Regular readers will know that I have argued the number one priority for the Democratic Party post-election has become an ideological one: we need to grow liberalism and shrink conservatism. What I have done comparatively little to discuss, however, is just how we go about such a Herculean task. John Judis has recently produced
just such a piece over at TNR, which descartes has already produced
a diary to discuss. Judis's piece is absolutely dynamite, as it brings a healthy dose of materialism to a public discussion of American political discourse that is typically only found within academia. Whether its blogs, talk radio, cable news, Sunday talk or print periodicals, more often than not materialistic viewpoints on contemporary American politics are hard to find.
When it comes to the condition of contemporary liberalism, the lack of materialist thought is a tragedy, since the economic structures and large institutions--material conditions--that form our society play an essential role in producing and shaping the thought of our society. In other words, Judis correctly points out that if the fortunes of liberalism are to be reversed, the material conditions that produce our politics must be structurally altered:
If you look at the history of liberalism, what you discover is not reassuring. From 1932 through 1974--even when Republicans Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon were president--liberals got much of their program enacted, but, since then, they have failed abysmally. In 1977, Jimmy Carter championed bills that matched almost perfectly what Starr includes in his liberal agenda--"progressive taxation, affordable health care ... environmental [and] labor protection"--but Carter failed to get any of them passed even though he had a sizable Democratic majority in Congress; in 1993 and 1994, Bill Clinton couldn't enact his signature health care measure with an almost equally large congressional majority.
It is convenient to blame these failures on incompetence, but the truth is that structural factors were more important. Liberalism's success from the '30s through the 1960s was based primarily upon certain special economic and political conditions: popular pressure from below, business' acquiescence in reform, and the conviction of the nation's opinion-makers that reform was good for America. Since then, dramatic changes in the international economy have turned business against reform and weakened the other forces supporting reform. Liberalism is by no means defunct, but it has been put on the defensive--most particularly, in this second Bush term. If Democrats want to revive liberalism, and not merely win office for themselves, they will have to address--and, where possible, rectify--the conditions that have undermined it.(...)
To revive liberalism fully--to enjoy a period not only of liberal agitation, but of substantial reform--would probably require a national upheaval similar to what happened in the '30s and '60s. That could happen, but it doesn't appear imminent.(...)
Liberals would also have to rebuild the infrastructure of democratic pluralism through encouraging, subsidizing, and defending unions and whatever other form of countervailing social organization is feasible--from community groups to Internet-based virtual communities. The Republicans took this lesson from the older New Deal movement and have built a political infrastructure of their own while attempting to destroy what the Democrats have constructed. Liberals would have to do whatever is necessary--including, above all, tightening labor law--to rebuild their movement from below.
If you have a subscription to TNR, I highly recommend reading the entire piece. Without going into too much detail, I would like to present the outline of a program to structurally alter the electorate and the institutions that shape opinion that I believe would allow for the desired increase in liberalism and decline in conservatism nationwide:
- Countering The Republican Noise Machine. As long as conservatives have built a message machine that completely dominates liberalism when it comes to the distribution and dissemination of political thought, there is absolutely no hope that liberalism will grow and conservatism will decline. This must remain our number one priority at all times. It entails not only altering the content of existing outlets of political information, but also the creation of new outlets. In other words, we must build our C3's and C4's, keep supporting blogs and listening to Air America, working against companies such as Sinclair, fighting media consolidation and trying to pass laws such as The Fairness Doctrine.
- Structural union reorganization along the lines suggested by Andy Stern and the New Unity Partnership, in addition to revamped law surrounding labor organizing, including public and private sector card check nationwide. If workplace union density does not increase, liberalism will have a difficult time growing.
- Election reform. This includes voting reform that serves to end the mass disenfranchisement liberal voters, campaign finance reform that reduce the power of the wealthy over the political process, redistricting reform that ends Republican gerrymanders, and even statehood reform that allows the residents of D.C. and Puerto Rico an equal voice in our national elections.
- The fostering of new mass membership organizations on the left. I do not believe that the new online communities and expanding unions alone can be the answer. We need many new types of civic and grassroots organizations that will serve as outlets of information, action and coordination. In fact, the decline of such organizations has been instrumental in the effectiveness of the Republican Noise Machine. More than ever, people receive their information and arguments from pundits rather than each other.
For the past two generations Republicans have successfully put in place structural conditions that have fostered the rise of conservatism, and they are still doing o. Minorities tend to vote for Democrats, so minorities have been disenfranchised through voter intimidation and new crime laws. Unions and lawyers tend to support Democrats, so unions have been mercilessly busted and now legislation is being passed to defund the legal profession. With the decline of mass membership organizations, more and more people receive their information from the media, so a Noise Machine was constructed. Forward thinking Republican strategists understood that the material conditions that produce our political though and elected officials needed to be changed in order for conservatives to triumph, and if Democrats are to reverse this trend they must do the same. Victory cannot be achieved solely through some sort of idealized Democratic dialogue and Jeffersonian persuasion and showing people "the truth." It must also be achieved by altering the institutions and material conditions that determine what truth actually is.
