I have been reading Blood on our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq by Nicolas J.S. Davies. Early in his account Davies draws attention to this country's criminal disregard for international law. He finds this doubly egregious because Article 6 of the United States Constitution specifically declares "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land;"
The burden of this portion of his book is that we, as a people and as a government, no longer pursue the rule of law in international issues. It was not always this way. At the end of World War II people were so impressed with the horrific loss that war incurred (62 to 78 million of which 40 to 52 million were civilians) that it was clear that national differences could no longer be addressed in this fashion and that a rule of law must exist among nations by which national conflicts could be arbitrated; hence the establishment of the United Nations, largely under the urging of Franklin Roosevelt who coined its name. This time, unlike the Senate's rejection of the League of Nations Treaty, the United Nations treaty easily passed the Senate with only two nay votes. This was recognition that the nation state was no longer to be regarded as the end-all of socio/political organization. For purposes of preventing war it was to be subservient to the rule of international law as administered by the United Nations. However, Roosevelt's successors soon reverted to the anarchy of nationalism, initially by trying to use the United Nations as a instrument of United States foreign policy. e.g. the Korean Conflict, which we refused to call a war, but rather a "Police Action." While it is the case that the newly minted United Nations was immediately presented with the unprecedented burden of two nuclear superpowers contesting for global domination, the United States, a prime mover in establishing the U.N. made little effort to support the U. N. in its role of peacekeeper. Indeed, as time wore on Americans began to regard the U.N. as an enemy, indeed many Conservatives urged our withdrawal from the organization. We withdrew our obligatory funding of the U.N. and denigrated it at every opportunity. All this without once recalling the monumental horrors it was designed to prevent. As a result we have had 65 years of continuous global conflict with millions more humans killed, maimed and deprived of a decent life. We have squandered the resources of this planet, condemned our posterity to the effects of global warming, diminishing water supplies, incipient food shortages and the chaos of a collection of nations armed to the teeth with an ever increasing capacity to kill, maim and destroy. One result of our self-perceived role as the world's "sole remaining superpower" was our embarking on a largely lawless journey in world affairs, e.g. the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq and now threats to bomb Iran.
In my judgment what has to change is a mass perception of ourselves as humans living together on the only home we have, the earth. We must cease seeing the nation as the ultimate socio/political unit and ourselves primarily as citizens of a country. The nation must become an instrument through which we pledge our allegiance and efforts to our world. But how?
The global environmental movement has shown us that humans can seek solutions to global problems. As reflected in a recent article in WorldWatch magazine the environmental movement is beginning to realize that it will have to expand its vision and efforts to include economic issues if our ecological problems are resolved. This suggests to me that the need to address socio/political concerns will be seen as a prerequisite to accomplishing the ecological goals of environmentalists. The environment is shared by all humans and is therefore a fit vehicle to begin shifting the human mind-set from nation to world. Yet another task progressives could take the lead in.
Bob Newhard
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Democracy is Not Enough
One of the more interesting contrasts between the conservative political posture and that of progressives is that conservatives emphasize personal values, which are by their nature abstract. They stress morality which, when pressed for instances, amounts to little more than convention. They stress individuality no matter what the economic circumstances; they stress courage, e.g. Reagan's "walk tall", no matter how stupid the goal. Progressives stress equality and fairness, which are social virtues. We have a host of programs to achieve various aspects of these values, which we tend to stress more than the values themselves. The result is that conservatives make personal attributes the center of their political mantra. Progressives make society the center of theirs. The personal will always trump the social in the minds of the majority of people. This is a fundamental problem for progressives and is why progressives make headway mainly when society has fallen apart and its value is starkly reduced to personal terms.
In what follows I will try to articulate a way to begin bridging this gap by suggesting that progressives need to get personal and a way to do this without sacrificing the need for major social change.
As I read Thomas Jefferson, he not only tried to establish the basis for democracy, i.e. all men are created equal, but also the fundamental purpose of democracy, i.e. the optimization of the citizen's potential. I think this is why he laid such a heavy emphasis on education. I think Hilary Clinton had this in mind when she published her book It Takes a Village, a phrase taken from an African tribe that believes the group is fundamental to human beings. She was taken to task in the 1996 presidential election, by Bob Dole who countered that it takes a family to raise a child. Given the looseness and irresponsibility of political propaganda this dispute could go on endlessly and this is all the conservatives need to retain credibility and relevance. Get most people to identify with the personal or near personal, e.g. family, and they will relegate social justice to the back burner.
