Fortunately,
young activists have failed to learn the lessons accepted by many who
have preceded them. For example, they fail to respect Hillary Clinton
as the wife of “the first Black president.” Young African
Americans have held her to the same standards applicable to white
politicians who display racist code words. They do not accept that
when Hillary or Bill lecture youth on Black “social predators” or
defend Bill’s policies leading to the mass incarceration of Blacks
that the Clintons are speaking as members of the family-- Uncle Bill
and Aunt Hillary. Consequently, the power couple has been roughed up
on the campaign trail when faced with reminders of earlier racial
transgressions.
Therefore,
it was necessary last week for the first real
Black President to intercede with a lesson on the proper etiquette
when addressing the wielders of power. While in London, Obama
attended a town hall meeting of young people, and explained:
Too
often what I see is wonderful activism that highlights a problem but
then people feel so passionately and are so invested in the purity of
their position that they never take that next step and say, ‘How do
I sit down and try to actually get something done?’
Curiously,
“getting something done…” would seem to be the task for
legislators, for elected officials and not the activists
“highlighting” problems. But Obama elaborates, drawing on his own
experience as a “community organizer”:
You
can’t just keep on yelling at them and you can’t refuse to meet
because that might compromise the purity of your position… The
value of social movements and activism is to get you at the table,
get you in the room and then start trying to figure out how is this
problem going to be solved.You then have a responsibility to prepare
an agenda that is achievable, that can institutionalize the changes
you seek, and to engage the other side, and occasionally to take half
a loaf that will advance the gains that you seek, understanding that
there’s going to be more work to do, but this is what is achievable
at this moment.
Embedded
in this lecture for young activists are the modern liberal values of
deference to power, compromise, and incrementalism. These values are
not the values that have inspired the more profound changes that have
markedly advanced life in the US. These are not the values that
inspired Thomas Paine, John Brown, Frederick Douglass, Eugene Debs,
or Martin Luther King. These are not the values that demanded a Bill
of Rights, ended slavery, built a labor movement, and ended
institutional segregation. Demands, and not polite requests, inspired
these fundamental improvements in the lives of the many. In fact, it
was the opponents of change, in every case, who preached quietly
sitting at the “table,” preparing an “agenda” and accepting
“half a loaf.”
Activists
need only reflect on the last seven years of the Obama administration
to see the fruits of civil discourse, trusting power, and gaining
polite access: endless wars, declining living standards, growing
debt, housing crises, escalating racism, and eroded civil liberties--
in short, more of the same.
The
liberal activist playbook has succeeded in accomplishing one thing
for Obama and those who will follow him: it has successfully
corralled many idealistic, energetic advocates for change, tamed
them, and kept them firmly in the grip of the Democratic Party.
And
Obama knows that holding serve, guaranteeing that his party and its
corporate, pro-business candidate (Hillary Clinton) will gain the
presidency, will require that another generation of young activists
is similarly co-opted. The post-Sanders campaign to assimilate
Sanders’ youthful followers is already underway, with party
loyalists ginning up the “Stop Trump” hysteria.
While
liberal angst over Trump will sway many, it’s important to remind
the left that though Trump is a clownish Mussolini/Berlusconi-like
reprobate, he is, in essence, an opportunist with no core ideology
beyond power and attention. For that reason, he has alarmed the
corporate elites who rule the Republican establishment. They fear his
unpredictability and maverick views. He is shattering the unity of
the party. The left should welcome that development.
Of
course there should be no doubt as to which class Clinton
wholeheartedly and reliably represents. If there was any doubt, the
recent comments by ultra-conservative billionaire Charles Koch should
have dispelled that notion. His carefully worded statements
legitimized Clinton as an option in a field of unreliable
conservative candidates whose unimpeachable corporate fealty is in
question-- Clinton is the more
corporate candidate. While liberal apologists scramble to prove that
Koch did not endorse Clinton, they miss the point: she could
be more acceptable than her rivals (because she is a proven corporate
politician).
The
big question remaining is what becomes of the admirable fire and
brimstone conjured by the aging pied piper of social democracy,
Bernie Sanders. As with earlier insurgencies fought within the
Democratic Party and contained by the Democratic Party, this youthful
movement may well be absorbed into the party. History and the left’s
inability to cut the cord with the Democrats suggest that it will.
After all, to effectively break the bondage imposed by the corporate
Democrats only two options are available: shake loose the iron grip
that corporate power maintains over the Democratic Party or reject
two-party politics and build an independent movement. The former is
popular, but a pipe dream; the latter is difficult, but the only
viable option.
However,
hope resides in a younger generation that both suffers greater
burdens than any generation since the Great Depression and is largely
oblivious to the scare-tactics of anti-Communism. The latest of
several polls shows a significant and growing interest in socialism
and an even greater rejection of capitalism. The Harvard University
study of young adults between 18 and 29 found that 51% do not support
capitalism. With the same group of respondents, 33% supported
socialism. Of older respondents, a majority of support for capitalism
could only be found among those fifty years old or older.
In
a 2011 Pew Research Center poll, 49% of 18 to 29 year-olds had a
positive view of socialism, a higher percentage than those with a
positive view of capitalism.
Reporting
the Harvard Survey in the Washington
Post, author Amy Cavenaile is
rankled by these results. She searches far and wide for an authority
or a poll result that can diminish these findings. Accordingly, she
finds Frank Newport, the editor-in-chief of Gallup, who opines:
“Young people could be saying that there are problems with
capitalism, contradictions… I certainly don’t know what’s going
through their heads.”
Further
disturbing to the author and other pundits, young people do not
identify socialism with government regulation or government
spending-- the establishment’s vulgar characterization of
socialism-- but with “Basic necessities, such as food and shelter
[and healthcare], are a right that the government should provide to
those unable to afford them.”
Clearly,
the seemingly unassailable truth of a few decades ago-- “there is
no alternative”-- fails to resonate with recent generations.
Shaping and sharpening a realizable vision of socialism for the
latest generations is the most critical task before us.
Zoltan
Zigedy
