by Ron Jacobs / May 26th, 2013
Recently,
Counterpunch editor Jeffrey St. Clair
posed the question “Is there a Left in America today?” His article was
not the first in recent times to pose the question but it did receive a
fair amount of attention given the prominence of
Counterpunch
in the US Left. To sum the piece up in a sentence, it stated that yes,
there is a Left, but it is in a fairly deep slumber. Whether one agrees
with St. Clair’s essay or not, the facts are as follows. St. Clair is
not the first of today’s leftists to pose this question, nor is it a
question easily dismissed by some stock answer regarding cynicism,
ignorance of the facts on the ground, or some other dismissive remark
(one I heard accused the writer of ultra-leftism.)
The question is fair and needs to be asked. The magazine St.
Clair edits is known for its provocative style. That’s why it’s called
Counterpunch.
It’s supposed to make its friends feel uncomfortable on occasion and
its enemies unsure on their feet in the ring of politics. Ideally, it
causes the latter to fall down for the count every once in a while and
the former to challenge the zone they feel comfortable in. Even more to
the point for those who are its friends, it should provoke debate that
will move the revolution we all know we need that much closer.
I don’t want to sound like an old-timer here–in part because I
don’t feel like one mentally or emotionally (physically is sometimes
another matter)–but mostly because what I aim to write is not passé or
irrelevant to the current situation. The Left has been here before. The
historical circumstances were different, but the static situation was
eerily similar. Although I could be referring to the 1950s in the United
States, when anti-communism was the national faith and leftists were
considered on a par with Satan and his dominions by the mainstream media
and most of its readers, the period I want to talk about is the 1970s
and 1980s.
The New Left was in retreat. A combination of victories and
half-victories, massive repression, a retooling of the Democratic Party,
and the demise of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) had
created a situation where a multitude of organizations existed on the US
Left. All too many of them considered their line to be the correct one.
None were very willing to compromise, preferring instead to fine tune
their particular interpretation of Marx, Lenin and the rest to such a
point that instead of gaining adherents, they slowly but surely lost
them. By the end of the 1970s, some of these groups were working on the
left end of the Democratic Party, hoping to expand the small opening
created by George McGovern’s 1972 campaign into creating a genuine left
parliamentary opposition in the US. Other groups were fighting amongst
themselves, listening to provocateurs in their midsts, or just
dissolving into thin air, as it were. Meanwhile, the US right wing was
consolidating its forces behind millions and millions of corporate
dollars. The result was the election of Ronald Reagan to the White House
and the portrayal of Jimmy Carter, the creator of the Carter doctrine
(which further bound the Empire’s military to the authoritarian regimes
under whose lands the energy industry’s oil profits lay), as a leftist
and wimp.
Nothing has been the same since. The Left waged successful
campaigns against US support for apartheid, but hardly bothered to
oppose the US invasion of Grenada. It was also fairly successful in
opposing US support for the Contras in Nicaragua and the bloody regime
killing thousands in El Salvador and elsewhere in Central America.
Unfortunately, their activities did not foresee the creation of an
extralegal funding process for the Contras or the emptiness of the
legislation against the human rights violations of the El Salvadorian
government. Also, despite one of the broadest campaigns against nuclear
weapons in history, the Pentagon and its corporate cohorts placed their
missiles throughout Europe. By 1989, the response of the Left to the
Bush administration’s invasion of Panama was barely a whimper. Then came
Bill Clinton–the popular pretender to the progressives’ throne. In a
litany fairly well known, Clinton pushed the neoliberal wet dream known
as NAFTA through Congress. Then he “reformed” public assistance to the
poor. Then he pushed through the Omnibus Crime and Terrorism Bill,
making federal crimes out of a multitude of political activities and
increasing the number of federal crimes that were punishable by death.
Oh yeah, he reneged on LGBT equality and injected racial coding into his
campaign as if he were a modern day Republican.
Meanwhile, he and Tony
Blair maintained a deadly sanctions regime on Iraq while bombing it at
will. Besides all this, Clinton lobbed cruise missiles much like Barack
Obama launches armed drones. On top of all this, he helped create the
situation that provoked the crash of 2008. No, he wasn’t solely
responsible, but the illusion of money where there wasn’t any greatly
expanded during his rule. And the Left was rather silent.
So, what does this have to do with today? To begin, the Left is
rather silent. There are a few campaigns organized around the suffering
environment, some of them even bringing thousands of people to the
streets. The Occupy movement raised the question of corporate greed and
responsibility, but when certain elements within the movement directly
challenged not just “bad” corporations but the system of capitalism
itself, the Democratic White House aligned with the forces of law and
order and cracked down hard. This was after the White House’s current
occupant rode to his position on a wave of disgust with the wars and
cronyism of Wall Street, the Pentagon and Congress. After decades of
painting corporate liberals as tantamount to socialists and communists,
the right wing dominates the political arena in the United States. The
loyal opposition is spot on when it comes to instances of individual
racism like the murder of Trayvon Martin in 2011, but ignores the
ultimately more damaging institutional racism that has never been far
removed from the US mainstream. That same opposition chastises a lone
protester who challenges the president on his drone assassination
program and the prison camp known as Gitmo, but says little or nothing
when those programs murder and imprison innocents. This is the hegemony
of capital at work. There is nothing it can not purchase, silence or
kill. Elections and highways, politicians and militaries, there is a
price on it all.
And it is us who pays that price. It is also us who
must end this dynamic.
It is time to organize. We don’t have time to bicker. Debate
over tactics and approaches, yes. Bickering and name-calling, no.
Leave the latter to those whom we wish to defeat.
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