theory overall is pretty good…

 

Yes, while left ideals are excellent, and left theory overall is pretty good, left practice leaves much, very much, to be desired.  Our left political practice is not good enough for our left movement, to put it bluntly.  We of the left lack not only political understanding and sophistication, but our tactical and strategic acumen is woefully inadequate.  As a result, all we can appeal to is our ideals, which we ofttimes simply can’t put into practice, make realizable.  That is why, while the left ofttimes punches above its weight (to borrow a phrase from fellow critical leftist Barry Finger, my closest political comrade), we leftists normally remain a minority, and an often beleaguered and marginalized minority at that.  While we incessantly talk of galvanizing the masses, typically we don’t galvanize them; they ignore us, or express hostility to us.  And that is our great tragedy as leftists.  Try as we may to be effective, ofttimes we fail at that.

This abstractly expressed argument above was made concrete for me recently, as I read a book about how Jeremy Corbyn became British Labour Party head in 2015, staved off a challenge to is leadership in 2016 (where the book ended), only to go down to ignominious defeat in the British elections of 2019, where Labour was trounced, suffering its greatest defeat since 1935.  Corbyn, who in 2015 was a little-known left backbencher Labour MP (Member of Parliament) from a safe district near London with no previous leadership experienced, galvanized many Labour Party members, it is true; he was especially strong among the young (under 39) and with women, but garnered only a plurality among trade unionist Labour members, had the open hostility of many fellow Labour MPs and the Labour bureaucracy, and his stunning win in 2015, coupled with his stunning reduction to ignominy in 2019, proved decisively that it takes more than a surprise insurgent candidacy to transform a party hierarchy that is strongly in place.  He came out of the antiwar and Palestinian movements, and many of his political views can be described as naïve at best.  Personally a nice, if somewhat colorless, person, he was drafted reluctantly as the left Labour leadership candidate, and while probably not anti-Semitic himself, had a real blind spot to left anti-Semitism, which rendered him open to attack on that front; also, his campaigning in support remaining in the EU, both in 2016 and in 2019, was tepid at best also.  He also had a campaign team that was enthusiastic and earnest, but inexperienced.  His seeming strengths overshadowed his glaring weaknesses.

There were similarities, of course, between Corbyn’s insurgency and the insurgent Democratic Presidential campaign of 2016 by Bernie Sanders, which also started in 2015.  But there were important differences.  For one thing, Sanders was a much more adept and eloquent politician than Corbyn, who, coming from a safe Labour seat of little importance for decades, where he was just another backbencher, had never been tested as a leader.  Also, Sanders was much more discriminating in who he publicly allied with and supported than was Corbyn, whose past uncritical and campist solidarities came back to haunt him not only throughout his campaign for Labour leadership, but also his time serving in office.  (Chief among these was his seeming support for “left” antisemitism, to which he was notably blind.)  Further, although British English is notably drier and more formal than American English, Corbyn’s spoken English in speeches (of which this writer has only seen snippets in print; but revealing snippets) was far more colorless and lackluster than was Sanders’s, who could be notably aggressive and forceful in making points—which he did with cogency and alacrity!  In short, Sanders was much more a natural-born leader than was Corbyn; and he had demonstrated that successfully not only while in legislative (and executive—he began his political career as Mayor of Burlington, Vermont) office, but during his campaign for the Presidential nomination.  Notably in this regard was the way Sanders responded on Sunday-morning TV to journalist George Stephanopoulos’s redbaiting objection that calling himself a “democratic socialist” would only hurt him, Sanders snapped back, “What’s wrong with that?” and proceeded to briefly but effectively explain what democratic socialism was. 

