Great essay with exactly the right political balance, I think. Something that's amazing to me over the past year is how quickly the Democrats (and Obama personally) are to back down from even association with a "radical" position or individual.

As you point out, this can be a lesson about which paths are, and are not, open for us and our political hopes. It definitely gives some undeserved legitimacy to Beck and the far right demagogues.

It's always been strange to me how much even having the vaguest historical connection to radical left politics can be such a curse for US politicians. In New Zealand there are quite a few MPs with communist and anarchist pasts.

<i>In New Zealand there are quite a few MPs with communist and anarchist pasts.
</i>

Hell. Gordon Brown has a radical past.

Nothing much to add here. This hits the nail on the head.

<i>Our main point is: This is how a system defines and limits allowable politics. This is how a “political mainstream” is invented, and then enforced. This is how the most promising solutions for the worlds problems (socialism, universal health rights, redistributing wealth, opposition to U.S. imperialism, guaranteed jobs, internationalism….) become demonized and marginalized.

</i>

One reason Van Jones was taken out is because there was not enough organizational strength at the base to defend him and back him up. A dozen 'Green for All' NGO groups, even with hundreds of hip-hop youth, is not nearly enough. The trade union leadership has a hard time seeing the necessity of defending its own, let alone allies in its Blue-Green Alliance

The far left and anarchist groups are useless because they oppose Jones anyway and have no clout in these base arenas anyway. Perhaps they'll change, but from what I see, they're just becoming more fragmented and marginalized.

And I'm still waiting for a practical contemporary example in this country of what MikeE sees as the revolutionary alternative.

distortion, lunatic paranoia, barely concealed racism, and very conscious indifference to burning issues, basic morality and truth.

you mean kinda like what your heros did to Sarah Palin and Dick Cheney?

Goodness, that's quite a leap. From defending one post and one reformist program, I'm now supposedly declaring the system to be neutral and up for grabs if we just have enough lefties in the streets. Or at least holding illusions about the same.

Please, Mike, you'll have to do better than that.

If you want to amass the power the get rid of the system altogether, don't you think you could also have--and need--the strength to defend a few minor gains along the way?

Van Jones' case holds a number of lessons, but I don't think this is one of them.

Team Obama is hell-bent on subordinating everything to kissing the butts of the insurance companies, derivative speculators and the wing of Empire that thinks 'Long Wars' lead to victory in Afghanistan. Its current method is to dump the left, split the progressives and conciliate to the far right. It's the road to perdition, and will lead them to greater defeats. Unfortunately, the main victors will be on the right in the shorter run, making our tasks even more difficult. Perhaps wiser people will eventually prevail, but I'm not counting on it, at least until the relation of forces becomes a lot more in our favor.

<i>One reason Van Jones was taken out is because there was not enough organizational strength at the base to defend him and back him up.</i>

Isn't Jones' decision to join the Obama administration a sympton of this weakness?

Back in 2002 and 2003, when there were gigantic anti-war protests, the Democrats and their operatives deliberately worked to undermine them, to demobilize and deradicalize people who had been pushed left by the extremism of George W. Bush and the stolen election in 2000. This is very difficult to prove conclusively but I can cite you 100 examples of liberal red baiting and "concern" over the idea that the anti-war movement might be dominated by "communists" (ie people like Jones). In other words, part of the modus operandi of the Democrats is to drive elite young activists like Jones into the party, then, of course, to sandbag them at the first sign of trouble.

In spite of the corporate media's double standard (and 100 teabaggers will draw more mainstream coverage than 100,000 anti-war protesters), the Democrats (and I'm talking about their progressive activist base not their corporate elite) have brought this on themselves. Jones should have seen this coming the moment he got to Washington. He probably did. But the more radical alternative had already been cut off by the very people he was going to work for.

And if you want one very concrete example, take the obstacles the Democrats put up against third parties getting on the ballot.

A lot of the discussion seems to be swirling around "what is to be done". An open dialogue and an honest critique of the state of revolutionary movements in the United States and the historic failures of Marxism to overcome capital in the 19th and 20th centuries is an excellent start.

