The Safe Depository

French socialist Andre Gorz famously jettisoned the reform/ revolution dichotomy, instead advocating a strategy of non-reformist reformism. He defined—and, as far as I know, unveiled—the concept in Strategy for Labor and contrasted it with conventional, system-sustaining, reformist reformism:

A reformist reform is one which subordinates its objectives to the criteria of rationality and practicability of a given system and policy. Reformism rejects those objectives and demands—however deep the need for them—which are incompatible with the preservation of the system.

On the other hand, a not necessarily reformist reform is one which is conceived not in terms of what is possible within the framework of a given system and administration, but in view of what should be made possible in terms of human needs and demands.

In other words, a struggle for non-reformist reforms—for anti-capitalist reforms—is one which does not base its validity and its right to exist on capitalist needs, criteria, and rationales. A non-reformist reform is determined not in terms of what can be, but what should be. And finally, it bases the possibility of attaining its objective on the implementation of fundamental political and economic changes. The changes can be sudden, just as they can be gradual. But in any case they assume a modification of the relations of power; they assume that the workers will take over powers or assert a force (that is to say, a non-institutionalized force) strong enough to establish, maintain, and expand those tendencies within the system which serve to weaken capitalism and to shake its joints. They assume structural reforms.

Seth Ackerman’s essay on market socialism in Jacobin’s current issue has been receiving a good deal of attention, and rightly so. He does a fantastic job of reviewing the literature on Soviet efficiency—in other words, what were and weren’t the economic culprits in the country’s centrally planned system. He then sketches out a plan to socialize finance, thus transferring ownership of the means of production from private to public hands.

So far as I can tell, the bulk of attention has been devoted to the logistics and effectiveness of the plan. Matt Bruenig, after lauding Ackerman’s socializing scheme, had this complaint:

With that said, it is important to highlight the limitations of this form of socialization. All this socialization does is wrestle away profits, dividends, and other forms of capital income away from private — and generally very wealthy — hands. While this is technically a socializing move, it does not necessarily have a significantly egalitarian or democratizing effect. Swapping out private owners for government owners does not necessarily empower workers in their own firms or ensure that low-income workers get a raise. To the extent that worker democracy and egalitarianism are critical goals of the socialist agenda, financial socialization will not, by itself, be sufficient.

To be fair, advocates of it have never claimed that it will be sufficient. The goal of socialized finance is very narrow: capture financial rents for the public. That’s a very worthwhile goal, and one that seems to be in reach. To increase income equality and worker strength, however, other programs and strategies are much more critical.

What hasn’t received proper attention, in my view, is Ackerman’s central intent. Here he is, with Mike Konczal, laying it out.

When most people think about corporations throwing around their weight in the political arena, they think about “money in politics” — deep-pocketed interests that, unless pacified, can deep-six proposals that threaten their interests. For liberals, the Affordable Care Act’s compromised state exemplified the “big money” problem. Obama had to placate insurance companies, Big Pharma, and other powerful actors to get the act through Congress and on his desk. One can question Obama’s strategy of appeasing powerful lobbies (in this case, the filibuster might have been more responsible for diluting the law), but the point is this: Whenever a duly elected majority attempts to institute reform, it must first go through the juggernauts.

Unlike Move to Amend-style reforms, the private ownership problem Ackerman wants to rectify is foundational to our economic order. End corporate personhood, and we’d still be in the same capitalist boat. Ackerman, in contrast, seeks to indict not merely corporate capitalism or big business — to liberals and left-liberals, the consummate bad actors — but capitalism itself.

Friedmanites and other capitalist enthusiasts see private ownership as a check on government power and, from a purely descriptive standpoint, they’re right: Capitalist institutions and arrangements pen in left-reformist governments. Structure-altering measures are completely off the table — not because of prudent limits on state authority enshrined in the constitution, but because of capitalists’ power. Even vaguely leftist reforms can be dispatched when the specter of market panic is raised. This is capitalism as constrictor, limiting democratic sovereignty, delineating the acceptable and unacceptable. Ackerman wants to eviscerate these artificially imposed limits, these political constraints masquerading as economic constraints.