Both Corbyn and Sanders galvanized youth support for their candidacies, and turned out the youth vote.  Corbyn won the Labour Party leadership by strong support among new Labour members (62%), women (63%), those 25-39 (67%) and newly affiliated trade unionists (57.6%), but among overall Labour members who voted, only won a plurality (49.6%), not an absolute majority.  (Data taken from Alex Nunn, The Candidate [New York and London: OR Books, 2016], the book I read referred to above, pp. 301-302.)  Bernie Sanders, though arguably his base of support was larger and more diversified, was also only a minority candidate—he won 47% of the Democratic primary votes in 2016, and before he aborted his Presidential campaign in 2020, 40% of the vote.  Which indicates that, in both cases, while support for the left is strong, it does not constitute an absolute majority.  In forming his shadow cabinet after winning, Jeremy Corbyn reached out to his opponents and non-supporters in Parliament, only to have them turn against him in the summer of 2016 (ironically, among his most vocal opponents was Hilary Benn, a right-wing Labourite, and son of noted left-wing Labour leader Tony Benn!); while Corbyn won that battle, and under his leadership in the elections of 2017, led Labour to an admirable showing (though not enough to form a government), Labour with him at the helm was massacred in the election of 2019, ousting him not only from power, but making him very vulnerable to his Labour enemies.  (2019 was Labour’s worst showing since 1935, as mentioned above.)  Truth be told, Corbyn had important baggage he carried, and it was very noticeable in 2019:  although possibly (no one is really sure) not personally an antisemite, he had a serious antisemitism problem due to his uncritical pro-Third Worldism, notably in support of the Palestinians against Israel, no matter what; he was also a tepid supporter of Britain remaining in the European Union, and his call for a second Brexit referendum, after three years of Brexit, Brexit, Brexit! turned many past Labour voters against him.  As for the ambitions Labour Party manifesto of 2019, exit polls indicated that a large number of voters thought it unrealistic, and doubted it Labour could fulfill it.  This in sharp contrast to Conservative Party Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s cry on long-regurgitated and talked-about Brexit, “Get it done!” 

There was also a clear class divide between the young who supported the Labour left, and the older, more socially conservative and traditionalist, working class and trade unionists who had formerly voted Labour—just as there is such a divide here in the U.S., although the left doesn’t want to admit it, or even talk about it.  The young are often college-educated, in contrast to the older, and come from backgrounds of privilege that enable them to go to college.  They are often better employed than older workers, and despite the rise of the precariat among the young, have better prospects for the future.  This is especially noticeable in the U.S. in the death rate for white males 55 and older, many of whom have lost their once-secure blue-collar and ordinary white-collar jobs—and now die prematurely of opioid addiction, alcoholism, and suicide, while other demographic groups see their lifespans increase.  Today’s left, both in Europe and in the U.S., is focused on social issues rather than economic ones because, truth be told, youth are more beneficiaries of neoliberalism than have been older workers.  Deindustrialization and globalism have brought layoffs and job disappearance to the traditional working class, or else severe drops in income and status as workers are forced to trade higher-income employment (often in manufacturing) for lower-income employment (often in services).  While youth doesn’t have it that great anymore either, they have employment options in NGOs and in professional employment lacking for the non-college educated.  For the youth, economic precarity is not a compelling issue, despite neoliberalism making it more prevalent.  Hence the turn of youth to social issues away from economic ones, and of course, the rise of neoliberal, pro-capitalist modes of supposedly radical “isms” such as feminism and anti-racism.  But as many a worker will tell you, in the end, there’s no difference, except perhaps stylistically, between a woman boss and a man boss, a boss of color and a boss who’s white!  As The Who sang tellingly, “Meet the new boss/Same as the old boss.”  Bernie Sanders grasped that.  I don’t think Jeremy Corbyn ever did.  Among other left leaders in the U.S. besides Bernie, only AOC seems to grasp what is really going on—and she often gets accused of “selling out” by certain persons on the U.S. left!

The Sanders, Corbyn, struggles for leadership encapsulate many of the failings of the contemporary left.  We are long past the golden days of Marxism and Marxist leaders of the first part of the 20^th Century such as Trotsky, Max Shachtman, Rosa Luxemburg, her nemesis Eduard Bernstein, Gramsci, even Lenin and Kautsky, not to mention Marx and Engels themselves, who lived and died entirely within the 19^th Century; and we are sorely missing later leaders such as Michael Harrington.  In my opinion, our current left “leadership,” as represented by such figures as Noam Chomsky, Vijay Prashad, and Medea Benjamin, are really not suitable leaders at all; hence our left descent into mediocrity, obsessive focus on cultural and social issues, including identity politics to the detriment of real class analysis and focus on economics and economic reality.  Today’s left, as it has been since the 1960s, is overwhelmingly college-educated, but not any smarter because of it.  We of the left are not terribly good at talking to average workers; we are far “better” talking (or rather, lecturing, hectoring) at them!  That is especially noticeable in the rise of “cancel culture,” the left equivalent of irredeemable Original Sin.  If we of today’s left were truly honest, we would read to everyone we talk to or about this version of their Miranda Rights:  “Not only will anything and everything you ever said or wrote be held against you, it will mark you forever, even at the expense of losing your reputation and employment.”  While leftists may protest, “But we have good intentions!” such intentions are never enough; politics, especially left politics, is not a morality play; it is a push to achieve power to effect substantive change.  It is not, decidedly not, about forming consensus-agreeing affinity groups, it is about forming coalitions, often diverse and even on some issues, contradictory coalitions, where not everyone agrees on every single issue.  It is also about using tact, sophistication, and nuance in organizing, and having a healthy skepticism of what we advocate, what we are for, so that we of the left are able to say to ourselves, “While I think I’m right in this, I will also admit I could be wrong.  I do not think so at present, because I have thought this over thoroughly.  But I may have overlooked something.”  Let us recall as leftists, many of us as Marxists, the dialectic, and how the dialectic means change, transformation, over time, so that what is so certain today may be substantially not so in the future.  That is what we of the left must do today—come to that understanding.

