Realizing the Promises of Liberalism

Jean Paul Holmes

"We want more than just a promise;

Say good-bye to Uncle Thomas.

Call me naive;

Still, I believe!"

–  Lena Horne, Now!

After four years of the Obama presidency the contradictions present in the capitalist politics of the U.S. are increasingly difficult to ignore.

Based philosophically in liberalism, the whole of U.S. politics operates as a liberal democracy. Pundits and political operatives are keen to label one or another group of people as representative of special interests, but they themselves all operate for the benefit or detriment of different interest groups – if they did not, they would not be in politics. The goal of those who act with liberalism as their guiding philosophy is to balance the demands of the various interest groups in society, directing conflicts by rule of law so justice might serve to bring these groups equal access to life, liberty, and property.

Yet there is a problem that haunts liberal politics. In Marxist analysis, the problem can be viewed as a contradiction rooted capitalism that creates a discrepancy between the liberty every citizen is supposed to have, theoretically, and the actual liberty that they are able to exercise. The problem that haunts liberal politics is the existence of social, political, or economic groups which, by virtue of historical precedents, exercise control over the make up of U.S. society unlike that of any other group in their respective social, political, or economic category.

Racially, we find that white people have a privileged status above all other races, the history of the U.S. bestowing upon them inherited wealth absent from people of color. Whites are five times more likely than people of color to inherit wealth, and they inherit wealth nearly three times the value of that which is inherited by those of other races. People of colors' lack of access to wealthy social strata lead to other social inequities as well, such as the unemployment level of African American's being consistently twice that of their white counterparts.

Regarding gender, men continue to operate as heads of their households, typically making 25 percent more than women in a given occupation and compromising 84 percent of the top executive positions in U.S. corporations.

With regards to sexuality, U.S. society remains so heteronormative that the law itself still has not adapted to provide even rudimentary equality. Lesbian and gay couples have the freedom to marry in only six states, five states have laws which make bar them from being free to adopt children, and 19 states provide absolutely no employment protection for LGBTQ individuals.

Perhaps the most striking inequity is that which those in a capitalist nation are supposed to accept as normal: the rule of the capialist class. In the last five years, the AARP has been the only non-corporate entity to appear among the top 20 highest spending lobbying groups. It is through lobbying, and outside policy discussion groups like the recently exposed American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), that issues are brought to the political arena for discussion.

Any given individual may have privilege in one area, yet may lack privilege in another. However, to be among the economic elite of the U.S. it is often required that a person have a great number of intersecting privileges. Numerous sociological studies on power, following the model established by G. William Domhoff, indicate that corporate directors are over 80 percent white and 80 percent male. The capitalist class is largely comprised of small numbers of individuals from each privileged category thus far described.

In positioning itself in opposition to the various people's movements seeking equality in the 1960s, the Republican Party has made itself the Party of the totally privileged. Manipulating the selfish impulses of individuals, the only people who the Republican Party won in the 2012 election were those who identified primarily as wealthy, straight, white or masculine. The Republican Party today represents the interests of a small amount of wholly privileged who have benefited from original appropriation, and manipulates others of partial privilege with racism, sexism, and homophobia in order to prevent the realization of freedom and justice for all.

In the last four years this has become shockingly evident. The Republicans openly identify as a force of obstruction in U.S. politics, and operate proactively only where they desire the destruction of laws or institutions which promote even the most minimal equality. In 2010, they were "the Party of NO" when the Democratic majority sought to solve the problem of 45 million U.S. citizens' lack of health care. Later that year, they opposed allowing LGBTQ persons serve openly in the military. Since 2010, they staunchly opposed raising revenue by letting the Bush tax cuts expire for the wealthy, and have several times taken the economy of the U.S. hostage to demand cuts to the social safety net. Republicans have lead the assault on labor in Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio and Michigan, reintroduced obstructions to voting with Voter ID laws, and most recently forced the Violence Against Women Act to expire.