As far as how to organize a movement--- in practical terms this is difficult. Mass movements don't appear out of anywhere and they really can't be willed into being by a revolutionary minority. Like Marx said, “Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given, and transmitted by the past.”

I think that a strategy of patience, of the slow building of oppositional social forces is what the left needs to be engaged in today. In practice terms what segments of the working class and other groups can be organized most easy and form the early base of such a movement is important to discuss. The immigrant worker populations, students, other marginalized groups, etc. I don't expect the mainstream unions to be a part of this movement at the start, but I do think that dismissing the white working class as hopelessly reactionary or rejecting modernity or Enlightenment values is profoundly anti-Marxist.

recommended: http://theactivist.org/blog/the-current-relevance-of-an-old-debate

<blockquote> This is where the Kautskyan “strategy of patience” comes in, where the workers’ party/movement builds up its forces over the long term to the point at which it is finally able to take power with majority support. The party refuses get-rich-quick coalitionist schemes as well “mass strike” fantasies. It instead fights, as the early SPD did, for an opposition that will openly express the independent interests of the working class. Without beginning with the struggle for an opposition, there is no chance of confronting in the future the problem of an alternative governing authority to that of the capitalists. </blockquote>


Excuse any errors, I'm on my way out and not giving this a read over.

<i>Other countries have other ways of marginalizing and coopting radical movements. The U.S. never had a broad, mass Labor Party or Communist movement</i>

I think also that the current role of the United States is to serve as "muscle" for capitalism. We're the enforcer, the hockey thug.

In some ways, we serve the same role that Russia did in Europe in the 1830s and 1840s, when democratic revolutions in Central Europe were always in danger of being put down by the Czar's armies.

France, Germany, Japan, Scandinavia, Canada are all demilitarized parts of the same interntional capitalism. The fact that none of these countries serves the role of thug/enforcer allows their populations to live under slightly less ideologically repressive systems. So they can have single payer health insurance. They can debate global warming. They don't have hordes of Christianists intimidating abortion providers or school teachers who want to teach evolution.

It's not that Americans are more reactionary as individuals than Canadians or Frenchman. But we do play a different role in the structure of international capitalism.

No surprise here. The Dems use people like these to dupe workers looking for alternatives into supporting them. Once they no longer need them, they drop them off like a bag of trash. It's like Lewis using reds to organize the mines before later abandoning them.

<i>I think also that the current role of the United States is to serve as “muscle” for capitalism. We’re the enforcer, the hockey thug.

In some ways, we serve the same role that Russia did in Europe in the 1830s and 1840s, when democratic revolutions in Central Europe were always in danger of being put down by the Czar’s armies.

France, Germany, Japan, Scandinavia, Canada are all demilitarized parts of the same interntional capitalism. The fact that none of these countries serves the role of thug/enforcer allows their populations to live under slightly less ideologically repressive systems. So they can have single payer health insurance. They can debate global warming. They don’t have hordes of Christianists intimidating abortion providers or school teachers who want to teach evolution.

It’s not that Americans are more reactionary as individuals than Canadians or Frenchman. But we do play a different role in the structure of international capitalism.</i>

This is a silly analysis. To begin with single-payer health care isn't a grand concession from the capitalist class--- it's in the class interest of large segments of the American bourgeoisie. I also fail to see how religious fundamentalism in the United States is a product of the strength of capital here.

<i>To begin with single-payer health care isn’t a grand concession from the capitalist class— it’s in the class interest of large segments of the American bourgeoisie. </i>

OK. My analysis may be "silly" but I'm having a hard time figuring out what you're actually trying to say here.

Are you saying it's in the interests of American capital to provide single payer health insurance and it's irrational not to? Or are you arguing that it's in the interests of American capital not to provide single payer health insurance to Americans? Or are you arguing that it's in the interests of American capital to allow single payer health insurance in Europe but not in America?

And if single payer health insurance is in the interests of American capital (ie it would make the American auto companies more competetive) why have single payer advocates been so easily steamrolled in the national debate? Why isn't it at the table?

<i>I also fail to see how religious fundamentalism in the United States is a product of the strength of capital here.
</i>

I didn't say it was. I said it was the product of the position of the United States within the overall capitalist system. The United States is rensponbible for almost 50% of the world's military spending as a whole. That dwarfs the entire EU and Japan combined.