 

Peace with Social Justice Issues Require a Programmatic Approach

This is the longer, more extensive version of an article recently published in the Summer 2012 issue of the Indianapolis Peace and Justice Journal--GF

Peace with social justice issues are indivisible—one can’t have true peace without eliminating the cause of conflict, namely oppression and injustice. Oppression and injustice are at the heart of conflict, its root causes, and if it was Karl Marx rather than George Fox, Paul Tillich or Thomas Aquinas who noticed this obvious fact first, so be it. It won’t be the first time this bearded Jewish atheist was right when the holy religious authorities were wrong! (But elaborating on this is something to be discussed later.) As the popular old song goes, “you can’t have one without the other;” peace and justice do go together hand-in-hand.

That’s why I “recommend” to all those who want peace most of all, if you really want peace then you should support right-wing dictatorships; because, historically, repressive dictators and fascist movements brought “peace” when before there was social chaos and disruption. Historically, the coming to power of Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, Pinochet, the Brazilian, Greek and Argentine military coups that ousted civilian leaders—all of them brought the “peace of the graveyard” to previously unruly and disruptive societies. They put an end to disruption and contentious dissent by—putting an end (often literally, through execution) to the disrupters and dissenters! And their “peace” of course didn’t last forever—but it did last for a long time in all cases, and it remained a stable “peace.” That’s why it’s always to question peace in and of itself as a goal. Because peace in and of itself is not peace with social justice, because the process of achieving social justice, the prerequisite for lasting peace, is always and forever a contentions process. Because powerful elites have vested interests in maintaining and promulgating social injustice.

 That’s why the Southern crackers, who charged that people like Martin Luther King and the nonviolent protests against segregation they organized in the 1960s were “disrupting the peace” and “riling up people who wouldn’t otherwise be riled up,” were absolutely correct! Martin Luther King and the other leaders and activists for civil rights really were “disturbing the peace” of the oppressive status quo, really were “riling up” those who had previously been too timed and afraid to stand up. And Martin Luther King also really understood the linkage between civil and political rights and economic rights and freedoms, really understood that you couldn’t have the resources to provide for justice at home while spending it on foreign wars. Which is why, quite in opposition to the “liberals” who said he would “hurt” the cause of achieving civil rights, Martin Luther King spoke out against the war in Vietnam as well as calling for civil rights at home, and why the final acts of his life were supporting African American city trash collectors in Memphis and organizing the Poor Peoples March, both issues of economic as well as racial justice. In Martin Luther King himself we see the interconnectedness, the very indivisibility, of peace and social justice issues—and the need to address both. And as Martin Luther King himself did, address them programmatically, through concrete demands and concrete modes of action such as sit-ins and marches, not just articulating them as abstract principles and addressing them only through token and symbolic actions of supposed moral witness.

(Parenthetically though, in view of what I wrote above about “crackers” and the unrelenting hostility I receive from some in the IPJC no matter what I write, I categorically deny that my use of the word “crackers” above was in any way intended to insult, demean, or offend—saltines! In fact, some of my best friends are saltines—along with Triscuit, Ritz, Town House and many, many others of this important culinary species! All of its myriad members, in my humble opinion, deserve recognition and acknowledgement for their significant contributions to gastronomy, which are too often overlooked and simply taken for granted.)

