Can Elizabeth Warren be the new Ted Kennedy?

[BainsBane]

37. You can't be serious

This is a long post, but I take challenges to my integrity very seriously and have a great deal to say.

I don't attack people for being "left." I'm a Marxist, for Christ sake. The difference is I understand the nature of the capitalist state, and now I get lectured by people who can't tell Marxist analysis from the Sunday newspaper.

I demonstrate my principles often in my posts. I post about social justice, violence, human equality, feminism, racism, empire, and war, even Marxist theory. I clearly express my principles in those threads. If I did not have principles, I would engage in group think and go along with the prevailing view at the time. That is something I have never done. What I do not do is focus entirely on contests among political elites. I know that social change doesn't emanate from the presidency down. As someone with training in social history and social movements in particular, I know that social change comes from the bottom up, and that politicians only respond when compelled to by the people. You see, focusing on the presidency to the exclusion of particular causes reflects a conservative (not as in GOP but in the more traditional meaning, as in great man view of history and social change) worldview. For example, people present FDR as a savior, the only real Democrat, yet show no awareness that FDR acted because he was forced to by widespread social movements. He saved the capitalist system by creating the New Deal that has assuaged many of the excesses of capitalist exploitation. If not for him, it is possible the country might have turned to social revolution at that time. He made sure it did not.

I did not grow up upper-middle or middle-class, so I have never been among the people who expected government to cater to me. I expect for people who grew up in more advantageous circumstances, there probably was a time when they saw government representing their interests. It has never represented the poor, and the days some here hearken back to were a time when the majority of the population was denied basic civil rights and existed outside the body politic.

My academic background in the history of nation building and national identity also enables me to see national mythology at work. Much of the frustration I see here is from people who buy into the national mythology of government for the people and by the people and think that government's failure to serve the needs of common people is new. It is not new. It is endemic to the capitalist state, a state that was never intended to serve common people, which is clear from how the framers set up government. While it is true that the cash nexus between capital and state is more naked than in the past, the fundamental relationship is much the same. A key difference today is that capital is increasingly global, and its accumulation is no longer dependent on nation. That has generated a new host of contradictions that we are witnessing today.

I don't see a lot of principal in endless fixation on contests among political elites. I do not see disputes about individual politicians as reflective of principle. In fact it avoids a discussion of broader and more systemic problems that cannot be solved by a President. When people identify one individual, like Clinton, as responsible for the ills of capitalism, it frustrates me because it reduces a systemic problem to a caricature and thus allows no possibility of addressing it. I consider that a very narrow political worldview.

I have never known of a politician in this country who expressed my views. The closest globally is Salvador Allende, but I know the nature of the country I live in. I look at electoral politics quite pragmatically: my principles are not expressed within the confines of the governmental structures of the capitalist state. When I was younger, I wouldn't identify as a Democrat for that reason and often voted third party. Bush changed that. He was so awful I realized I had to consistently vote for Democrats. I'm all for progressive reform of the party, and time and time again I have suggested that people get involved at the local level to make that happen. Expecting a president to spontaneously transform society is folly and impossible under the confines of our system.

I live in one of the most progressive states in the country, a state that has gotten a lot of press about its governor lately. Yet missed in that coverage is that we have the most politically engaged population in the country: not only do we have the highest voter participation rates in the country, we organize around issues like marriage equality, defeating voter ID and retaining election-day voter registration, an increase in the minimum wage linked to inflation, requiring employers to pay sick leave, funding for the arts and parks. That is all possible because the population organized for it, not because we waited for a governor to give it to us. If we are to have progressive reform, people need to do that all around the country. Sitting back and waiting for the perfect president to bestow it is a fool's errand. Worse yet, people who think that not voting constitutes a form of activism only make the situation worse.

I think part of what is happening here is we have a fundamental disagreement about what constitutes left. For me, leftism is Marxism, socialism. It is not liberalism, and it is not embodied in a particular US presidential candidate or arguments over individual public figures. And in fact when that is accompanied by hostility to the rights and interest of the subaltern (eg. racial justice, gender equality, and full civil rights for LGBT), I consider it right-wing.