Before we assume that the environmentalists present a viable arena, we
should be aware that, at least in the leadership, they have been
acquainted with socialism and have found it distasteful. The following
is from Sam Smith, local DC curmudgeon, national Green Party figure, and
(I had thought) one of the more important local progressive naysayers.
I am forwarding this piece because it is so reprehensible: it says a lot
of what is wrong with Smith and the Greens.
Examples --
"a stolid, unyielding, suspicious, passive-aggressive leftist and
liberal establishment right in the middle of the path leading to a new
America -- sitting, as Disraeli once said of the opposition bench, like
a range of exhausted volcanoes.
"an unappealing blend of Marx and tofu.
"The very idea of left vs. right is challenged by green thought as is
the
need to choose, say, between capitalism and socialism.
"If the problem were only the major media, it would be bad enough. But
you find many of these issues only rarely treated in Mother Jones or The
Nation, either. After all, who has time to discuss alternative economics
when you have a book on the Abraham Lincoln Brigade to review? Or
lengthy defenses of Noam Chomsky for his views over the years on
Cambodia?
"It has collaborated with, defended, and covered up for, the most
reactionary and anti-democratic president of modern history, one who in
less than two terms has laid waste to constitutional protections,
un-raveled decades of liberal and left reforms, and created a culture of
immune corruption never before seen in Washington.
"The president has taken the country deep into places from which it will
be hard to return and the left, sadly, has helped him do it. The result
has been major damage to our democracy, our liberties, our economy, our
environment, and even to our local, state, and national sovereignty. It
has been an assault on everything the liberal/left claims to honor.
"The new politics is green, it is populist, it is progressive, and it is
based the primacy of communities"
To Sam Smith and his Greens, Chomsky is the same as Clinton and The
Nation is the same as the Washington Post. Moreover, Chomsky and The
Nation are responsible for the Clinton debacle. Where was Sam Smith and
the Greens? Why didn't THEY stop Clinton?
In this reading, the Green goal is Communitarianism, harking back to a
movement consisting, among others, of Brook Farm, the Shakers, and
various socialist groupings. Founded on love, hope, charity, and
peace, Communitarianism sadly played itself out in the 19th century. In
its heyday, and hopefully now, it was a movement that would have found
little place for Sam and his shabby Green sectarianism.
Dave
----------
From: McLarty, Scott T.[SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Tuesday, December 30, 1997 1:15 PM
To:
Subject: Excellent reading for your holiday pleasure
Hey, boys 'n' girls
Read Sam Smith's essay below. It's one of the best assessments of
leftism, and of the position and potential of the Greens, that I've seen
for a long time.
It's the kind of stuff you won't find in The Nation or The Village Voice
or Z Magazine or Mother Jones.
(Thanks, Sam, for allowing me to circulate it.... I included your usual
promotional stuff at the bottom.)
Scott
DC Greens
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Waiting for Lefties: How liberals and the left hold up change
>From The Progressive Review
No. 352, December 1997
(Slightly shortened to make the Pen-l 50KB limit.)
There are things happening elsewhere in the world that you don't hear
much about in America. Like polls finding the Green Party to be the
third most popular party in Germany. Or the news that one of Brazil's 26
state governors is a Green. Or that the French environmental minister is
one also. Or that the Green Party candidate for mayor of Stuttgart came
in second with 40% and exit polls showed him the most popular candidate
among all voters under 50. Or that there are now Green parties in over
70 countries, all without any central organization or even that much
collaboration.
There are some good reasons why it's hard to find out about such things
in America, such as the disinterest of the media in matters foreign and
its love of the conspiracy for the restraint of political trade known as
the two-party system. The media also hates complexity, especially any
that muddies up its essential message to America, namely that there are
winners and losers in life and trust us to tell you which are which.
The centrist establishment isn't going to help you learn about a new
politics either, because its power depends in no small part upon
maintaining the absurd myth that it will come up with every new idea
worth discussing. Meanwhile, the right, which has conned the rest of
the establishment -- from media to White House -- into adopting its
jargon, premises, and economics, has little interest in anything that
might disturb its marvelous scam.
But there is another problem. Those working to build a new politics
have repeatedly run up against an obstacle that is unwanted,
counter-intuitive and even a bit embarrassing -- yet clearly in the way.