As I see it, other non-reformist reforms (full employment, substantial labor law reform, to name two) would have to precede his socialization plan. The Swedish example is instructive. As Ackerman notes towards the end of his Behind the News interview, the Meidner plan would have wrested ownership away from private capital and put Sweden on the path to economic democracy. The apotheosis of social democracies, with full employment, a generous welfare state, and a strong labor movement, Sweden was still steered away from democratic socialism. If revanchist neoliberalism were to fail anywhere, it would have been in Sweden. Yet it prevailed.

Could things have been different? I tend to think so. At the end of the day, though, it’s all about power. Only with a more potent Left, a vibrant labor movement, and a conscious, well-developed radical reformist strategy will we fare better at the next epochal crossroads.

“Today, perhaps more than ever, the very meaning of democracy needs to be clarified—its institutional norms and practices, its social and material conditions, its human and political transformative potential.” -Carl Boggs, The Socialist Tradition (1995)

For democratic socialists, the qualifier—”democratic”—is fundamental. It’s not something insouciantly slapped on, but a description of strategy, a core animating principle, and a distinguishing characteristic.

If democratic socialism is to be won—or, more accurately, moved towards— it will be through popular mobilization, persuasion, and the political process. Emancipation will come from below, not be delivered from on high. Indeed, properly conceived, democratic socialism is the expansion and deepening of democracy in all spheres of social, political, and economic life. Democracy not just in terms of procedures, but constitutive principles—equality, agency, self-determination. These are democracy’s radical tenets, blithely discarded by its elite adherents. Reclaiming and trumpeting this richer conception of democracy means returning it to its rightful radical owners, before it was drained of its militancy and potency and claimed by centrist custodians of the status quo.

It’s undemocratic, for example, for a small slice of the population to control the bulk of society’s resources and thus, the destiny of millions. It’s undemocratic to cordon off and deem inadmissible decisions that would “spook the market.” It’s undemocratic for capital to control the material basis for human flourishing. And, if we subscribe to this expansive notion of democracy, undemocratic outcomes that come out of the (procedurally) democratic political process are, paradoxically, still undemocratic.

If you’re perplexed, answer this: Is it democratic for citizens to vote away their own voting rights? Surely the answer is no. It’s similarly absurd to talk of “democratic outcomes”—again, even if these are decided through the democratic process—if they undercut democratic precepts like, say, equality of voice or agency. To cherish democracy is to cherish not just surface-level “rules of the game,” but democracy’s embedded principles.

So say you’re a small-d democrat surveying our society. You come upon this thing called capitalism. And, if you’re thinking clearly, you do a double take because it’s so obviously at odds with the democratic convictions the populace ostensibly holds. In this congenitally hierarchical, authoritarian domain, bosses possess tremendous power over their workers. Capital extracts as much value as it can from labor. Absent a strong countervailing force—a robust welfare state, full employment, effective unionization—workers can 1) toil or 2) experience extreme material hardship. Their choice. (See, it’s voluntary!) The majority of the population at least implicitly supports this economic regime, yet it’s profoundly undemocratic.

The noble aspiration of social democratic incrementalists was to “humanize” capitalism and insulate workers, reform by reform, from the mercurial market that dominated them. (Neoliberalism arrested and reversed this progress decades ago.) But even the social democratic reforms were inadequate: internal relations of the firm must be changed. Sovereignty must be transferred to workers. That’s the genuinely democratic solution, even if crudely democratic measures (the preponderance of people favor capitalism) indicate otherwise.

It’s understandable that non-leftists advance an impoverished conception of democracy. What’s surprising is that leftists let their bloodless espousals go unchallenged, and only haphazardly and sporadically couch their prescriptions and visions in explicitly democratic terms.  Jodi Dean even suggests the Left give up on the idea altogether. But this would be an enormous mistake and a victory for the Right. As I said above, the American populace ostensibly believes in democracy. The duty of the Left is to highlight undemocratic realms and assail them accordingly. Call the people to higher ground, if you will.

Democracy can be a stirring, persuasive language to speak in and, at its principled core, it’s radical as hell. Why let our political enemies claim it for their own?

UPDATE: I apologize for my delayed response. I’ve received constructive pushback, both on Twitter (from the fantastic Matt Bruenig) and in the comment section. I’d like to clarify some of my claims.