However, let us try to understand "individual" in a more developed fashion. Suppose we use Maslow's hierarchy of human needs to define the individual for political purposes. The conservative argues that human freedom is preeminent. What is done with that freedom is of less consequence. If it is used to deprive others of their freedom by producing an elite of wealth and hence power, that is ok. Nobody, in their view, ever promised anything resembling a level playing field. Hence the wealthy, whose wealth continually accrues more wealth, deserve to grasp and hold all the wealth they can. I submit this is nothing more than the law of the jungle. Republican's since the 19th century have advocated social Darwinism as the modus vivendi for our society. Corporate leaders are fond of regarding business competition as war and advocate The Art of War by Sun Tzu as a strategy manual for corporate competition.
Maslow, however, proposed and it has been widely accepted in sociological circles, that individuals are a bundle of needs. At the bottom of his needs hierarchy are survival needs, e.g. food. Near the top of the hierarchy are needs for self-esteem, achievement and the respect of others. At the top of the hierarchy are a collection of needs he calls "Self actualization" needs, e.g. morality, creativity, spontaneity. I suggest democracy can be viewed as an instrument for meeting this hierarchy of needs with the objective of producing citizens whose lives are optimized as they move from necessity to self optimization. The conservative view of democracy, at best, leaves human beings with the freedom of the jungle to be victimized by those who dominate the jungle. Hence we have the hopeless poor, the haggard job holder and the dominating rich. Some conservatives, when faced with the brutality of their sociopolitical philosophy, proclaim their advocacy of charity. Indeed Bush 1 advocated the charity of a "thousand points of light" to replace government aid programs. Conservatives do not aim at producing a society, but rather a continuous warfare of competing classes, with many people at Maslow's survival level, many more in jobs held mainly to avoid sinking to a survival level and a few with the resources to seek self optimization.
Looked at this way, progressivism is far more concerned for the individual than is conservatism. Progressivism, so understood, can bring far more of that overwhelming concern of libertarians, i.e. merit, to the surface than can a society ruled by the so-called meritorious.
I want to underscore the absolute barbarity that underlies the conservative view of society. Theirs is that of a collection of human beings seeking their own ends at the expense of others. Notably, these are the same people who have the unmitigated gall to call those who seek social justice advocates of class warfare. I suggest that progressives devote considerable energy to thinking out, articulating and pushing its concern for the civilized individual rather than the self-centered barbarism that issues from conservative ideology.
Bob Newhard
In what follows I will try to articulate a way to begin bridging this gap by suggesting that progressives need to get personal and a way to do this without sacrificing the need for major social change.
As I read Thomas Jefferson, he not only tried to establish the basis for democracy, i.e. all men are created equal, but also the fundamental purpose of democracy, i.e. the optimization of the citizen's potential. I think this is why he laid such a heavy emphasis on education. I think Hilary Clinton had this in mind when she published her book It Takes a Village, a phrase taken from an African tribe that believes the group is fundamental to human beings. She was taken to task in the 1996 presidential election, by Bob Dole who countered that it takes a family to raise a child. Given the looseness and irresponsibility of political propaganda this dispute could go on endlessly and this is all the conservatives need to retain credibility and relevance. Get most people to identify with the personal or near personal, e.g. family, and they will relegate social justice to the back burner.
However, let us try to understand "individual" in a more developed fashion. Suppose we use Maslow's hierarchy of human needs to define the individual for political purposes. The conservative argues that human freedom is preeminent. What is done with that freedom is of less consequence. If it is used to deprive others of their freedom by producing an elite of wealth and hence power, that is ok. Nobody, in their view, ever promised anything resembling a level playing field. Hence the wealthy, whose wealth continually accrues more wealth, deserve to grasp and hold all the wealth they can. I submit this is nothing more than the law of the jungle. Republican's since the 19th century have advocated social Darwinism as the modus vivendi for our society. Corporate leaders are fond of regarding business competition as war and advocate The Art of War by Sun Tzu as a strategy manual for corporate competition.