But back to programs. Programs are what make principles real and realizable, programs guide actions that guide and goad supporters, and make those actions real and concrete move beyond the purely symbolic expressions of a select cognoscenti—in other words, programs suggest and lead to application, limn roads to follow for putting principles and goals into effect, i.e., tactics. Which, while often overlooked, are really the lifeblood of any serious movement for peace with social justice. Noam Chomsky has written tellingly on the crucial nature of tactics:

Talk of tactics sounds sort of trivial, but it is not. Tactical choices are the ones that have real human consequences. We can try to go beyond the more general strategic choices—speculatively and with open minds—but beyond that we descend into abstract generalities. Tactics have to do with decisions about what to do next, they have real human consequences. (Chomsky on Anarchism, AK Press 2007, p. 237)

This is key, more key than many in the IPJC imagine, for tactics lead to implementation of principles, they bring about power and influence—and let’s honestly face it, a movement without power and influence, a movement unable to implement what it stands for and believes in, is impotent. Impotent despite the sincerity of its members, the “deep meaning” (or perceived “deep meaning”) of its symbolism and symbolic actions, and the “good guy” nature of its organization and small membership (necessarily small, because impotent organizations, organizations that cannot wield power, influence, and get things done do not attract large numbers of people wishing to join).

IPJC expresses one tactic which has proven effective, as many mass movements have shown—nonviolence. Unfortunately, IPJC confuses the tactic, nonviolence, with the abstract principle of pacifism. But in so tying nonviolence directly to pacifism, especially the pacifism of the organized peace churches, IPJC automatically limits its appeal drastically, cuts itself off from numerous potential supporters. Many more would be drawn to IPJC as an organization were it not so stiff-necked on pacifism, for many who desire a peaceful world with social justice are not pacifists, indeed are critical of pacifism justifiably: after all, pacifism proved only a hindrance both to stopping Hitler and to ending slavery in the U.S., where numerous pacifist measures had previously been taken to prevent the inevitable conflicts that both slavery and Nazism represented. I even wrote positively on this originally in the October 2008 issue of the Indianapolis Peace and Justice Journal, “Slandering Nonviolence,” which was updated (with attribution to the Journal as original source) and expanded for New Politics online and posted September 15, 2011, http://newpol.org/node/510. Which is to say bluntly, one does not have to be a pacifist to be peaceable; conversely, not being a pacifist does not automatically commit one to violence under any circumstances. That’s just a hoary but blatantly false canard that needs to be abandoned without reservation now and forever. Even by committed pacifists.

Pacifism limits IPJC in other ways as well, making it automatically almost completely occupied with issues of war and foreign policy, on which it can have little influence, especially in Indiana, one state out of 50, and one both overwhelmingly hidebound and without consequence when it comes to issues of war and peace. Which makes the IPJC, along with its complementary organization, the Indiana Peace and Justice Network, IPJN, little more than foreign policy windbags. Conversely, the social justice and labor movements in Indiana, such as organized labor itself and organizations such as the Community-Faith-Labor Coalition and Central Indiana Jobs with Justice, press local and domestic social justice issues without reference to antiwar issues, even though it is the so-called national “defense” budget and the costs of imperial wars such as Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan which drain vital resources that could be used to create a society in which unemployment, affordable healthcare, decent housing and schools, and other social ills would not be the pestilences they are today. More indication that peace and social justice issues are inextricably linked; and that an effective program in one area must also encompass an effective program in the other. In other words, what the peace and social justice movements need now is a unified program that address the real, compelling need—peace with social justice—that separated movements, one for peace, the other for justice, and neither the twain shall meet, cannot adequately address themselves through this separation, this artificial “division of labor.”

Yes, perhaps we march separately, and for some certain issues are more paramount than others, at least for the moment; but we realize not only the need to strike together, but to strake multiple targets. And while we of the movements may not realize this, believe me, the economic elites and their political satraps do. That’s why the military hawks such as the Blue Dogs, the Tea Party, and the Republicans all wish to gut organized labor, support “right-to-work,” and eviscerate social entitlement programs as well—they understand the interconnectedness of peace and social justice issues, even if peace and social justice grassroots activists do not!

This interconnectedness is something the political campaign of Donnie Harold Harris for Indiana Governor and me, George Fish, for Lieutenant Governor realized from the beginning, and drew up as our campaign proposals an interconnected platform, which we invite all to examine and “steal” from as deemed appropriate. This interconnectedness is developed in writing at length in two documents readily accessible: my entry on my “Politically Incorrect Leftist” blog, “A Peace with Social Justice Program for Indiana—and the World,” http://politicallyincorrectleftist.blogspot.com/2012/07/peace-with-social-justice-program-for.html; and “The Peace with Social Justice Platform of Harris-Fish for Indiana: Catching the Occupy Spirit!” under “About” on the Harris-Fish for Indiana Facebook page.

Principles in themselves are not enough—they must be fleshed out with programs and appropriate tactics, or else they become dead letters. The world has long been waylaid by plenty of good principles not properly put into practice—and the principle of peace with social justice will join them if it is not dealt with appropriately, programmatically, and with an eye to implementation as well as to mere articulation.