In my post, I tried to differentiate between a procedural commitment to democracy (accepting the democratic rules of the game) and a robust commitment to democracy (advocating for policies that increase equality and democratize power and, as a result,  actively strengthen democracy). The second conception is central to the socialist project. In arguing that majority support for  democracy-augmenting policies had no bearing on their status as “democratic” or “undemocratic,” I wasn’t arguing that we should sweep away the traditional democratic process. I was simply asserting that having a robust commitment to democracy necessitates supporting equality-enhancing policies.

What this means in practice is contingent on the extent to which democracy is already present. Help me out, Robert Dahl:

For the nondemocratic countries, the challenge is whether and how they can make the transition to democracy. For the newly democratized countries, the challenge is whether and how the new democratic practices and institutions an be strengthened or, as some political scientists would say, consolidated, so that they will withstand the tests of time, political conflict and crisis. For the older democracies, the challenge is to perfect and deepen their democracy.

Replace “countries” with “areas,” and there you have it. In the political sphere, consolidation and deepening are the orders of the day. In the economic sphere, and in most other spheres of our lives, the transition is inchoate, or yet to begin. This, then, is one of the central tasks for socialists: To sketch out and struggle for a society in which democracy is on the march and domination is beaten back.

I recall a conversation I had a year or so ago with a friend of mine. We were comparing our political persuasions and after describing himself as solidly left of center on social issues, my friend proclaimed he was “liberal where it matters.” The implication being, that is, that economic liberalism, or an unshakeable allegiance to labor, were passé. The sentiment is a common one among my generation, I think. Support gay marriage, abortion rights, and gun control? You’re a forward-thinking liberal. Barack Obama is your guy, economic justice, obtained through collective means, an afterthought.

Mine is a generation that came of age in the oughts, when good Democrats opposed the war in Iraq and the Bush tax cuts. Unions, their retreat as consequential actors in the national economy complete, seemed like some strange holdover from the past; Republicans loathed them and Democrats halfheartedly supported them, but we rarely came across their members outside of the classroom or the library or the post office. The most recent social movements, the ones with which we tended to be most familiar — antiwar, civil rights, gay rights, feminist, environmental — weren’t constitutively anti-capitalist. If class was invoked, it was to contrast consumer habits and cultural markers — NASCAR-loving gun owner versus Starbucks-frequenting Volvo driver. With the Left insipid, neoliberalism firmly established itself as the new “common sense“; neoliberals began to set the terms of debate and structure the way most people thought about the world.

The Left that did survive wasn’t unscathed, immune from neoliberalism’s influence. Consider the rise of “green capitalism,” whose proponents proposed, and continue to propose, that we essentially buy our way out of climate change catastrophe (and feel warm and fuzzy doing it!). Under this strategy of change, corporations and localist lefties, if they’re not acting in concert, are not working at cross-purposes at the very least. And naturally, corporate power and capitalism itself are resultantly granted reprieve.

Postmodernists, in assailing essentialism and exalting difference, also contributed to a Left increasingly skeptical of class-based movements, strategies, and analyses. To these critics, understanding the world through the lens of class, relations of production, and the economic “base” of society was hopelessly simplistic. The world was much too complex for such a reductionist exercise. Class struggle was out, identity, contingency, and subjectivity in. Capitalism’s staying power and the declining power of labor unions also reinforced this retreat, as leftists focused on more auspicious sites of struggles.

A decade after the global justice movement hit the United States, Occupy, reclaiming the language of class, declaimed against a rapacious 1 percent. Occupy might not be dead, but it is dormant.

So the question is, what role should class play in the politics of the democratic left? In an era of escalating income and wealth inequality—such that even center-left types and corporate Democrats have expressed alarm—should economic justice and challenging capitalism be our principal preoccupation? And how will our project speak to, and question some of the assumption of, the generation born and bred under hegemonic neoliberalism?