Maslow, however, proposed and it has been widely accepted in sociological circles, that individuals are a bundle of needs. At the bottom of his needs hierarchy are survival needs, e.g. food. Near the top of the hierarchy are needs for self-esteem, achievement and the respect of others. At the top of the hierarchy are a collection of needs he calls "Self actualization" needs, e.g. morality, creativity, spontaneity. I suggest democracy can be viewed as an instrument for meeting this hierarchy of needs with the objective of producing citizens whose lives are optimized as they move from necessity to self optimization. The conservative view of democracy, at best, leaves human beings with the freedom of the jungle to be victimized by those who dominate the jungle. Hence we have the hopeless poor, the haggard job holder and the dominating rich. Some conservatives, when faced with the brutality of their sociopolitical philosophy, proclaim their advocacy of charity. Indeed Bush 1 advocated the charity of a "thousand points of light" to replace government aid programs. Conservatives do not aim at producing a society, but rather a continuous warfare of competing classes, with many people at Maslow's survival level, many more in jobs held mainly to avoid sinking to a survival level and a few with the resources to seek self optimization.
Looked at this way, progressivism is far more concerned for the individual than is conservatism. Progressivism, so understood, can bring far more of that overwhelming concern of libertarians, i.e. merit, to the surface than can a society ruled by the so-called meritorious.
I want to underscore the absolute barbarity that underlies the conservative view of society. Theirs is that of a collection of human beings seeking their own ends at the expense of others. Notably, these are the same people who have the unmitigated gall to call those who seek social justice advocates of class warfare. I suggest that progressives devote considerable energy to thinking out, articulating and pushing its concern for the civilized individual rather than the self-centered barbarism that issues from conservative ideology.
Bob Newhard
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Thinking about a new progressive vision
The following article is the only one I have found so far articulating and calling for a progressive vision. I think it is very well done and is the kind of thinking we badly need,
Bob Newhard
**************************
Published Friday, 27th November, 2009
by David McKnight
I'd like to begin by recalling the words on the invitation to this seminar, in which we describe the aspirations of many people for a better society --- and also the way Australian society falls short of these aspirations. Then we added the following:
'...underlying these concerns is something else that is rarely discussed: it is the crisis of ideas and values which express alternatives. In spite of the current economic crisis, the rise of neo-liberalism reminded us that social change depends on political ideas embedded in an intellectual and moral framework. The motive for this seminar therefore arises from the need to find a space to discuss the development of intellectual and moral frameworks for progressive politics in Australia.'
By putting it in this way, we are talking about the connection between ideas and politics. Or what would once have been called the connection of theory to practice.
A crisis of vision
The lack of a broadly agreed set of ideas for the non-conservative side of politics is reflected in a number of ways. Perhaps the most obvious, at one end of the spectrum, is the decades-long crisis of vision within the Australian Labor Party. That party once had a vision which was based on using government to regulate and civilize capitalism. Yet it was a Labor federal government which ushered in privatization and deregulation in the national economy. In a different way, the radical left in Australia was, historically, a small but significant part of the Australian political scene. It had a highly developed analysis of society, centering on the social consequences of private ownership of property and the market. Most of the radical left has now disappeared altogether, including the Communist Party of Australia to which I once belonged. Some of the remaining parts of the radical left, as far as I can tell, seem to be groping towards a vision of ‘ecological socialism'. Others look determinedly backwards to past glories.
Yet while the anti-corporate left has largely disappeared, problems about the role of private corporations in democracies like ours have not disappeared.
The crisis of vision extends to other social movements, such as the women's movement. This movement achieved tremendous gains in social equality and opposition to discrimination. These changes, combined with the inflexibility in the economy and workforce, have lead to a situation where we now have what Barbara Pocock calls a ‘work-life collision'. In many families neither partner is able easily to fulfill the role of carer of small children. More broadly we have the continued devaluation of caring itself in a society focused on work, economic efficiency, consumerism, and individualization.
