In a time of massive economic crisis, in the midst of a lost decade for American workers, the great rallying cries of the progressive Left have failed to produce any meaningful reform of or restraint on capitalism. It's true that progressives of all stripes rallied against the disgusting abuses of the Bush administration. But after his eight years, is it just me, or does it seem like the fire has gone out?
I wonder if the problem is that the progressive movement in America generally lacks a cohesive vision for the future? An ideology worth fighting tooth and nail over? Proposals that translate into serious improvement in the lives of working families? Maybe it's time to shed "progressivism" and more forcefully adopt the socialist critique of modern transnational capitalism?
The Tea Party is on the march. While many on the Left would like to downplay the strength of this movement, and take comfort in the fact that it's too conservative, too white, too libertarian, or too silly to be taken seriously, the movement nevertheless has vision. It has energy. It has fire. It can swing elections, and provide a narrative to capture the imagination of Republican voters and politicians who were recently so demoralized and hapless in the waning hours of the George W. Bush administration. The Tea Party, in other words, taps into legitimate public anger over terrible economic performance and declining living standards, with a simple message: the Government is your enemy.
The refrain from the Democratic Establishment has been less than forceful: maybe the Government can sort of be your friend, if it doesn't do too much. As to why things are so very bad for so many Americans, it has nothing to do with globalization or free trade or transnational capitalism or outsourcing, but simply because there have been too many tax cuts for the rich. If we raise taxes a little bit on the rich and provide some super-extended unemployment benefits / new lending to small businesses, things will be fine. Oh, and while we're at it, we need to set up a complicated scheme to regulate carbon dioxide, mandate private health insurance, and recapitalize the banks. But eventually things will get better.
Which message is more populist? Simpler to understand? Which proposes a simpler, more direct solution to workers' problems? The Establishment Democratic Party, torn between corporations, small business interests, labor, environmentalists, feminists, and true progressives, can propose little in the way of definite action. It can at best critique some of the unfortunate aspects of capitalism and promise some tweak in tax policy to address it. The great rallying cry of today's Democratic Party is that "all our problems can be solved with the right tax credits." For the rest, a shuffling of the alphabet soup of federal agencies will more effectively tame the beast that is wild capitalism left to run amok with other peoples' money (which is all that banks are).
There was a time when the Left was radical, feared. Now the Right, with its grand unified vision of corporate free capitalism and theological politics is radical, strong. It's true they have the money... but it's always been so. What's missing from the Left, I think, is the unifying vision of Marxism: democratic socialism.
What are we fighting for? Tweaks around the edges of a flawed capitalist system? Even if we win such changes, the growing influence of corporate money will lobby and lawyer such changes to death over time. Nothing can "stick" where your opponents have all the time and money in the world to undo those changes. They'll always have more access and power in a representative democracy that allows any role at all for private money. And even if it was banned from the process, it could still be used to buy ads, bully workers seeking to organize, or to pay off former government workers to set up a revolving door between Washington and corporate lobbying efforts.
The solution, in my humble opinion, is to challenge the Enemy on its own terms. When the Right attacks the Government and defends corporate capitalism, what they're really doing is attacking democracy and defending economic tyranny. On the Left, it seems to me the most grand, unified ideal we can raise in response is the idea that democracy shouldn't end at the workplace doors. Any lesser, more moderate message will only further empower the Right, like the abandonment of single payer at the outset of the health care reform debate helped kill the public option. An idea should be met with its most logical counterargument, and socialism, it seems to me, has never been a more necessary rallying cry. Instead of a progressive caucus, a Social Democracy caucus could accomplish far more with its vision for politics in America.