The New Left in the United States was a social democratic
movement. It was
resolutely anti-Soviet, and when Eastern Europe and the USSR
fell, few in
the New Left opposed the destruction of the socialist systems.
The New Left
did not mourn or protest when the hundreds of millions in Eastern
Europe and
Central Asia lost their right to jobs, housing at reasonable and
legally
protected rents, free education through graduate school, health
care and
cultural enhancement. Most belittled any suggestion that the CIA
and certain
NGOs such as the National Endowment for Democracy or the Open
Society Fund
had actively participated in the annihilation of socialism. These
people
felt that the Western determination to destroy the USSR since
1917 was
barely connected to the fall of the USSR. For them, socialism
failed of its
own accord, because it was flawed.
Comment: A Fragment on Democracy
In the main I felt the same way concerning the so-called New Left and the Young Communist Movement during the early 1970s, 1980s and into the 1990s. By the mid 1990s my personal point of view manifest a radical shift in understanding. Today. I believe that characterizing the New Left in America, as Social Democratic is historical inaccurate because ones framework is the political trends that emerged within "European Continental Politics" in relationship to the various political trends in Russia, gathered together under the name "Bolshevism."
A revolutionary movement in any society cannot exist outside the framework of a revolutionary crisis. A fish cannot exist outside of water. That is to say the fish expires and cease existence as an organic life form.
Most students of American history - in its social features, ideological forms and underlying ceaseless economic transformations, generally associate the New Left emergence with the split in the old SDS (Students for a Democratic Society). On what basis was this movement for a democratic society generated? What in fact is democracy? We could debate what democracy is for a lifetime and not get one step closer to understanding American history and economic development in our country. Adding the slogan "workers control" and "bottom-up" leadership to the discussion simply speaks of ones ideological bent. One can of course - not, escape ideology because it is the framework in which people think things out and in the last instance operates within the materiality of social relations.
As American's generational, what is democracy in our specific evolution? Democracy is the rule of the people and rest upon the ability of the people to make choices freely. That, in turn demands independence. Independence rests upon a person secure access and control of the necessaries of life. If I depend upon someone else for my food, shelter and clothing, then I am a person's slave. I am compelled to do that person's bidding no matter how subtle the command may be or how it is expanded in the ideological sphere.
The concept of Jeffersonian democracy rests upon this understanding. Hence, the demand for independence provided by the small family farm. Our political revolutions did not achieve Jeffersonian democracy in 1776 or in the aftermath of the Civil War - 1865, owing to the political defeat of industrial capital (that is correct: industrial capital) and its transformation and emergence as financial-industrial capital, which its dominated the former slave holding South.
This issue of democracy and American development is complex and has been a field of study for generations of scholars. I am not a historian or scholar by any stretches but rather has studied a little theoretical Marxism. That is to say that the axis on which Marx approach to social life is riveted is the material power of the productive forces or the state of development of the mode of production. This implies - actually demands, that one frame the striving for democracy - the rule of the people, within the actual state of development of the mode of production as its fundamental technology and instruments are applied in daily life.
In the main, up until the Civil War - generally speaking, the whole of the American economy - North and South, was based on the expenditure of slave labor. The North was dependent upon slavery and the manufacturing that resulted from it. Northern industrial development began by supplying the manufacturing and foodstuff the South required. Everything America ever professed itself to stand for was horribly disfigured by the existence of slavery. This most certainly includes its deep democratic striving. A disfigured democratic striving means the forms of democracy are disfigured not the striving.
Now the revolution of 1776 ushered in a whole epoch of national liberation or national democratic revolutions that reached its peak almost 200 years later during the era of colonial revolts between the late 1940s and the 1970s. It is for very real material reasons that our Constitution - its vision, inspires not just the American peoples but people throughout the world. "All . . . are created equal . . . with the pursuit . . . life . . . liberty and the pursuit of happiness." No one in their right (or left) mind can seriously oppose this vision.
The rule of the people in the last instance is realizable - as it evolves through its various quantitative and qualitative stages and states of being, inexplicably fused with the state of development of the material power of the productive forces and the resultant political forms and institutions that arise based on this underlying compulsion.