The crisis of vision also touches on matters of cultural diversity. Progressives have championed acceptance of cultural diversity against its detractors such as John Howard and Pauline Hanson. Progressives were also key supporters of acceptance of other forms of diversity around sexuality. Indeed, if you asked many younger people today the meaning of the political term ‘the left' many would respond in terms of its support for cultural and social diversity.
In celebrating diversity, it's worth recalling what has happened to an older progressive virtue -- that of the common good and the notion of a common interest. In a society in which the forces driving individualization are powerful, the notion of a common good has been a casualty. Even so, some thinkers dismiss such a notion at the level of theory. However, if one abandons a notion of the common good, one is reduced to promoting particular and small constituencies. Yet members of small constituencies also have communal identities -- as Australians, as users of a health care system or an education system.
Many of us want to retain support for acceptance of diversity, but we also believe that political action to address some of the major crises facing us is impossible without a notion of common humanity which shares a common fate and which needs to identify a common good. But how can a new balance be achieved?
Other problems exist between progressives based on the labour movement and the new and growing environmental movements. The need to address climate change will mean the dislocation of industries, and the need to end jobs in certain industries such as coal mining, and this is causing growing problems. My own view is that the need to address climate change will move to the centre of political ideas and practice. This situation will require the creative and bold application of progressive values.
A lesson from neoliberalism
In discussing the crisis of ideas for progressives, I think it is useful to look at a parallel and opposite case back in the 1970s. In those days it was the Right which had a dearth of credible and inspiring ideas. In the 1960s and 1970s, the old conservative Right found its dominance under challenge by ideas of social change. Old notions of nationalism, of racism, of deference to authority and of the naturalness of privilege were being undermined.
But some individuals and forces within the Right sought an intellectual renewal, not by defending old shibboleths but by exploring old ideas which, in their view, suddenly had a new relevance. This was the beginning of the era of the ‘think-tanks' and the rise of economic liberalism or neo liberalism.
This ideological revolution of the Right had an instructive result. Over a period of time, it gave the Right the ascendancy in the battle of ideas and values in Australia and elsewhere. Even where the Right did not directly succeed in taking government, the ideas of the new Right dominated the political agenda and promoted its values and world view. It is only now, after decades of dominance, with the global financial crisis that this extraordinary movement has received its first effective opposition and undergone a significant challenge to its credibility.
In its days of success, neo liberalism had one advantage, and it contains a useful lesson on the reason for the rise and fall of ideas which aim to have social impact.
That advantage, and a key to the success of neo liberalism, was that it was in tune with deeper social changes. In my view the set of ideas known as neoliberalism evolved as one response to the age of affluence. Probably even its originators were not fully aware of this, but it suited the social changes which were sparked by material prosperity. Let me explain. The material prosperity of countries like ours is extraordinary and unprecedented in human history. This wealth gives most people a range of choices of which the most obvious are in supermarket shelves but which extends to a vast number of choices about where to live and how to live. It extends from choice about whether or not to have children -- to choices about which overseas destination to travel to. With choice comes a degree of personal freedom for ordinary people which, as I said, is unprecedented in history. It was not surprising that a set of ideas arose which celebrates choice and freedom and see these abstract notions as the basis for a good society. On this basis, neoliberal economic and social policies foster a strong individualism and self interest.
As I said, I believe that properly understood, this has lessons for us. Every successful movement for social change has invariably had one major advantage over bigger and more powerful forces. That advantage is the ability to identify problems emerging from beyond the horizon and to articulate a new social vision.
Why is that? Well, because certain forces have a logic of their own: they impose themselves on events regardless. Things are forced to change - and if you are in tune with that change, if you understand something like climate change in all its shocking implications, then you can do one very important thing. To put it bluntly you can seize an opportunity when it arises. Because when things begin to change, those who have a vested interest in the present state of affairs don't want to recognize the new reality, they want to tinker with it, they hope for the best. Those who do not have a stake in the present, but who have a vision of the future which is both principled and pragmatic can have an enormous influence.
Because you never know what is over the horizon. Let's say in the next 12 months an unprecedented drought occurs. Let's say Melbourne and Sydney's water supply once again dips down below 30 %, down to 20% or less. This sort of frightening example of climate change would also be the kind of event which forces the whole society to consider new possibilities in public policy and politics. Being able to explain these events gives you a tremendous advantage in being able to suggest a course of action.
