Part Two: What’s The Matter With The Left?
Okay, whether or not my analysis is correct of the economic situation is correct, the Liberal Left failed dramatically the last election...when it should have done very well indeed. Why?
Alas, there are many, many things wrong with us as a social movement. But, I think, we failed chiefly because the Liberal Left had become a private club closed to new members, because it had embraced an ideology compatible with large corporations but not people, because it had divided itself into powerless grouplets based on gender and identity politics, because it failed to reach out to the young (or even taken them seriously), and, most of all, because it lacks a vision and a goal.
Let me take these one at time.
1) Elitism and a closed shop within the Democratic party and other liberal institutions
Bluntly, the Democratic party, and particularly the DNC, along with more of the rest of the Liberal Establishment than is healthy, has become a private to which ordinary mortals are simply not admitted. If you’re not already an insider, and preferably one with a trust fund, then you are going to be shown the door.
I can testify to this personally. In the early 1980s and then again in the 2000s, I attempted to get involved with both the Democratic party and various liberal organization, and even sent a few resumes to liberal think tanks. At the think thanks, I wasn’t just rejected, I was laughed out of offices. Maybe you could say I was simply unqualified for the jobs (though I knew that at least one of them later went to a lesser skilled individual who had little experience, but who did have connections). But you can’t say about the Democratic party when I wanted to volunteer my services during one election in the late 1990s. All I wanted was to hold a sign on a street corner or pass out leaflets. Yet, my offer was refused ...and not too politely.
It left me rather peeved, I must confess. But imagine how much worse are the feelings of people like Bernie Sanders and others who tried to force the DNC outside its parochial insularity in 2016. It must be particularly galling given that if Sanders had been the candidate, he would have almost certainly beaten Trump to the ground.
2) An ideology of managerial-corporatism
What is it that Democratic party, or at least its leadership, genuinely believes? That’s kind of hard to say. Fifty years ago, it was the party of the genuine 1960s-style liberation. Before that, it was the New Deal.
Now? Well, at least judging from the DNC and its proxies, it is a party of global neoliberalism which values the transnational corporation as the only valid form of economic enterprise. Further, it sees white-collar professionals as the only voter worth courting—doctors, lawyers, some engineers and other technical professionals, not University professors, and most of all, business managers, the MBAs who run the big corporations.
Everyone else? They are irrelevant. Service industry workers, waiters, repairmen, artists, intellectuals...everyone, dropped like a live grenade. And as for the industrial worker...well, as Thomas Frank pointed out in his scathing book, Listen Liberal, the Democratic party long ago abandoned them without a backward glance. Maybe, in a postindustrial age, there was no alternative. But, still, it could have made room in itself for the growing ranks of un- and underemployed. That it did not do so was a serious mistake, as we know from the election of Trump.
3) Identity Politics
Let us face it, the Liberal Left has spent the last forty years sub-dividing itself ad infinitum. We are no longer a united movement. We are a collection of squabbling grouplets based on gender, race, class, or whatever, none supporting the other, and each antagonistic to the all the rest.
Consider: as I write this there is a well-intentioned movement drifting about the web and the world in which Liberals and other members of the Left are wearing safety pins in their clothing as a sign of resistance and as a signal to individuals who may be threatened in the New World Order that we are “safe.”
And, already...already!...there are articles articles and letters appearing in the press saying that this is foolish and elitist and merely the manifestation of white privilege.
One wonders, are the authors of such pieces actively in the pay of the Right, or merely idiots?
Will wearing safety pins in your clothing do any good? Maybe. Maybe not. But it is harmless. And it could be an important indicator of group (Liberal) identity.
So why, in the name of all that’s holy, are you making it another reason to dis-unite? To alienate potential friends and allies, and to thus passive assist our joint enemies?
Understand me. There is nothing wrong with identifying oneself as a member of a unique and possibly oppressed group and working to better that group’s standing. Indeed, it has done very good things over the last few decades.
