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Some more or less cosmic thoughts:
Mike Meeropol here responds to Louis Proyect's research essentially
illustrating how the Dem Party honchos need not be responsive to public
outcry, even unfavorable electoral outcomes, aside from entertaining
measures culminating in identitarian, cosmetic or cultural change which
might be convenient or not unduly disruptive to capital, and are not
going to permit any reform of the party, any meaningful reform in the
direction of public need; pointing to how they can live with defeat at
the polls because whatever, they're doing what their keepers want them
to do, they're just doing their job, and they'll be rewarded accordingly.
What are some of the components of this historical but nonetheless
increasingly blatant corruption? They're certainly OK with repression,
that's part of their shtick. They're OK with corporate welfare and
perks, subsidy, tax reduction, amortization and depreciation allowances
and givebacks and reciprocal heaping emoluments at taxpayer expense.
They're reaping enormous bribes in the form of campaign contributions on
the well-worn sluice ramps of patronage, and they're profiting
enormously whether they remain in or out of office. They have lavish
prospects for life following long careers in protected sinecures, after
their incumbencies functioning as richly rewarded lobbyists with a
network and pipeline to the Congress and intimate experience, in and
through legislative committees and staff liaison, with the vast
government bureaucratic maize, as transnational corporate board members
and management functionaries, as government policy wonks in well-funded
corporate think tanks or positions in "higher education," or as members
of commissions and administrative posts.
As Howie Klein has said, and it hardly needs saying I guess, at least
two thirds of Democrats successful in the midterms - that's at least -
are Blue Dog or New Dem right wing ideologues, quite content to make
their beds in a Trump world. The fortunes of politicians rise or fall -
patronage and government funds distribution to their districts,
committee assignments, junkets, inside information on profitable
investment, leadership roles, power - with how well they perform as
functionaries, personifications of capital, in the legislative and
administrative instruments of social control guided by the interests of
capital expansion. So any progressive reform or change within the
system? Fageddit.
This is not in the least reductive reasoning; it's amply verified. It's
come as a realization all too slowly for good use in my case. It's also
becoming more obvious that presidents or prime ministers, cabinet
members, legislatures, judicial systems, bureaucracies, are increasingly
ineffectual as even nominally independent bodies or personages in
forming policy in a context of increasing disparities of wealth, power,
concentration, centralization, and the over all need for concerted
responsiveness to the requirement of capital profitability. Although
powerful transnational capital has no apparent vision of how to sustain
profitability either, that's the most vulnerable Achilles heel, but they
certainly call the shots.
Mike here hews to what he sees as central to our longer-term interests,
the means of opposition to the palpably plain coming crunch of
authoritarian rule.
With both hands tied behind our backs unless resistance is global?
Because capital certainly is global, becoming more so, increasingly free
to slosh around everywhere mindless of larger consequences in search of
profitable returns and competition for market share, while lowering
costs through AI, automation, offshoring and wasteful consumption of
dwindling planetary resources and survivable climate. Through
restrictive labor legislation, increased repressive militarization of
domestic and global enforcement, immigration control, etc. compelling
global labor to work where they're cheapest and of most advantage to
capital. While keeping the working class of the world off balance,
disorganized, spatially separated, fractious and divided. And capital
remaining increasingly free to manipulate, control, smash or ignore
governments of smaller nation-states, whose sovereignty is diminishing
exponentially in the face of control by treaty law based on assumptions
of "comparative advantage" and capital-directed bodies of international
finance and regulation. Or arms supply to those more compliant, exchange
restrictions and tariffs, proxy wars or outright invasion for those who
are not.
So simply put, and as Mike and anyone else among us realizes well, we
kick it over or we get kicked over. But of course, nothing about it is
simple, possibly other than frustration boiling over with sufficient
intensity, mass and universality, in directions that serve rather than
obscure our needs and interests. I am one who thinks that's happening.
Just a reminder. What's our over all theory of movement and change?
Analysis - whazdat, whyzdat, whozdat, wheresdat - comes first, in
combination with and informing theoretical conclusions, then policy
based on theoretical foundations. But if the theory is wrong, policy and
its implementation are wrong too, more often than not disastrously.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mike Meeropol wrote
Sorry to once again restate my "the fascists are coming" wolf-cry ---
but of course I really do believe it.
The Democratic Party got a HIGHER margin over the Republicans than the
Republicans did over the Dems in the 2018 midterms -- that is a WAVE of
voters no matter how much it was blunted by the Senate map and
gerrymandering --
The leadership can be pushed BACK towards a New Deal style set of
policies --- but just as important -- they can be dragged kicking and
screaming into an anti-Trump coalition.
There's a great line from the song "Deliver the Goods" (probably written
by Woody Guthrie) about World War II
"Now me and my boss, we never did agree
If a thing helped him, then it didn't help me!
But when a burglar tries to bust in to your house
You stop fighting with the Landlord and throw him out!"
The Soviet Union united with the United States to fight Hitler after
Pearl Harbor --- the anti-imperialist anti-war activists were in
coalition with Democrats -- even "war criminals for peace" --- in the
early 1970s as Congress gave the coup de grace to Nixon and Ford's hope
to keep propping up "South Vietnam" ---
I think we just guarantee our irrelevance if we keep reminding ourselves
how rotten the Dems are ...
that's not where the people of the resistance are ---
Mike
---
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