By the rules of logic and soul, this obstacle shouldn't exist, yet there
it is: a stolid, unyielding, suspicious, passive-aggressive leftist and
liberal establishment right in the middle of the path leading to a new
America -- sitting, as Disraeli once said of the opposition bench, like
a range of exhausted volcanoes.
If the old left and liberals were merely slow to react, a collegial
spirit might compel one not to complain or even seem to notice. But the
traditional left and liberal establishment is far more than merely
tardy; in its resistance to anything other than its own archaic rhetoric
and agendas, it has become a true impediment to change --
unintentionally and ironically a conservative force in society that
parodies its own antecedents.
Further, in the mind of the media and the public, this elite occupies
under false pretenses the tiny but valuable space that has been reserved
for the discussion of anything new.
....
To be sure, in the case of the American green movement the left did try
another approach. In the 1980s, it co-opted the movement and
successfully kept those not of its own ilk at bay. This helps to explain
why today the German greens are happily throwing their weight around
while American greens are still struggling to get on the playing field.
There are, of course, other important factors -- among them the lack of
proportional representation in the US -- but the slow development of
American green politics has been in no small part due to the fact that
the green flag was tightly held by sectarian left greens for the better
part of a decade.
The result was a movement that seemed to have an unlisted number; to
join the revolution you had to know somebody. Some of us who saw
ourselves as green were turned off by what appeared to be an awkward
retrofitting of green ideas into standard left format and rhetoric -- an
unappealing blend of Marx and tofu. So we just stayed away. Besides, I
would sometimes argue that those of us who formed the DC Statehood Party
in 1971 really created the world's first Green party -- we just hadn't
picked the right name.
....
Control by the left greens was not the only problem the green movement
faced. For example, during this entire period the green idea was being
largely ignored by the left and liberal elites. Given the substantial
academic, foundation, think tank and media redoubts of these elites,
this was a critical omission. In fact, that green politics exists here
at all owes far more to the Internet then to liberal and left America.
The mind of the Left
While the Greens provide the most structured form of transformational
politics in America today, they are far from alone. All over the
country, experimenters, thinkers, and organizations are giving shape to
new ideas growing out of ingenuity, common sense and simple decency. By
themselves these ideas do not owe allegiance to any particular paradigm,
but together they represent a typically American and remarkably hopeful
response to the decadence, corruption and inertia of our country's
politics. Together they help write the rough draft of a new There's one
more thing they have in common: rarely do their ideas come from those
liberal and left sources whose most striking characteristic has been a
tireless capacity for reiteration.
Name one notion from the left approaching the draw, say, of those
contained in the GOP's successfully misnamed "contract with America."
Admittedly good ideas are harder to come up with than bad ones, but
there once was a time when ideas and liberalism were virtually
synonymous. Today there are still plenty of new ideas in America but the
left is one of the last places to find them.
How did imagination and the left drift apart? Why do those with ideas
find such little enthusiasm on the left? Why do old liberals give the
new politics such a cold shoulder?
Some of the answer can be found, I believe, in certain habits and
inclinations of leftist thought. Among them are these:
* A preference for the bipolar: Part of the tension between left and
green politics is that the former is prone to polarities while the
latter favors concepts of holism, synthesis, and ecological connection.
The very idea of left vs. right is challenged by green thought as is the
need to choose, say, between capitalism and socialism. Many non-green
practitioners of new politics, including progressive populists,
ecologists, and community activists simply find such divisions
irrelevant, boring, or even destructive.
Imagine, for example, a traditional left or liberal journal publishing
an article like the one Jim Cullen wrote recently for the Progressive
Populist:
<<When it comes to issues, it's hard to tell the Reformers from
progressive populists. Pat Choate . . . spoke to the convention of a
new generation of robber barons . . . moving jobs overseas while the
basic infrastructure of the United States is wearing out faster than it
is being replace. One-third of Americans lack access to basic health
care and education. . . . Not all the Reform Party positions are
compatible with progressive populism. But progressive populists ought to
work with the Reformers on common issues such as opening the ballot to
alternative parties, campaign finance reform, fair trade laws and
encouraging small farmers, small businesses and American
manufacturing.>>
To the traditional liberal or leftist, talk of such a coalition is
heresy. And the idea that a good economy might include not only a
working class but places for it to work is also frequently absent from
a left agenda in which the vision of what a decent economic society
might actually look like remains exceedingly vague. Who would run the
restaurants in utopia? The answer I am sometimes given -- locally owned
cooperatives -- is not reassuring to one not particularly enamored of
alfalfa sprouts and wheat germ.