That said, we must keep in mind that when it is carried to extremes, it is dangerous. Issue sof race, religion, gender...all the markers of group identity have split us apart. We’ve divided and divided and divided into smaller, ever purer, ever more powerless micro-factions.
We have to overcome this. The grim reality is that we are going to have to put aside our differences (no matter how major those differences may be, and how bitter we may be about them) if the left is to have any chance of simple survival...not to mention undoing the damage that Trump will do over the next four to eight years. If we continue to play at “I’m more oppressed than thou,” then we will continue to useless to the world and to history.
As an aside, I have written more about the dangers of identity politics, and particularly in regards to Feminism (which, I fear, has done an awful lot of damage in this regard) elsewhere in this document — specifically here, "Identity and Gender Politics 1," and here, "Identity and Gender Politics 2." (But, also, be certain to check out "Identity and Gender Politics 3: Why The Left Shouldn't Bend Over Backwards For White Males (or other Trump supporters)."
6) Failure to seek the young
Further, and perhaps uniquely deadly, the established Liberal Left has failed to consider the young. Millennials and others have been totally left out of the Establishment’s considerations.
It says much about the failure of the Democratic Party’s failure that its grandees explained, for example, the supporters of Bernie Sanders are being merely white male sexists... “Bernie Bros” ...rather than as seriously threatened young men and women seeking some way, any way, of advancing their interests in a world which has no interest in them.
7) Lack of a Message and a Goal
Finally, I am convinced that the Liberal Left, and particularly as it was made manifest by the Democratic Party in the last election, no longer has anything to say to anyone. What I mean by that is that we lack a stirring issue, and a view of a future society, with which we can motivate the voters.
Bluntly, it seems to me that in the 2016 election, the Democrats were the party of Same Shit, Different Day. When people asked if all there was to life was increasingly long hours... spent working at increasingly boring things...for ever diminishing wages...all of which would end with death and/or being replaced by a robot...the DNC replied, why yes, That’s right. And that’s just the way it is. So, suck it up.
That is not the way to gain support. It is the way to gain enemies.
Alas, there are many, many things wrong with us as a social movement. But, I think, we failed chiefly because the Liberal Left had become a private club closed to new members, because it had embraced an ideology compatible with large corporations but not people, because it had divided itself into powerless grouplets based on gender and identity politics, because it failed to reach out to the young (or even taken them seriously), and, most of all, because it lacks a vision and a goal.
Let me take these one at time.
1) Elitism and a closed shop within the Democratic party and other liberal institutions
Bluntly, the Democratic party, and particularly the DNC, along with more of the rest of the Liberal Establishment than is healthy, has become a private to which ordinary mortals are simply not admitted. If you’re not already an insider, and preferably one with a trust fund, then you are going to be shown the door.
I can testify to this personally. In the early 1980s and then again in the 2000s, I attempted to get involved with both the Democratic party and various liberal organization, and even sent a few resumes to liberal think tanks. At the think thanks, I wasn’t just rejected, I was laughed out of offices. Maybe you could say I was simply unqualified for the jobs (though I knew that at least one of them later went to a lesser skilled individual who had little experience, but who did have connections). But you can’t say about the Democratic party when I wanted to volunteer my services during one election in the late 1990s. All I wanted was to hold a sign on a street corner or pass out leaflets. Yet, my offer was refused ...and not too politely.
It left me rather peeved, I must confess. But imagine how much worse are the feelings of people like Bernie Sanders and others who tried to force the DNC outside its parochial insularity in 2016. It must be particularly galling given that if Sanders had been the candidate, he would have almost certainly beaten Trump to the ground.
2) An ideology of managerial-corporatism
What is it that Democratic party, or at least its leadership, genuinely believes? That’s kind of hard to say. Fifty years ago, it was the party of the genuine 1960s-style liberation. Before that, it was the New Deal.
