In the Winter 2007 issue of Dissent Magazine, Michael Walzer argues for a common "set of principles" that he believes an American left should support, "even if we disagree sharply about how best to represent those principles in the ‘real world.’"
For Walzer, these "principles are big ones, like freedom, democracy, and - the defining principle of any left - equality." Walzer’s "left" obviously is not identical to the Democratic Party’s big tent or even the "progressive" wing (body?) of the party. Nevertheless, as one who identifies with Walzer’s politics, I find his argument worthy of consideration. One ought to be able, I think, to explain why, or why not, one chooses to part company from him. (In what follows, I have excerpted and paraphrased so as to mitigate any copyright issues. One cost is a loss of the fluidity and cogency of Walzer’s own words.)
Domestic issues Walzer believes are "probably not controversial, or . . . controversial only at the margins. The problem is that too many of these commitments are defended by single-issue groups that don't take much of an interest in the other items on the list." The American left, Walzer maintains, should be:
- "strongly pro-labor and committed to rebuilding the union movement." Walzer makes this point first "because the idea of an egalitarian politics without a base among industrial and service workers is an illusion[.]"
- for a strongly redistributive tax system "so that the burdens of both domestic welfare and an internationalist politics are shared fairly by all our citizens"
- for strong, well-funded public education. "We should be the defenders of a secular curriculum, with strong intellectual content, imaginatively taught, by teachers who are respected and decently paid. And we should be defenders of schools that are integrated across the lines of class and race."
- for comprehensive national health insurance as "the keystone of any decent welfare system."
- able to "insist that the dangers of domestic terrorism can be forcefully addressed . . . within the constraints of constitutional democracy. It isn't enough to point to Guantanamo and the Patriot Act and shout ‘fascism!’"
Global issues, in contrast, Walzer believes are more divisive. That said, Walzer offers the following:
- "First, as American citizens, we should not adopt the easy anti-Americanism that fuels and disfigures so much of the global left." In addition to being "critics of many aspects of our domestic society and of US foreign policy," Walzer claims that "we also know that our country can be and has been a force for good." Accordingly, we need to judge cases on their merits, not reflexively.
- Second, we "must be internationalist, . . . in defense of human rights and democratic politics." Walzer cites examples of (what he styles) an internationalist division of labor: the Vietnamese in Cambodia; India in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh); Tanzania in Uganda (Idi Amin); and the U.S. in Kosovo.
- But internationalism is not just a matter of state action. Often "state support for democratic dissidents abroad or for some fledgling human rights, or feminist, or environmentalist movement in the third world isn't possible or isn't wanted." But this is not a counsel for inaction: "the left can provide volunteers, resources, political defense, ideological reinforcement." Indeed, Walzer believes that our actually doing so, "and that we do it only on behalf of men and women who are committed to freedom, equality, and democracy (and refuse to support illiberal movements just because they are anti-American) - that is the true test of leftist internationalism."
- "We need to oppose the neoliberal economic order, but without setting ourselves against economic growth and globalization. Perhaps the most important contribution the left can make would be to expose the complex patterns of politics and finance that make for grinding poverty, rampant disease, and governmental failure in the developing (or not developing) countries."
- "Finally, and perhaps this is the most difficult thing, we need to recognize that although we have opponents at home, with whom we are engaged in democratic debate and competition, we have enemies abroad, with whom we are engaged in a much fiercer kind of conflict." Identifying the "standard enemies of the left" as all those "who have a vested interest in economic inequality, in the gender hierarchy, and in the authoritarian rule of oligarchs and plutocrats," Walzer maintains that our most dangerous enemies right now are "people who defend inequality, hierarchy, and authoritarianism idealistically, with ideological fervor and organizational discipline." In perhaps his most controversial move, Walzer says that now "we need to be clear about our hostility to religious fundamentalism - in all its versions, but most important, right now, in the form of Islamic radicalism, because this is by far its most threatening form. Here we have idealistic hatred of everything the Western left stands for (or should stand for); here we have fanatical zeal, cruel intolerance, a cult of death, a passionate commitment to the subordination of women, vicious anti-Semitism, and a pervasive hostility to liberalism and democracy. And yet there are people on the left who insist that the dangers posed by this hatred are exaggerated (or even invented by rightwing politicians) or who make excuses for it, invoking cultural difference or imperialist oppression - as if our enemies were (secretly: it would have to be secret) advocates of multiculturalism and national liberation. "
By no means am I offering these principles as a litmus test for the Democratic Party or its progressive elements. But I do suggest that a decent, serious American left -- more precisely, those of us who want to see ourselves as part of such an American left -- need to be able to say why we agree or disagree with these principles. And, to the extent we achieve agreement at the level of principle, that only sets the stage for discussions about how to apply them in practice. IMHO, such discussions should not take the place of working to secure electoral majorities for as progressive a Democratic Party as possible. But we should ask more of ourselves than simply defeating Republicans.