Collective Conscious

It con­tin­ues to be asked whether neolib­er­al­ism has a viable alter­na­tive:

Is there a work­able alter­na­tive to a left-​​leaning neolib­er­al­ism that, after all, sup­ports pro­gres­sive tax­a­tion, redis­tri­b­u­tion­ism (through tech­no­cratic pro­grams), and some base­line of reg­u­la­tion, includ­ing human rights reg­u­la­tions? … As much as I loathe neolib­er­al­ism as an ide­ol­ogy, I don’t think its adher­ents are dupes of plu­to­crats or post-​​modern stand-​​ins for the Illumanti or who­ever. Ygle­sias in par­tic­u­lar is intim­i­dat­ingly knowl­edgable and thought­fully sym­pa­thetic to nearly every prob­lem the left cares about. And frankly he’s right that recrude­s­cent Great Soci­ety sta­tism is not a viable alter­na­tive to left­ish neolib­er­al­ism, mostly because it not only failed mis­er­ably but also begat neolib­er­al­ism itself. Social­ism as prac­ticed has been wholly discredited.

But there is a bit of leg­erde­main in Ygle­sias’ frus­tra­tion: his insis­tence that the left offer a “work­able” alter­na­tive. I pre­sume he’s the arbiter of what is “work­able.” As we saw with the health care reform debate (and the clos­ing of GTMO, don’t ask don’t tell, the aban­don­ment of EFCA and striker replace­ment, Bush tax cuts, etc., etc.,), “work­able” may mean “some­thing that is imme­di­ately polit­i­cally fea­si­ble.” That of course is just set­ting the bar where the cur­rent con­sen­sus thrives.

Or, if “work­able” means some­thing that will poll test well, in other words be instantly pop­u­lar, there is a sim­i­lar prob­lem. If major reform movements–from abo­li­tion­ism to the labor move­ment to gen­der equality–simply waited until it was pop­u­lar enough to win a plebiscite or pass the mys­ti­cal, unre­formable fil­i­buster, noth­ing would ever change. The whole point is we need vocal lead­er­ship to fight for this fun­da­men­tal change.

This analy­sis hits the sweet spot in the debate over what it means to be a rev­o­lu­tion­ary move­ment seek­ing real change in the polit­i­cal land­scape. Essen­tially, the prob­lem is that if we fol­low a pol­i­tics of the pos­si­ble — if we try to build a move­ment that has a self-​​sustaining elec­toral base — it is only pos­si­ble that we build a con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment. I believe that was the suc­cess and the fail­ure of the past gen­er­a­tion of lib­eral lead­ers, the accom­plish­ment that led to the emer­gence of the self­stable neolib­eral bloc.

I expect that a true pro­gres­sive move­ment would have to expect its base to be in con­stant flux, as var­i­ous groups change soci­etal sta­tus from ‘want­ing’ to ‘sated’ in their var­i­ous needs. Pro­gres­sivism must be a con­stant bat­tle to cor­rect the emer­gent injus­tices and imbal­ances in soci­ety — an ‘uphill lib­er­al­ism’ if you will. What we ought to be doing, if we accept that idea, is build­ing a set of insti­tu­tions that guar­an­tees the present pro­gres­sive van­guard — even if we our­selves are no longer a part of it — the oppor­tu­nity to bring their own agenda to the fore­front of the polit­i­cal conversation.

As I wrote on Google+ yes­ter­day in response to Mark Thoma’s ques­tion:

I think one of the most impor­tant advances in a world with­out orga­nized labor would be the devel­op­ment of an auto­matic voter reg­is­tra­tion process in every state (as in Cal­i­for­nia where the DMV offers voter reg­is­tra­tion ser­vices with every licens­ing visit), and more avail­able vote-​​by-​​mail sys­tems (as in King County, which auto­mat­i­cally mails USPS-​​ready bal­lots to every reg­is­tered voter). This means that more peo­ple are vot­ing, espe­cially peo­ple who have dif­fi­culty get­ting to the polls or who lack access to elec­tion information.

Since these peo­ple also tend to be the class with­out money to spend on elec­tion­eer­ing, the increase in lib­eral polit­i­cal power (since one-​​person-​​one-​​vote is the essen­tial bal­ance against ‘dol­lar democ­racy’) might begin to pro­vide more power to pro­gres­sive inter­ests nationwide.

This uphill lib­er­al­ism has to con­stantly be bring­ing the new young, poor, and dis­en­fran­chised into the elec­toral fold. When­ever the flow of elec­toral power for the left stops, cor­po­rate finance rushes in to fill the void and dom­i­nate the agenda. Mass-​​movement pol­i­tics need not be explic­itly coor­di­nated in the way that union pol­i­tics were; if we accept the class divide as a dri­ving force in polit­i­cal sen­ti­ment then we can be even more secure in the fact that greatly expanded suf­frage will lead to more steady pro­gres­sive politics.

Besides that, how­ever, we need an exec­u­tive who is will­ing and able to deploy cri­sis for the advance­ment of the move­ment. We need a pres­i­dent who is will­ing to force the con­sti­tu­tional option on the fil­i­buster and on the debt ceil­ing, for exam­ple; we need some­one who will shat­ter the insti­tu­tions of con­ser­vatism with the stroke of a pen. Some sort of anti-​​Reagan, if you will. And I believe that is the sort of pol­i­tics that might emerge from dra­mat­i­cally increased polit­i­cal par­tic­i­pa­tion by labor — an insti­tu­tional uphill liberalism.