As long as the interests of the privileged are regarded as no different from those of the oppressed, as liberalism is philosophically bound to do, the U.S. will be engaged in a never-ending back-and-forth struggle. But the interest groups of the wealthy, white, male, and straight are exceptional. Unlike other social groups, historical precedent has unjustly placed them in positions of power, with the strongest among them in control an economic system which perpetuates inequality by operating as if the social forces of racism, sexism, classism, and heteronormativity do not exist.

It is this reason that Marxists refer to capitalist democracy as a dictatorship of the bourgeousie. In the time Marx introduced this idea, dictatorship did not correspond to an authoritarian structure of government, but refered to the postion of a social group which had the final say on an issue. The definitive yes, or NO. Thus, the alternative, the dictatorship of the proletariat, is representative of popular power which overcomes the back-and-forth of a decaying capitalist democracy.

The Republican Party and conservative forces have an easier set of tasks to accomplish than do their progressive counterparts. Operating within liberal democracy by acting as if they represent legitimate interests, they retain power by obstruction and destruction, the latter of which they have become experts at as a minority party. Identifying the labor movement as a powerful force that rallies voters for the Democrats, they have set about removing the collective bargaining rights of workers throughout the union-strong states of the upper Midwest. Seeing the growing population of people of color, they pass threatening legislation modeled after Arizona's SB1070 throughout the South, as well as discourage voting with Voter ID laws.

Progressives must not shrink from stacking the game in their favor. If progressives are serious about realizing equality, it is time to recognize that socialism, not capitalism, is better suited to deliver the promises of justice and liberty; to stop talking about the concepts as ideals in a liberal legal framework, but to make them real through socialist political action.

As conservatives and the Republican Party increasingly define themselves as obstructionists, the next four years should be viewed as an opportunity for progressives to define themselves as the political actors who will take the U.S. out of political gridlock and into the future. In work to defeat conservatism, progressives should be planning one step ahead of the game so that the Republican Party, with no right to the power it currently exercises, is wholly unable to recover from defeat.

There are a plethora of laws and potential institutions that can be constructed to undermine conservative power and create greater equality.

The Move to Amend coalition is pushing for a Constitutional Amendment that clarifies corporations do not have the same rights as people. Even if it does not result in an Amendment, the effort could force the Supreme Court to clarify how corporations may and may not interfere in politics. Law could be established that limits or eliminates corporations' power to donate to politicians or lobby.

In certain states, early voting assisted working people and people of color in being able to vote in the last election. Progressives could organize to implement early voting in states which do not allow it, or allow it in a prohibitively short time period. It is also worth seeking alternatives to the now defunct Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN).

Before Michigan passed Right to Work legislation, a coalition of unions in the state went on the offensive and sought to enshrine the right of state employees to collectively bargain in the Michigan Constitution. This measure was defeated, but now provides progressives with model legislation. Further, a renewed effort could be made to pass the Employee Free Choice Act.

In the height of the Occupy movement, the United Steelworkers published Sustainable Jobs Sustainable Communities: The Union Co-op Model, a detailed paper on how workplaces could be run as worker cooperatives. Combine this idea with the push to establish state-owned banks like the Bank of North Dakota, which could be used to finance worker cooperatives, and the 99% could begin to address the Recession in an innovative new way while simultaneously building its own power outside of an increasingly conservative manufacturing sector.

Over the course of the last half-century the women's movement, movements for racial justice, LGBTQ rights and workers' movements have struggled for, and won, many battles. With each victory, many of those who have lost formerly unchallenged privileges have been manipulated through the culture war narrative into joining the conservative backlash. The social forces represented by the Republican Party should not be left to define the quality of any person, and organized conservatism has no right to defend the lingering historical legacy of social chauvinisms and original appropriation.

If the Republican Party wants nothing done, progressives should make sure they are able to do nothing. If liberalism taught the disenfranchised to dream the American Dream, Marxism is the method that will make that dream a reality for all.