Ellen Willis, the late feminist and democratic socialist, provides some insights in her essay “What’s the Matter with Tom Frank (and the lefties who love him)?” The New Deal-loving Frank famously argued in What’s the Matter with Kansas that the culture wars were an insignificant sideshow, fodder for the GOP’s regressive bait-and-switch. Willis strenuously disagrees:

The cultural radical impulse is rooted in the core elements of the democratic ideal: equality and freedom. There is a clear logic in the progression from affirming that all men are created equal, with the right to choose their government, enjoy freedom of speech and religion, and pursue happiness, to demanding that these rights apply to racial minorities, women, homosexuals, young people, atheists and other groups in one way or another denied them; that the challenge to repressive authority extend beyond government to institutions like the corporation, the family, and the church; that the pursuit of happiness include freedom from sexual restrictions dictated by patriarchal religious norms; that free speech include explicitly sexual and anti-religious speech… Cultural radical demands immediately question and disrupt existing social institutions, yet building democratic alternatives is a long-term affair: this leaves painful gaps in which men and women don’t know how to behave with each other, in which marriage can no longer provide a stable environment for children but it’s not clear what to do instead. Is it really surprising that cultural revolution should cause conflict?

To argue that this conflict has no political significance is to say that democratic values have none—never mind the blood and passion expended by democrats and their enemies.

Willis concludes, “We need to look not to the New Deal but to a new politics, one that recognizes equality and freedom, class and culture, as ineluctably linked.”

Willis has a certain affinity with post-Marxist theorist Chantal Mouffe, a thinker known for — opprobriously, in some circles — displacing class as the central struggle for the Left. Writing in the 1980s with her colleague Ernesto Laclau, Mouffe tried to account for and theorize the “new social movements”:

One of the central tenets of Hegemony and Socialist Strategy is the need to create a chain of equivalence among the various democratic struggles against different forms of subordination. We argued that struggles against sexism, racism, sexual discrimination, and in the defence of the environment needed to be articulated with those of the workers in a new left-wing hegemonic project. To put it in terminology which has recently become fashionable, we insisted that the Left needed to tackle issues of both ‘redistribution’ and ‘recognition’. This is what we mean by ‘radical and plural democracy’.

This “chain of equivalence” is mighty discomforting to lefties who want to build movements on the basis of bread-and-butter economic issues, conventionally conceived. Willis would retort, of course, that culture issues and economic issues are inseparable, and both indispensable to a Left politics. Laurie Penny put it pithily in a recent Guardian column: “There can be no true democracy, no worthwhile class struggle, without women’s rights.” When I think about an egalitarian political project, it must be, at bottom, about democratizing power relations, reducing human suffering, and emancipating people from domination.

I’ll cut it off there, as this post is running long. Class, the neoliberal generation, and the Left—to be continued.

Today I finished Walker Percy’s excellent novel The Moviegoer, the recipient of the 1961 1962 National Book Award. Towards the end of the book, the aristocratic aunt of the protagonist unleashes this acerbic anti-egalitarian monologue, a mighty good distillation of the reactionary mind:

I’ll make you a little confession. I am not ashamed to use the word class. I will also plead guilty to another charge. The charge is that people belonging to my class think they’re better than other people. You’re damn right we’re better. We’re better because we do not shirk our obligations either to ourselves or to others. We do not whine. We do not organize a minority group and blackmail the government. We do not prize mediocrity for mediocrity’s sake. Oh I am aware that we hear a great many flattering things nowadays about your great common man – you know, it has always been revealing to me that he is perfectly content so to be called, because that is exactly what he is: the common man and when I say common I mean common as hell. Our civilization has achieved a distinction of sorts. It will be remembered not for its technology nor even its wars but for its novel ethos. Ours is the only civilization in history which has enshrined mediocrity as its national ideal. Others have been corrupt, but leave it to us to invent the most undistinguished of corruptions. No orgies, no blood running in the street, no babies thrown off cliffs. No, we’re sentimental people and we horrify easily. True, our moral fiber is rotten. Our national character stinks to high heaven. But we are kinder than ever. No prostitute ever responded with a quicker spasm of sentiment when our hears are touched. Nor is there anything new about thievery, lewdness, lying, adultery. What is new is that in our time liars and thieves and whores and adulterers wish also to be congratulated and are congratulated by the great public, if their confession is sufficiently psychological or strikes a sufficiently heartfelt and authentic note of sincerity.

After some Twitter pushback from Ned Resnikoff and yours truly, Elias Isquith is still skeptical of the claim that Jack Lew’s nomination should make lefties queasy.