Seeking a coherent new vision
A new vision needs to have a degree of coherence. That is, your economic policy has to be in alignment with your social policy. If you want to encourage, for example, home care for children , then you don't want economic conditions that force women back to work immediately after giving birth. Or, if you want to fight carbon pollution, this has big implications for your economic approach as well as your social policy.
In raising the need for a coherent social vision, some might see this as a return to an oppressive orthodox theory of society. And that is the tendency after the collapse of the grand narrative of socialism. Indeed in as far as I can understand postmodern ideas, they have a decided preference for localizing politics and rejecting anything resembling a synthesis. And this is understandable up to a point, since it's perfectly possible to argue that the trajectory of Marxism which began to liberate working class, ended by enslaving them. Whether you accept this rather simplistic argument or not, it seems to me that the age of theories which purport to explain everything from world history, to current politics to the future of humanity, is over. Like certain kinds of religions, such theories tend toward a fundamentalism.
But to reject so called ‘theories of everything' is not to reject sets of ideas which try to explain more than local events and issues. Diversity is good and I don't wish to impose an orthodoxy on progressive politics. But in complex societies such as ours, some sort of coherent vision seems almost unavoidable. To take an obvious example, if you want to say something about the environment, it's necessary to have a view on aspects of the economy. Indeed you could argue that the fundamental issues of the environment are now issues of political economy and vice versa.
My personal view about a new politics is that it means searching for a new ‘social philosophy' which deals with problems such as sustainability and the balance between the life-world and the market. Another view is that politics will increasingly be oriented around the need to reduce carbon emissions -- and that this will involve a clash with entrenched corporate power as well as a challenge to deeply ingrained ways of life shared by large numbers of people.
Developing a new vision will not be easy. It is not a simple arithmetical ‘adding up' of a list of progressive causes and demands. Rather it involves far more complex syntheses of ideas and policies. And the need to explore some of those processes is what brought this collection of thinkers and authors together.
Bob Newhard
**************************
Published Friday, 27th November, 2009
by David McKnight
I'd like to begin by recalling the words on the invitation to this seminar, in which we describe the aspirations of many people for a better society --- and also the way Australian society falls short of these aspirations. Then we added the following:
'...underlying these concerns is something else that is rarely discussed: it is the crisis of ideas and values which express alternatives. In spite of the current economic crisis, the rise of neo-liberalism reminded us that social change depends on political ideas embedded in an intellectual and moral framework. The motive for this seminar therefore arises from the need to find a space to discuss the development of intellectual and moral frameworks for progressive politics in Australia.'
By putting it in this way, we are talking about the connection between ideas and politics. Or what would once have been called the connection of theory to practice.
A crisis of vision
The lack of a broadly agreed set of ideas for the non-conservative side of politics is reflected in a number of ways. Perhaps the most obvious, at one end of the spectrum, is the decades-long crisis of vision within the Australian Labor Party. That party once had a vision which was based on using government to regulate and civilize capitalism. Yet it was a Labor federal government which ushered in privatization and deregulation in the national economy. In a different way, the radical left in Australia was, historically, a small but significant part of the Australian political scene. It had a highly developed analysis of society, centering on the social consequences of private ownership of property and the market. Most of the radical left has now disappeared altogether, including the Communist Party of Australia to which I once belonged. Some of the remaining parts of the radical left, as far as I can tell, seem to be groping towards a vision of ‘ecological socialism'. Others look determinedly backwards to past glories.
Yet while the anti-corporate left has largely disappeared, problems about the role of private corporations in democracies like ours have not disappeared.
The crisis of vision extends to other social movements, such as the women's movement. This movement achieved tremendous gains in social equality and opposition to discrimination. These changes, combined with the inflexibility in the economy and workforce, have lead to a situation where we now have what Barbara Pocock calls a ‘work-life collision'. In many families neither partner is able easily to fulfill the role of carer of small children. More broadly we have the continued devaluation of caring itself in a society focused on work, economic efficiency, consumerism, and individualization.