Now? Well, at least judging from the DNC and its proxies, it is a party of global neoliberalism which values the transnational corporation as the only valid form of economic enterprise. Further, it sees white-collar professionals as the only voter worth courting—doctors, lawyers, some engineers and other technical professionals, not University professors, and most of all, business managers, the MBAs who run the big corporations.
Everyone else? They are irrelevant. Service industry workers, waiters, repairmen, artists, intellectuals...everyone, dropped like a live grenade. And as for the industrial worker...well, as Thomas Frank pointed out in his scathing book, Listen Liberal, the Democratic party long ago abandoned them without a backward glance. Maybe, in a postindustrial age, there was no alternative. But, still, it could have made room in itself for the growing ranks of un- and underemployed. That it did not do so was a serious mistake, as we know from the election of Trump.
3) Identity Politics
Let us face it, the Liberal Left has spent the last forty years sub-dividing itself ad infinitum. We are no longer a united movement. We are a collection of squabbling grouplets based on gender, race, class, or whatever, none supporting the other, and each antagonistic to the all the rest.
Consider: as I write this there is a well-intentioned movement drifting about the web and the world in which Liberals and other members of the Left are wearing safety pins in their clothing as a sign of resistance and as a signal to individuals who may be threatened in the New World Order that we are “safe.”
And, already...already!...there are articles articles and letters appearing in the press saying that this is foolish and elitist and merely the manifestation of white privilege.
One wonders, are the authors of such pieces actively in the pay of the Right, or merely idiots?
Will wearing safety pins in your clothing do any good? Maybe. Maybe not. But it is harmless. And it could be an important indicator of group (Liberal) identity.
So why, in the name of all that’s holy, are you making it another reason to dis-unite? To alienate potential friends and allies, and to thus passive assist our joint enemies?
Understand me. There is nothing wrong with identifying oneself as a member of a unique and possibly oppressed group and working to better that group’s standing. Indeed, it has done very good things over the last few decades.
That said, we must keep in mind that when it is carried to extremes, it is dangerous. Issue sof race, religion, gender...all the markers of group identity have split us apart. We’ve divided and divided and divided into smaller, ever purer, ever more powerless micro-factions.
We have to overcome this. The grim reality is that we are going to have to put aside our differences (no matter how major those differences may be, and how bitter we may be about them) if the left is to have any chance of simple survival...not to mention undoing the damage that Trump will do over the next four to eight years. If we continue to play at “I’m more oppressed than thou,” then we will continue to useless to the world and to history.
As an aside, I have written more about the dangers of identity politics, and particularly in regards to Feminism (which, I fear, has done an awful lot of damage in this regard) elsewhere in this document — specifically here, "Identity and Gender Politics 1," and here, "Identity and Gender Politics 2." (But, also, be certain to check out "Identity and Gender Politics 3: Why The Left Shouldn't Bend Over Backwards For White Males (or other Trump supporters)."
6) Failure to seek the young
Further, and perhaps uniquely deadly, the established Liberal Left has failed to consider the young. Millennials and others have been totally left out of the Establishment’s considerations.
It says much about the failure of the Democratic Party’s failure that its grandees explained, for example, the supporters of Bernie Sanders are being merely white male sexists... “Bernie Bros” ...rather than as seriously threatened young men and women seeking some way, any way, of advancing their interests in a world which has no interest in them.
7) Lack of a Message and a Goal
Finally, I am convinced that the Liberal Left, and particularly as it was made manifest by the Democratic Party in the last election, no longer has anything to say to anyone. What I mean by that is that we lack a stirring issue, and a view of a future society, with which we can motivate the voters.
Bluntly, it seems to me that in the 2016 election, the Democrats were the party of Same Shit, Different Day. When people asked if all there was to life was increasingly long hours... spent working at increasingly boring things...for ever diminishing wages...all of which would end with death and/or being replaced by a robot...the DNC replied, why yes, That’s right. And that’s just the way it is. So, suck it up.
That is not the way to gain support. It is the way to gain enemies.
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