Isquith:

One, we don’t know enough about Lew’s actions while at the NYU to draw any definitive conclusions; he certainly wasn’t working in concert with or on behalf of the organizers. Yet it’s important to appreciate that this wasn’t his job. If he made some kind of decisive push against them, one that wouldn’t have happened in his absence, then that’s significant and something lefties are right to find appalling. But we don’t know — maybe we can find out during Senate hearings, though I doubt it.

Second and more important is whether or not Lew will actually be influencing policy rather than merely implementing it. The 2012 elections resulted in something of a two-sided political retrenchment, with the perpetuation of the status quo near-guaranteeing that no stimulus is in the offing for 2013. The near-term policy goal for liberals? Less austerity than there might be otherwise — at best. (Not quite Braveheart’s “Freedom!” when it comes to rallying cries.)

With the debt ceiling near at hand, however, the option of literally doing nothing is out of the picture. Doing nothing means potential economic armageddon. So there will have to be negotiations — even if the negotiations are over whether or not there should be negotiations. And that’s where Lew’s decades of experience in DC’s back rooms becomes valuable, potentially so valuable as to outweigh his ideological shortcomings. Don’t take my word for it: skip ahead to 3:12 and hear Paul Krugman, no Obama apologist, say the same.

Since I can’t speak to the behind-closed-doors persuasiveness of Lew, I’d like to instead comment on Isquith’s initial inclination: that is, to tweet “If Jack Lew’s job had anything to do with labor unions, this would matter.”

To me, what’s troubling is the clear delineation Isquith posits between cabinet positions which affect labor and positions which are immaterial to labor. In his mind, one can easily classify the duties of the treasury secretary as outside those narrowly defined boundaries; Lew, you see, would be advising the president on economic policy and negotiating over the debt ceiling—not say, enforcing labor law or conferring with Richard Trumka. (Lew’s role would also be quite different than his predecessor, Tim Geithner, even if they’d be occupying the same position.) Thus, whether Lew’s actions as an NYU administrator amounted to union busting—a matter I won’t wade into, though I’m loath to quibble with Josh Eidelson’s reporting—isn’t germane to his possible ascension to treasury secretary.

For those who put workers’ rights and economic justice at the center of their political project, however, Lew’s views and actions vis-a-vis organizing struggles are absolutely relevant. Every cabinet post, but especially those tasked with overseeing or crafting some facet of domestic policy, is relevant to labor, to workers. The degree of impact on the livelihood and freedom of workers varies from position to position, of course. But Isquith—not out of conscious anti-union animus, I’d hasten to add—is thinking about this in an insidious way. His easy compartmentalization of what positions will and won’t affect unions serves to reduce labor to a constituency or interest group.

And a weak one at that. Union density is low, workers are relatively impotent. A regrettable state of affairs, Isquith allows, but the inescapable reality, to Isquith, is that this further shrinks the decisions and posts that labor can claim affects it. Unions are no longer redoubtable movers and shaker. They don’t impact macroeconomic policy. They’re not a powerful constituency. But where does this leave workers?

Government rulings and statutes—most notably, the Taft-Hartley Act, passed in 1947 despite President Truman’s veto—have boxed in unions and induced them to act on a narrow set of issues that affect their members. Unfortunately, the proscription of certain solidarity-enhancing tactics—secondary boycotts, for example, which Taft-Hartly outlawed—has also often been exacerbated by union parochialism.

In short, narrowness of vision and narrow definitions of interests impede the construction of a vibrant labor movement—yes, one composed of unions and associated groups, but one engaged in a broader fight for social and economic justice. Stunted conceptions of labor by its would-be allies don’t aid that fight.

Breathe and exhale, union backers.

A blow to organized labor, an affront to workers, disingenuous union-busting—Michigan’s new right-to-work (RTW) law is all of these. And in the birthplace of the hallowed United Auto Workers? It’s almost unfathomable. Union workers and their allies assembled en masse last week, and will likely mount a campaign to rescind the law, for a reason. But, righteous struggle or not, the odious legislation needs to be put into perspective.

We should view it more as a measure of labor’s weakened state than an impediment to future growth, more a manifestation of the UAW’s sad fall from grace than the demise of the labor movement writ large. Aggressive organizing, especially in the service sector, would substantially brighten labor’s prospects; mobilizing to defend ever-dwindling union territory will do nothing of the sort.