Note. I also think Jones' position probably doomed him. "Green Jobs Czar" means little to most people. What's a "green job" anyway? It sounds like something of a entry level position where you wouldn't be as carefully vetted as some other positions, a bit like a job you'd get on Wall Street "cold calling".

Here's a brief description of his job by an Obama insider.


<i>Van Jones has been a strong voice for green jobs and we look forward to having him work with departments and agencies to advance the President’s agenda of creating 21st century jobs that improve energy efficiency and utilize renewable resources. Jones will also help to shape and advance the Administration’s energy and climate initiatives with a specific interest in improvements and opportunities for vulnerable communities.

</i>

I'm still not sure what he did after reading this. Did he have any chance to set standards or any real budget?

I apologize for dismissing your point as silly and offering a very short, glib response. My apologizes comrade.

"And if single payer health insurance is in the interests of American capital (ie it would make the American auto companies more competetive) why have single payer advocates been so easily steamrolled in the national debate? Why isn’t it at the table?"

An excellent question, one that Henwood grappled with in the last Left Business Observer. You are obviously aware of the concept of trade union consciousness versus working class (socialist consciousness). Part of the reason why CEOs who personally support single-payer (the gran bourgeoisie) aren't openly advocating for single-payer is the idea that if the government expropriates an insurance company and single-payer has public support-- will this open up the door for more expropriations and further inroads into the rights of capital.

Also the petit-bourgeoisie, which is an influential lobby in Congress, might see single-payer as an attempt by big business to shift costs onto small business.

Large parts of this issue is also a deeply ideological one.... America does have an anti-government ethos. But I suppose someone could argue that single-payer would make workers less fearful of losing their jobs, which would perhaps work against the drive of the capitalist to maximize the rate of exploitation.

OK. Here's a better description of what Jones did.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103456763 />
<i>"We've got about $40 billion in the recovery package that is targeted toward renewable energy, green-job training, energy efficiency, and part of my job is to help to coordinate getting all that money out into the economy, making jobs for people."
</i>

Does this mean the government still has 40 billion dollars of stimulus money set aside to create "green jobs" for the federal government, in projects sponsored by the federal government?

Or does it mean that local contracters and state governments will get federal money if they meet certain standards Jones would have been responsible for imposing?

<i>In response to criticism that many of the Obama administration's proposed shovel-ready projects could hurt the environment, Jones says the efforts are focused primarily on jobs that make our buildings more efficient.

"We have millions of buildings across the country that are wasting energy," he says.
</i>

<i>Large parts of this issue is also a deeply ideological one…. America does have an anti-government ethos.</i>

Unless it's about the military or the prison industrial complex. Then Americans have a profoundly pro-government ethos. Nobody ever lost an election in America promising to spend more money on guns and jails.

I think it was during the second debate between Obama and McCain. I'm not sure if it was the second. But it was one of the debates. McCain said something like "we need to spend money on the military without thinking about limits" and Obama just agreed with him.

I can't imagine this in the EU or Canada.

<i>But I suppose someone could argue that single-payer would make workers less fearful of losing their jobs, which would perhaps work against the drive of the capitalist to maximize the rate of exploitation.
</i>

That just about hits the nail on the head. And I guess the Europeans and Canadians might eventually lose their safety nets too.

Carl,

Was Van wrong to work in the 1990s as a member of a group committed to "organizing a revolutionary movement"?

On what basis, precisely, were we supposed to back up Van? I was contemplating whether my signature on a petition would do him more harm than good when I learned that he was out. But I was genuinely conflicted. It seems to me that the vocal efforts to defend Van basically accepted the demonization of his revolutionary past and sought to insist that it didn't reflect the "real" Van Jones. WE were being asked to treat his revolutionary activism as a youthful indiscretion a la George Bush's binge drinking.

I think that the revolutionary left in the US needs to develop serious methods of work in the electoral arena, but I think that it needs to do so precisely from the point of view of "organizing a revolutionary movement."

