by Randy Cunningham
I appreciate the resurgence of American socialism, and the Left in general. Or as I told my brother, for the first time in my adult life I can aspire to not being looked upon as the spawn of Satan or the agent of an enemy power. The entrance of the Left into electoral politics shows that the Left is at least interested in dating reality. Moving in together much less marriage is not even in sight. Probably the biggest change I have observed in my radical career is that it is no longer ideologically illegal to run as a candidate of the Democratic Party. What could make me happier? The formation of a left caucus in the Republican Party. Don’t laugh. During the New Deal, one of FDR’s worries was being out flanked on the left by Republicans who were genuine progressives. New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, Mamdani’s muse, was a Republican. So was “fighting Bob” LaFollette who served as a Republican governor of Wisconsin, worked with socialists though not one ideologically. He distinguished himself as a civil libertarian, an opponent of World War I and imperialism, and a stalwart of progressive reform.
As positive as all these developments have been, there is a lot that still causes me to worry that our progress may be ephemeral. I am not expecting “the revolution” which is mostly a rhetorical left over from the last century. It plays the same role in the Left, as “the Rapture” plays among fundamentalist Christians. Add to that, the fact that the revolutions of the 20th century either failed or ended up enthroning what I call Red Capitalism – a horrific monster that hybridizes the worst of both traditions. I want the socialist left to become a normal, almost boring, part of American politics. I want American socialists to no longer be thought of as the occupants of a flying saucer that lands on your front lawn and declares “take me to your leaders.” I want fewer professors and more plumbers in our ranks. I want normal Americans to be able to listen to our speeches without having to access a dictionary on their smart phones. My message to the black clad members of what I call the “desperado left” is to grow up.
When it comes to the topic of growing up, I am reminded of an article that appeared in the old Working Papers for a New Society, by Dick Flacks called “Making a living, while making history.” Dick and Mickey Flacks were legendary members of Students for a Democratic Society. Their activist roots went back to the civil rights movement. They did not go nuts and start blowing up buildings like some of their former comrades did. The cartoon that accompanied the article showed a normal suburban yard, with a man in a beret mowing the lawn. The sign in front of the house said “The Guevaras.” The title of the article is as relevant today as it was in the 1970s, and it is something my generation had to tackle. Making the transition from street warrior to a normal American making a living is not easy. But it is an essential skill if we want to have a left that is not just a youthful lark, but something that will last.
What I fear is what the Israeli Defense Forces call “mowing the lawn.” Meaning not letting any dissident movement among the Palestinians to grow to the point that it can burst out of the apartheid state. We saw this a few years back when Palestinians put down the gun and began a campaign of civil disobedience to press their case. The non-violent protesters were shot down by IDF snipers “mowing the lawn.” The powers that be in America, those who have always owned and run America like it was their wholly owned corporation, have shown an ability to “mow the lawn” as well. The history of American dissent and rebellion is also the history of American repression as well. It would not surprise me in the least, if in the near future there will be a new bipartisan Red Scare launched. It would be another chapter in an old story. We can point to examples such as the crack down on dissent that was engineered by Democratic President Woodrow Wilson against anyone who opposed the US entry into World War I. Then the Red Scare of the 1920s and 1950s. Then the war on dissent in the 1960s was supervised by J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, who learned their trade during the Wilson years. These onslaughts have always gone hand in glove with White Supremacy as enforced by the KKK, and memorialized in the race riots in East St. Louis, Illinois in 1917 and Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1921. Then the war on the Black Panthers. And now, thank you John Roberts and Donald Trump, we have Jim Crow 3.0 making its debut.
America is overflowing with unmet needs, and escalating injustices. Today we have more social and economic inequality, more political corruption, and a level of oligarchic arrogance that competes with the worst we have ever seen in our history. The very environment itself is rebelling. If our current guardians of the status quo are bewildered at the return of the Left and wonder at the reasons for it, they can just pause in their looting to look in a mirror. There is their answer.
The fever dream of revolution is just that – a fantasy. But there is a lot that can be won and built on short of that. How do we make gains, and more important still, how do we preserve gains. How do we win victories but also keep our eye on the prize – a society based on solidarity and democracy, not dog-eat-dog selfishness and greed.
One of the things we can do is develop a brand of socialism appropriate to the American environment. We should keep our own counsel. We need to do the organizing that has distinguished the latest upsurge and not get ahead of ourselves, because as surely as we have won victories, we will suffer defeats. But that is all part of the game. You learn from victories and you learn from defeats. If we organize for the long haul, we will make a place for ourselves that will bear fruit in the future.
Randy’s Rants is going on August vacation and will return to your mail boxes on September 12th. Many of you may know that I am active in Save Ohio Parks, which is working against the fracking of Ohio’s state parks and nature preserves. Ohio has the shameful reputation of being the only state in the union that allows fracking in its parks. But that is what you get with a State House that is owned by the oil and gas industry and their hirelings. Save Ohio Parks is holding a fund raiser at the Forest City Brewery, 2135 Columbus Rd, Cleveland 44113 on Tuesday September 8th from 6 to 8 pm. If there is a David vs Goliath fight in Ohio, this is it and we need all the financial help we can get to continue our fight vs the plutocrats and polluters. If you can’t make it, donate to: hello@saveohioparks.org.
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