Waking Up

by digby

There was a lot of sturm and drang a week or so ago about the NY Times asking Obama whether or not he was a socialist. (dday wrote a great post on the subject.) The accusation against Obama is, of course, idiotic — something designed to please the wingnut rubes, who react in Pavlovian fashion and don’t have any idea what they are so upset about. But socialism is a real system and it’s practiced in some degree throughout the world. So I’ve wondered why nobody is talking to them right now.

Bill Moyers did that on his show this week, speaking with Mike Davis, professor at UC Riverside an card carrying socialist. He’s also an American and someone who lives in the real world so he doesn’t prescribe strictly socialistic solutions to our current problems, but he had some very interesting things to say about the role of the left at a time like this, which I found very thought provoking.

MIKE DAVIS: Well, I mean, the role of the Left or the Left that needs to exist in this country is not to be to come up with a utopian blueprints and how we’re going to run an entirely alternative society, much less to express nostalgia about authoritative bureaucratic societies, you know, like the Soviet Union or China. It’s really to try and articulate the common sense of the labor movement and social struggles on the ground. So, for instance, you know, where you have the complete collapse of the financial system and where the remedies proposed are above all privileged the creditors and the very people responsible for that, it’s a straightforward enough proposition to say, “Hey, you know, if we’re going to own the banking system, why not make the decisions and make them in alliance with social policy that ensures that housing’s affordable, that school loans are affordable, that small business gets credit?” You know, why not turn the banking system into a public utility? Now, that doesn’t have to be in any sense an anti-capitalist demand. But it’s a radical demand that asks fundamental question about the institution and who holds the economic power. You know, why isn’t the federal government taking a more direct role in decision making? I mean, I believe, for instance, during the Savings and Loan Crisis there was a period when the.

BILL MOYERS: 1980s, late.

MIKE DAVIS: Yeah.

BILL MOYERS: Late ’80s, right.

MIKE DAVIS: Yeah, I mean, the Resolution Trust Corporation was set up to you know, buy up the abandoned apartments and homes and then sold them at fire sale to private interests. For a year or two it had the means of resolving much of the housing crisis, you know, in the United States. Why shouldn’t the federal government basically turn that housing stock, into a solution for people’s housing needs? Sell them directly to homeowners at discounts you know, rent them out? In other words, the role of the Left is the ask the deeper questions about who has power, how institutions work, and propose alternatives that seem more common sensical in terms of the direct interest of, you know, of satisfying human needs and equality in this society. I think President Obama and the liberal Democrats that still exist should actually welcome a revival of the Left. It only strengthens them in a way. It’s like being Martin Luther King without having Malcolm X. The problem with the Democrats is they fold. The Democrats tend to concede to the Republicans a power and to give them a veto ability that is has shaped legislation that they needn’t to. We need something of the spirit of Roosevelt in 1937, 1938 when he tried to take on you know, the right wing of his own party, the Supreme Court, the right wing of the Republican Party.

BILL MOYERS: He was accused of being a socialist. And they tried to paint him with that. He was accused of conducting class war as, in fact, now Obama is being accused by conservative forces of launching a class war because he wants to return the tax rate to 39.9 percent, which is where it was in the Clinton era. But how do you deal with this charge of class war coming from the “Wall Street Journal” and the Heritage Foundation and others?

MIKE DAVIS: Well, I think you deal with it by saying, yeah, we want class war, too. And here’s what class war means, that the only possibility of getting this country out of the crisis, the only possibility that really deep set reforms can occur, including the protection and renewal of the productive base of the economy is labor has to become more powerful. We need more protests. We need more noise in the street. At the end of the day, political parties and political leaderships tend to legislate what social movements and social voices have already achieved in the factories or the streets or, you know, in the Civil Rights demonstration. And the problem is that so many progressives, so many liberals now treat the new President as if he were, you know, El Commandante. And we line up, follow, you know, follow his leadership. But he’s maneuvering in a relationship of forces where people on the Left, progressives, even the Black Caucus doesn’t account for that much. He’s appeasing Blue Dogs. He’s having to deal with Republicans.

BILL MOYERS: Conservative…

MIKE DAVIS: And to an absolutely unnecessary extent, I think he’s following the template of the Clinton years. And, of course, the Clinton years were years of the closest collaboration between financial industry and the White House that produced financial deregulation. I think the best thing the President has done is the stimulus. The worst thing has been to continue the bailout along the same lines that it was initiated by Treasury Secretary Paulson, a bailout that’s truly rejected by the majority of the American people and seen as a reward you know, to the very people who, you know, ignited this crisis in the first place. But the deep questions about, how do you rebuild the productive economy? The necessary role of the public sector in providing employment, whether fair trade is impossible.

The whole interview is very interesting and provides a view that you just aren’t allowed to hear in the mainstream media.

This crisis is reawakening the left in some ways it hasn’t been tested in some time. It’s been a long series of bubbles and political setbacks over decades and there aren’t a whole lot of people who have been engaged in these issues on a philosophical basis for quite some time. The argument among us took place between the economic neoliberalism of the DLC and lukewarm, leftover Great Society articles of faith. But there is more on the left spectrum than that (or full throated Marxism.) It’s necessary to expand the conversation in a time of crisis.

The right is tapped out — they’ve had free rein for a couple of decades and have tried everything from the old conservatism of reliance on aristocratic institutions to Ayn Rand’s radical pseudo-philosophy of greed. Their run has shown the limitations of unbridled capitalism as vividly as the Soviet experiment showed the limitations of communism. Philosophies which rely on utopian human behavior aren’t very realistic.

Anyway, now is the time for the left to assert itself. As Mike Davis pointed out elsewhere in his interview, the left was vibrant and energetic during the 30s and provided a necessary voice in the political discussion, which influenced many of Roosevelt’s successful policies. Right now, the public is engaged and ready to hear new things. The left needs to be willing to say them.

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