The crisis of vision also touches on matters of cultural diversity. Progressives have championed acceptance of cultural diversity against its detractors such as John Howard and Pauline Hanson. Progressives were also key supporters of acceptance of other forms of diversity around sexuality. Indeed, if you asked many younger people today the meaning of the political term ‘the left' many would respond in terms of its support for cultural and social diversity.
In celebrating diversity, it's worth recalling what has happened to an older progressive virtue -- that of the common good and the notion of a common interest. In a society in which the forces driving individualization are powerful, the notion of a common good has been a casualty. Even so, some thinkers dismiss such a notion at the level of theory. However, if one abandons a notion of the common good, one is reduced to promoting particular and small constituencies. Yet members of small constituencies also have communal identities -- as Australians, as users of a health care system or an education system.
Many of us want to retain support for acceptance of diversity, but we also believe that political action to address some of the major crises facing us is impossible without a notion of common humanity which shares a common fate and which needs to identify a common good. But how can a new balance be achieved?
Other problems exist between progressives based on the labour movement and the new and growing environmental movements. The need to address climate change will mean the dislocation of industries, and the need to end jobs in certain industries such as coal mining, and this is causing growing problems. My own view is that the need to address climate change will move to the centre of political ideas and practice. This situation will require the creative and bold application of progressive values.
A lesson from neoliberalism
In discussing the crisis of ideas for progressives, I think it is useful to look at a parallel and opposite case back in the 1970s. In those days it was the Right which had a dearth of credible and inspiring ideas. In the 1960s and 1970s, the old conservative Right found its dominance under challenge by ideas of social change. Old notions of nationalism, of racism, of deference to authority and of the naturalness of privilege were being undermined.
But some individuals and forces within the Right sought an intellectual renewal, not by defending old shibboleths but by exploring old ideas which, in their view, suddenly had a new relevance. This was the beginning of the era of the ‘think-tanks' and the rise of economic liberalism or neo liberalism.
This ideological revolution of the Right had an instructive result. Over a period of time, it gave the Right the ascendancy in the battle of ideas and values in Australia and elsewhere. Even where the Right did not directly succeed in taking government, the ideas of the new Right dominated the political agenda and promoted its values and world view. It is only now, after decades of dominance, with the global financial crisis that this extraordinary movement has received its first effective opposition and undergone a significant challenge to its credibility.
In its days of success, neo liberalism had one advantage, and it contains a useful lesson on the reason for the rise and fall of ideas which aim to have social impact.
That advantage, and a key to the success of neo liberalism, was that it was in tune with deeper social changes. In my view the set of ideas known as neoliberalism evolved as one response to the age of affluence. Probably even its originators were not fully aware of this, but it suited the social changes which were sparked by material prosperity. Let me explain. The material prosperity of countries like ours is extraordinary and unprecedented in human history. This wealth gives most people a range of choices of which the most obvious are in supermarket shelves but which extends to a vast number of choices about where to live and how to live. It extends from choice about whether or not to have children -- to choices about which overseas destination to travel to. With choice comes a degree of personal freedom for ordinary people which, as I said, is unprecedented in history. It was not surprising that a set of ideas arose which celebrates choice and freedom and see these abstract notions as the basis for a good society. On this basis, neoliberal economic and social policies foster a strong individualism and self interest.
As I said, I believe that properly understood, this has lessons for us. Every successful movement for social change has invariably had one major advantage over bigger and more powerful forces. That advantage is the ability to identify problems emerging from beyond the horizon and to articulate a new social vision.
Why is that? Well, because certain forces have a logic of their own: they impose themselves on events regardless. Things are forced to change - and if you are in tune with that change, if you understand something like climate change in all its shocking implications, then you can do one very important thing. To put it bluntly you can seize an opportunity when it arises. Because when things begin to change, those who have a vested interest in the present state of affairs don't want to recognize the new reality, they want to tinker with it, they hope for the best. Those who do not have a stake in the present, but who have a vision of the future which is both principled and pragmatic can have an enormous influence.
