How many of you have ever read Democratic Left the magazine of the Democratic Socialists of America ? If you haven't, you are missing a vital part of the spectrum of diverse views that go to make up this great Democratic Party. The history of the Democratic Party will reveal many significant contributions from DSA . The founding editor of Democratic Left was Michael Harrington (1928-1989). My diary Michael Harrington: An American Socialist who influenced the democratic party was well recieved here and had a significant impact. As we struggle with a situation that seems to have created a consensus for change, the question of what we want that change to be will be a central topic for some time to come. It is worth having a good source of information to counter the misleading approach the corporate media throw at us without ceasing. Look below to see what Democratic Left has to offer you.
The Spring 2008 issue (it is published quarterly) Begins by introducing the Talking Union blog. As I tried to emphasize in my diary about this, it is a source that is right on the mark with respect to the labor issues that dominate this primary season. "Free trade agreements are next and DSA has launched a Renegotiate NAFTA campaign. The campaign has a website and DSA members will be circulating a petition this summer to try to make the rhetoric of the primary campaign something more than that.
A key article by Corey D. B. Walker (member of DSA's National Political Committee and Assistant Professor of Africana Studies as well as a Faculty Affiliate in the Center for Latin American Studies at Brown University) is entitled: Latin America and the Next U. S. Left. It harks back to Michael Harrington's book The Next Left: The History of a Future (1986). Here is a quote from that book:
The democratic left of Europe and North America must do the same, nationally and internationally. It is not just that its Fordist program of the last half-century no longer works and that it must go far beyond it. It will only be able to speak for the increasingly diverse peoples of the West if it rethinks and restates its own legitimacy.
What is the relationship between the left in the United States and the political reorganization struggles in Latin America? Often as we read the press or listen to our politicians we see the events in Latin America used to frame the left as a bunch of anti-democratic bad guys. Yet the situation is far, far more complex than that.
American foreign policy and often positions taken by the Democratic Party suffer from a severe lack of information. To judge what is going on in Latin America without studying beyond what the vast propaganda machine uses to frame the issues for us is inviting disaster. Walker writes:
To be sure the political reorganization struggles in Latin America have met fierce resistance from entrenched power elites throughout the region in addition to a hostile and agressive regime in Washington, D. C., that maintains the imperialsit view and posture that Latin America is the United States' backyard....Despite the multiple internal and external obsticles facing these political tendencies in their attempt to institutionalize more egalitarian social, political, cultural, and economic policies, the left in the United States can learn a great deal from the strategies, tactics, and philosophies of some of our Latin American comrades.
This was true in the 1960s and the effort the propaganda machine and the covert forces of our government put forth to make it seem otherwise only testifies to its truth.
But now we have moved into a new era. The Cold War has been replaced by a hot one with threats of an encore. Globalization, NAFTA, and other issues are now tio be reckoned with. Walker says:
The "Battle of Seattle" in 1999, which graphically confronted capitalist globalization, also marked the high-water mark of the U. S. left's unfortunate valorization of a model of politics and organizing that privileges civil society in challenging the power of capital and the state. In this view, the mechanisms and politics of the state are disconnected from other relations and formations in society and the only opening with any potential of political transformation of the existing order is offered by and through the actions of civil society actors and groups. As encoraging as the waves of opposition to neoliberal globalization were, the U. S. Left remained bereft of any critical strategies, formidable tactics, and coherent ideologies that critically integreate a radical politics of civil society with an equally radical politics of the state.
I often feel like I am in another world when I see politics discussed in this manner. It has been that way for me since the Vietnam era. Political discourse back then was not imprisoned within the very restrictive bounds of an election cycle. People talked about what they wanted to happen and came up with things outside the electoral constraints. Alternative structures including the press and other institutions sprang up. Other experiments were tried. But now, as Walker points out:
This situation is exacerbated by the presidential campaign of 2008. Left discourse has been saturated with what Howard Zinn has rightly called "electoral madness" instead of taking up the arduous task of organizing a broad Left, there has been a pronounced tendency to abandon the electoral field and allow the low-intensity spectacle politics of the American "one party, two faction" political system to set the terms and frame the debate not only on social policy but on left political thought and strategy, too.
Walker has much more to say, but I'll hope you are interested enough to seek that out. This issue will be on line shortly. What I'd like to focus on in closing is the way we misuse the election. We spend time energy and money at a scale that is hard to comprehend. I will commit sacrilege now and suggest that at least part of that enormous effort could be used for a better purpose.
The Democratic Party was put into an interesting relationship with the Republican Party in Walker's statement about a "one party, two faction system." Try to imagine that Walker is correct if if you disagree. If that characterization is at all true then so much about which we post diary after diary here day after day suddlenly can be seen in a very interesting light. The differences we dwell on, when looked upon in a wider context than the election and its dynamics, are really not that great. You do not have to agree with DSA to see that. The very fact that there is a DSA makes it clear. Some of us need a place to see the agenda broadened beyond those boundaries that some political guru has set because, we are told, those boundaries keep us viable in the eyes of the American electorate.
In a very unique way, Senator Obama has broken those rules. He has dared to suggest that the game we have been playing is destructive and counterproductive. The first thing thrown in his face is this mystical nonentity called "electiblity". Why can people in Latin America get away with things we refuse to even consider? Is it true that politicians can only succeed if they contain any desire to really change the system in necessary radical ways and pander to a ficticious electorate? What is leadership if not taking those voters to a place they never dreamed of going? Well, what do you think? Should Senator Obama have played it safe? If he can do it who's next? Maybe the leadership dam is bursting? I sure hope so!