There is a significant potential for a cross-over politics of the sort
suggested by Cullen. For example, conservative libertarians have been
miles ahead of the left and liberals on such issues as preserving
democracy and ending the war on drugs. And those involved in new
politics have discovered ways to discover and nourish such common
ground.
....
* Eurocentrism: The Ameri-can left and liberal leadership tends to be
heavily educated, which means, among other things, that it has profound
respect for the European provenance of ideas and action, but often
surprisingly little knowledge or appreciation of the intellectual
traditions of its own land. This is not to say that universities don't
teach such matters, only that there is a academic continental drift that
allows a student, say, to graduate in English from some our best schools
without ever having read a book by an American author.
Certainly American models, thinkers, ideas, and experiences are in
remarkably short supply in liberal and left discussion. The world being
described often becomes a strangely generic or unrooted one, devoid of
the passion of history and place and personal memory. This is one reason
the left does so poorly; it often give the impression that at best it
has no affection or understanding for America; at worse that it may
secretly dislike it. One of the rhetorical advantages of ecological or
populist politics, on the other hand, is that it never gets too far
away from the land, communities, and people it proposes to serve.
* Excessive intellectualism: Thought without action is the coitus
interruptus of the mind, which may be why the left produces so few
progeny. A politics so heavily grounded in intellectual considerations
as opposed to human experience, runs the constant risk of losing its
bearings. A wiser approach was espoused by Julius Nyerere who argued
that the true revolutionary acted as one of thought and thought as one
of action.
....
* Distrust of devolution: Thomas Jefferson said that people "by their
constitutions are naturally divided into two parties: 1. Those who fear
and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the
hands of the higher classes. 2. Those who identify themselves with the
people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most
honest and safe, although not the most wise, depository of the public
interests." There is little doubt as to which party many on the left
belong. Rhetoric notwithstanding, too often those leading liberal and
left America believe they were born to rule and act that way. In fact,
their profound self-assurance on this score helps to explain another
anomaly of liberals and leftists: the frequency with which you will find
them cavorting with those -- Bill Clinton is a name that springs to
mind -- whose politics should be an anathema. The reason is simply that
the blood of entitlement is thicker than that of ideology. What really
ties Washington together and unites it against the rest of the country
is not policy but a common understanding of the sort of person who
should be in charge.
....
Such habits and inclinations not only separate liberal and the left
leaders from numerous Americans, it makes them suspicious of, and
sometimes even hostile to, the new politics that has been taking root
around the country. One approach is elitist; the other populist. One
draws from European history and thought; the other is rooted in American
experience. One favors a centralized state and believes in the
beneficence of large bureaucracies; the other is skeptical of grand
institutions and keeps pulling decisions back towards the community. One
seeks confrontation; the other consensus. One is polar; the other
holistic. One is rational; the other spiritual.
The left media
Even such divisions, however, would not be insurmountable were it not
that so much of the discussion of them, for all practical purposes, is
controlled by a left and liberal media that prefers either to ignore the
existence of an alternative politics or to regard it as quaint and
peripheral at best and an unwise schismatic venture at worst.
The role of this media is enhanced by its role as the only progressive
voices credited by such major civic cuisinarts as the Washington Post,
New York Times, C-SPAN, PBS, and NPR. These latter institutions, while
far from liberal themselves, have a great following among liberals. An
incestuous intellectual closed loop develops in the left/liberal brain
-- from Brian Lamb to the New York Times to Diane Rehm and back again --
all without the need to broach a single truly troubling, radical or
profoundly human thought along the way.
In fact, what you get when a Republican appears on C-SPAN across the
table from a Democrat, (or even a Nation columnist paired with an
editor of the National Review) is not so much opposition as a carefully
controlled oscillation. The idea that such people are debating in any
meaningful sense is one more myth the media transmits, for nearly all
these talking heads are committed to rule by elite institutions and
individuals. Most have an astoundingly limited range of ideas for
dealing with current problems, have agreed as to which these are and
accept the terms under which they will be discussed. Such major trends
as the decline of American democracy and liberty, the deadly effects of
the drug war, and the inevitable consequences of current population
growth are rarely on the list.
....