Because you never know what is over the horizon. Let's say in the next 12 months an unprecedented drought occurs. Let's say Melbourne and Sydney's water supply once again dips down below 30 %, down to 20% or less. This sort of frightening example of climate change would also be the kind of event which forces the whole society to consider new possibilities in public policy and politics. Being able to explain these events gives you a tremendous advantage in being able to suggest a course of action.
Seeking a coherent new vision
A new vision needs to have a degree of coherence. That is, your economic policy has to be in alignment with your social policy. If you want to encourage, for example, home care for children , then you don't want economic conditions that force women back to work immediately after giving birth. Or, if you want to fight carbon pollution, this has big implications for your economic approach as well as your social policy.
In raising the need for a coherent social vision, some might see this as a return to an oppressive orthodox theory of society. And that is the tendency after the collapse of the grand narrative of socialism. Indeed in as far as I can understand postmodern ideas, they have a decided preference for localizing politics and rejecting anything resembling a synthesis. And this is understandable up to a point, since it's perfectly possible to argue that the trajectory of Marxism which began to liberate working class, ended by enslaving them. Whether you accept this rather simplistic argument or not, it seems to me that the age of theories which purport to explain everything from world history, to current politics to the future of humanity, is over. Like certain kinds of religions, such theories tend toward a fundamentalism.
But to reject so called ‘theories of everything' is not to reject sets of ideas which try to explain more than local events and issues. Diversity is good and I don't wish to impose an orthodoxy on progressive politics. But in complex societies such as ours, some sort of coherent vision seems almost unavoidable. To take an obvious example, if you want to say something about the environment, it's necessary to have a view on aspects of the economy. Indeed you could argue that the fundamental issues of the environment are now issues of political economy and vice versa.
My personal view about a new politics is that it means searching for a new ‘social philosophy' which deals with problems such as sustainability and the balance between the life-world and the market. Another view is that politics will increasingly be oriented around the need to reduce carbon emissions -- and that this will involve a clash with entrenched corporate power as well as a challenge to deeply ingrained ways of life shared by large numbers of people.
Developing a new vision will not be easy. It is not a simple arithmetical ‘adding up' of a list of progressive causes and demands. Rather it involves far more complex syntheses of ideas and policies. And the need to explore some of those processes is what brought this collection of thinkers and authors together.
A progressive message
Progressivism, in my judgment, is in desperate need of a coherent, focused, and honest message to communicate to people. As it is we seem focused on a variety of projects, mostly issues or political candidates. We need to come to the public with a fundamental message.
I think that message should be the corporations as the major source of the problems people face from loss of jobs, to war, environmental destruction, the loss of our democracy, rights and liberties and the threat of fascism.
We should not be timid in facing the Democratic Party leadership any more than the Tea Party did in calling their own movement conference. If the Democratic Party will not communicate that message progressives must and in the interest of our people and our democracy , do soforcefully, coherently and quickly. I believe that the public is beyond caring much about political parties, but is concerned with political solutions. Ronald Reagan came to power by identifying an enemy, i.e. government and a good to be obtained, i.e. freedom. He lied in his teeth with that message, but it had political appeal to people faced with stagflation. Similarly we should focus on corporations as the cause or enabler of most of people's problems and the good we pursue is freedom from corporate domination and an expanded freedom as articulated by FDR in his Four Freedoms speech.
Please post your comments and suggestions. Thank you.
Bob Newhard
I think that message should be the corporations as the major source of the problems people face from loss of jobs, to war, environmental destruction, the loss of our democracy, rights and liberties and the threat of fascism.
We should not be timid in facing the Democratic Party leadership any more than the Tea Party did in calling their own movement conference. If the Democratic Party will not communicate that message progressives must and in the interest of our people and our democracy , do soforcefully, coherently and quickly. I believe that the public is beyond caring much about political parties, but is concerned with political solutions. Ronald Reagan came to power by identifying an enemy, i.e. government and a good to be obtained, i.e. freedom. He lied in his teeth with that message, but it had political appeal to people faced with stagflation. Similarly we should focus on corporations as the cause or enabler of most of people's problems and the good we pursue is freedom from corporate domination and an expanded freedom as articulated by FDR in his Four Freedoms speech.
Please post your comments and suggestions. Thank you.
Bob Newhard
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