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The never-quite-quiescent debate between neoliberals and the traditional left is active again. I know it irks Matt Yglesias to no end, but I don’t find these discussions gratuitous. Easy to dismiss as inside baseball, they also delineate real differences that have real consequences for the viability and efficacy of a left project.

The latest skirmish was prompted by the release of a paper authored by Mike Konczal, an exceptional wonk at the Roosevelt Institute who cares about more than just crunching numbers. Konczal’s latest is about the “coupon state” versus public provisioning—or, if you like, neoliberal versus liberal/ social democratic approaches to the welfare state.

Predictably, the report is fantastic, and it includes this chart, which nicely encapsulates Konczal’s arguments:

One gap in the chart, in my view: Public provisioning of social goods should be employed when possible because it avoids commodifying those goods. This isn’t feasible in some cases—food stamps come to mind—but decommodification should be the left’s default position. For instance: Even if we allow that charter schools can under certain (often unmet) conditions be desirable, profit-making operators should be verboten.

As the case of higher education shows, providing social goods up front is often better than subsidizing on the back end:

Since the 1970s the government has created several voucher mechanisms to fund access to private colleges and universities, including Pell Grants, government-subsidized student loans and tax-subsidized savings vehicles. Meanwhile, public funding is being lowered and tuition raised at the equivalent public option, state public colleges and universities.10

There’s a set of arguments stating that private institutions of higher education largely capture these vouchers by raising tuition in order to compensate for the extra demand vouchers produce.11 If this logic is flipped, directly reducing the price of a college degree through public education will also reduce the tuition costs at the private institutions, as they are forced to reduce margins in order to compete. So in these instances, money spent on providing cheaper public options will amplify their effect throughout the market, while money spent through vouchers is simply captured by incumbent institutions and prices rise across the board.

I agree entirely with Konczal. The conservatives and libertarians response to ballooning tuition has been their go-to—deregulate and further privatize. The neoliberal response has been increasing Pell Grants and making student loans more favorable to debtors. More effective would be directly attacking tuition hikes via increased appropriations. And if states aren’t willing to adequately support their public universities, the federal government should. (This is another instance in which Bhaskar Sunkara and Peter Frase’s solution of federalization is a wise idea.)

I would say it’s perplexing that more liberals don’t advocate this kind of approach, but the lacuna mirrors others in the higher education conversation. When national Democrats talk about making college more affordable, they’re talking about more federal grants and loans. This approach doesn’t engender affordability, however, but higher tuition and more student debt.

For their part, conservatives and libertarians are given to justifying tuition hikes with jeremiads against bloated administration. Cut the fat, and tuition wouldn’t have to jump. And they’re right: bureaucratic largesse is a problem. It’s just a problem of little importance compared to the widescale privatization of our public universities. More federal grants and loans to pay for ever-escalating tuition won’t solve this. The remedy is simple: send federal money to states to depress tuition costs, and prevent the continued erosion of the universal right to education.

Seth Ackerman, Matt Yglesias, and Doug Henwood had an interesting Twitter conversation earlier this week about boosting wages  at Walmart. As Ackerman and Yglesias note, higher pay has to come from somewhere and Walmart, a company whose munificence has always been lacking, wouldn’t bear the full brunt of such an increase: They’d likely pass a portion of it on to customers. Walmart has staked its reputation on delivering low prices, however, so they couldn’t substantially hike prices without sullying the company name.

For his part, Henwood contends that the Demos plan—increasing full-time workers’ annual pay to $25,000—”Could stimulate growth and offset redistribution. Relative incomes would change, but absolute could all rise.” Henwood’s economic chops dwarf my own, so I won’t quibble with his assertion. The underlying labor-capital conflict won’t disappear, though, so, absent ever-escalating profits, the pay increases would eventually cut into Walmart’s bottom line. Workers will have to act in concert to get what’s rightfully theirs, especially when profits aren’t bountiful.

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T.H. Marshall, in “Citizenship and Social Class”:

Is it still true that basic equality, when enriched in substance and embodied in the formal rights of citizenship is consistent with the inequalities of social class? I shall suggest that our society to-day assumes that the two are still compatible,  so much so that citizenship has itself become, in certain respect, the architect of legitimate social inequality.