The rule of the people - this specific democratic vision of society and people, suffered catastrophic defeat in the aftermath of the Civil War. The interest of Yankee imperialism - finance capital, lay in absorbing the South as it was, stripped of the slave power as national political rulers but maintaining the slavery, plantation system and its severe exploitation of labor. This political and economic reality prescribed the limits of democracy.
For those a little familiar with the history of the Soviet Union, a key component in the Marxist planning of the industrialization of the Union was the mechanization of agriculture. To carry out this mechanization an industrial infrastructure must exist to make the machines that make the machines. A class cannot be emancipated until machines emancipate its human labor. The framework for measuring the historical boundary of democracy is riveted to the degree of emancipation of labor power. Not labor power being "free" to dispose of itself on the market - but being emancipated as something to be brought and sold. If you are compelled to sell your labor power for existence you most certainly are not free, because the person you sell it to has more power and freedom than you.
The mechanization of America's agriculture in the post Second Imperial World War era leaped forward, emancipating the class of sharecroppers that was created after the Civil War with the defeat of Jeffersonian democracy. Kicked out of their economic class by machines that replaced their human labor, they became industrial proletarians - more than less, and proletarians absolutely.
Lets look at the aftermath of the Civil War by what did not happen.
Hell, if industrial capital perse had its wishes during this period of time, Secretary of War Stanton and this group of Red Republicans would have implemented his proposal for "forty acres and a mule" called for by Jeffersonian democracy and provided the industrial implements of the family farm. America would still be a capitalist country but a different political/ideological entity in is specific expression of democracy.
I do not take a position that an economic fact equals a political reality. I do take a position that the defeat of reconstruction meant that the vision of 1776 - Jeffersonian democracy, and the reason for the Civil War - breaking the rule of the slave oligarchy and ending slavery, had been met and attained in varying degrees but halted and overthrown by the emergence of financial-industrial capital. Further, the new vision of democracy generated by the Civil War called for a vision of democracy that embraced freedom and equality for all and this meant the individual.
In other words today the vision that is being expressed is the one articulated in the Civil War called freedom and democracy or what one today would call "mass democracy" or democracy for every individual regardless of his or her station in life, or race, creed, color or sex. The Civil War could not achieve the real basis of this vision because freedom for any class means being kicked out of the economic relationship by which you are defining the word class.
The slave was emancipated as chattel - a human being owned by another human, but not kicked out of his laboring position in the system of production or his labor was not replaced by another energy source. How would the cotton get picked? Thus, roughly 5 million former slaves - who were prevented by the politics of who controls the technology in society, ended up condemning 6 million "free whites" to the same indignities of sharecropping, because there was nothing to replace their labor.
People immigrated to America to work in the factories - not to pick cotton!
The mechanization of agriculture in America, the liberation of the sharecropper and the resultant social reform movement called the Civil Rights Movement set the political environment for the growth of the student movement and the emergence of the Students for a Democratic Society - who organizational roots were in the old League for Industrial Democracy, and what would evolve into the New Left.
The New Left was not a revolutionary movement but a reform movement based on real transitions taking place in the context of changes in the mode of production. All reform movements contain revolutionary aspects in as much as the norm is being challenged and a revolutionary vision emerges amongst a section of leaders and thinkers.
Condemning the New Left for not grasping the significance of
"the hundreds of millions in Eastern
Europe and Central Asia (who) lost their right to jobs, housing at reasonable and
legally protected rents, free education through graduate school, health
care and cultural enhancement."
Is all right - I guess, but the New Left of the 1970s had disintegrated by the time of the collapse of Soviet Power. Further, the reform movements in America have to be understood as reform movements and not revolutionary movements or assertions. Then the ideological assertions that express the striving of the individual - as they live out their lives as a member of a social class in the most imperial of all countries, must be understood as it evolved historically.
The only way Americans can really support the striving of the world's people and pay homage to their own history is to fight for revolutionary direction in our own country. Justice, Freedom and Equality are class concepts birthed in the good ole US of A. The rule of the people is going to involve how the robot - advanced robotics, computerized and digitalized processes, are put to use for the people.
Now, this matter of George Soros is a different story. He is in fact an imperial wizard of the speculative brand.
By the way this is an excellent article.
Melvin P.
(Time to deal Black Jack again)