If the problem were only the major media, it would be bad enough. But
you find many of these issues only rarely treated in Mother Jones or The
Nation, either. After all, who has time to discuss alternative economics
when you have a book on the Abraham Lincoln Brigade to review? Or
lengthy defenses of Noam Chomsky for his views over the years on
Cambodia? Or, in the case of the Village Voice, the penile pursuits,
proclivities, and pathologies of its male readers?
....
Charles Dickens once described Washington as a "city of magnificent
intentions." It might be similarly said that the left practices a
politics of magnificent intentions. The liberal/left race industry
illustrates this for in many ways it helps to perpetuate the very
problem it wants to eliminate. Thus we find:
* Liberal intellectuals discussing the myth of race as though it were
objective fact.
* Liberal "investigative" journalism brimming with ethnically or
sexually hostile quotes that parades as perceptive and sensitive
journalism.
* A lack of interest in practical solutions.
....
* Ethnic and sexual identity being considered an adequate substitute for
political, ethnic and sexual progress and power. Thus, if you dress
right, talk right, and have the right attitude -- if, that is, you are
left by logo -- who cares if you are also an attorney for the world's
fifth largest polluter or that there are still only a handful of women
and one black in the Senate?
* An assumption that multiculturalism is a vaccine against fascism and
other evils. But if Fortune 500 corporations can embrace diversity,
there is no reason the next dictator won't as well.
* Submersion of class issues in a great swamp of sexual and ethnic
debate leaving unasked basic questions such as: How different would
ethnic relations be if there were decent jobs for everyone?
The slighting of some of the largest ethnic groups in the nation
(German, Irish, Italian), the biggest religions (Catholic and Baptist)
and those white males with less than a college education who are at the
bottom of the economic progress pile.
....
The left at work
Even more problematic than the quality of contemporary liberal and left
thought is what happens when it is put into practice.
Liberal and left advocacy has become increasing dependent upon a culture
of lawyers, foundation grants and incremental-change artists. There is
nothing intrinsically wrong with such skills and sources as long as they
exercised by support staff. When they start to define the outer limits
of the movement, however, one no longer has a movement but rather just
another well-intentioned bureaucracy. A visiting Tanzanian scholar
shrewdly observed recently that this culture has resulted in non-profit
organizations dependent on a promise to the IRS of non-advocacy, on
government subsidy, and on the 'clientization' of victims rather than
their transformation into something else. This is hardly an aggressive
challenge to the status quo.
....
The only excuse the left and liberals can offer is: well, the
Republicans wouldn't have been worst. There is, in fact, little evidence
of this as Clinton has moved far to the right of both Reagan and Bush.
Further, if Bush had been president, the left might have even had the
courage to criticize the White House from time to time.
....
It gives me no pleasure to write of this. To those who regard it as
apostasy, it will probably do no good to mention that I was raised in
the shade of the New Deal and learned my ways from some of the best
liberals and leftists of the times. I believe I remain close to the
spirit of these men and women by being not afraid of my country, my
fellow citizens, of freedom, imagination, experimentation, and variety.
Of course, those times were different. Then there was a connection
between leftist-liberal thought and what people wanted, what the country
needed, and what the human soul demanded. That tradition has been
reconstituted into a cold, brittle replica of what was once warm and
real.
That warmth and reality will not be revived by Democratic summer
soldiers playing at reform for the duration of the presidential
primaries and then turning their backs on it. We tried that with Jesse
Jackson. He got a job for Ron Brown; we got nothing.
....
The new politics is green, it is populist, it is progressive, and it is
based the primacy of communities, the health of the planet and the human
spirit. It is politics with a soul instead of a theory. And if the
liberal-left doesn't understand it yet, doesn't like it yet, doesn't
want it yet -- well, then, they'll just have to catch up later. We've
waited on them long enough. -- Sam Smith
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
PROGRESSIVE REVIEW
WASHINGTON'S MOST UNOFFICIAL SOURCE
A service of the Progressive Review: 1739 Conn. Ave. NW Washington DC
20009
202-232-5544 Fax: 202-234-6222 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Editor: Sam
Smith.
For a free trial subscription to our hard copy edition and e-mail
updates send us your postal address with zip code(Sorry, foreign
addresses will
receive e-mail edition only.
Copyright 1997, The Progressive Review. Matter not independently
copyrighted may be reprinted provided you pay TPR your normal reprint
fees, if any, and give proper credit.
application/ms-tnef