When you say there was "not enough organizational strength at the base to defend him and back him up” I wonder what base you are talking about and on what political basis you think it needs to organize itself. The way I see it, in the absence of an organized and explicitly revolutionary movement, there will never be the forces to successfully defend someone like Van in a situation like this except on the basis of <b>repudiating</b> revolutionary politics. As long as we refuse to speak explicitly about revolution in our mass work, all that we do to build the "progressive wing" of the Democratic Party will never produce not just the organizational strength, but, more importantly, the political clarity, to beat back anti-communist witch hunts like the one that just took down Van. Put another way, anti-communism will always prevail in the absence of an actual communist movement willing to speak up in its own defense.

Re: Jones and the 9/11 Truth Movement.

I remembered an old column Robert Fisk wrote about the 9/11 Truth Movement.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-even-i-question-the-truth-about-911-462904.html

Here's the money quote:

<i>Each time I lecture abroad on the Middle East, there is always someone in the audience – just one – whom I call the "raver". Apologies here to all the men and women who come to my talks with bright and pertinent questions – often quite humbling ones for me as a journalist – and which show that they understand the Middle East tragedy a lot better than the journalists who report it. But the "raver" is real. He has turned up in corporeal form in Stockholm and in Oxford, in Sao Paulo and in Yerevan, in Cairo, in Los Angeles and, in female form, in Barcelona. No matter the country, there will always be a "raver".</i>

<i>His – or her – question goes like this. Why, if you believe you're a free journalist, don't you report what you really know about 9/11? Why don't you tell the truth – that the Bush administration (or the CIA or Mossad, you name it) blew up the twin towers? Why don't you reveal the secrets behind 9/11? The assumption in each case is that Fisk knows – that Fisk has an absolute concrete, copper-bottomed fact-filled desk containing final proof of what "all the world knows" (that usually is the phrase) – who destroyed the twin towers. Sometimes the "raver" is clearly distressed. One man in Cork screamed his question at me, and then – the moment I suggested that his version of the plot was a bit odd – left the hall, shouting abuse and kicking over chairs.</i>

Here's a video of Amy Goodman being harassed by Kevin Barrett

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2yC4xgeVMM />
Here's a video of Michael Moore being cornered by 9/11 Truthers

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1gk7iqNksg&amp;feature=related />
The reality is that I think a lot of prominent progressive people were targetted by (usually wingnutty) 9/11 Truthers and hounded. Since there certainly are a lot of unanswered questions about 9/11 (I read the 9/11 Commission Report through twice and concluded most of it was just filler) the progressive (Amy Goodman, Michael Moore, Robert Fisk, Van Jones) finally breaks down and says "well yes. I agree with you. There are a lot of gaps in the narrative."

He/She is then presented with some kind of petition to sign. If he/she balks, he/she continues to be harassed.

I think Jones most likely signed that petition just to get people to leave him alone.

We've been through this many times, 'Tell No Lies.'

Promoting 'revolution' in 'mass work'? In nonrevolutionary conditions? Exactly how do you propose doing that? (Carrying Red flags and wearing orange doesn't count).

Socialism today is a task of revolutionary education, propaganda work and theoretical work with the advanced. That's the way I do revolutionary work on the matter of replacing this system with another. There are occasional opportunities to reach beyond that, like the Republic Windows battles, but they don't pop up every day. When they do, we make the most of them.

A socialist revolution is not today a slogan of mass action, ie, 'dual power, seize the factories, all power to the workers councils.' When we shift to a revolutionary upsurge and an insurrectionary period, things will be different. But using slogans and tactics appropriate THEN in today's conditions make no sense and is self-defeating.

As for mass work today, we try to unite a majority of the workers and their allies around mass democratic tasks--'out now' from the wars, pass EFCA, pass HR676, expand Green Jobs, Debt relief for students and youth, etc--and build mass organizations with both an electoral and social movement capacity that belong to the workers themselves.

Within that context, we also build more advanced organization, socialist organization, to unite a militant minority, and grow its strength as well. In brief, we link our mass democratic and our socialist tasks, but we understand they are not the same.

The attack on Van Jones in part of an overall racist assault on Obama's election by rightwing forces who refuse to accept a Black man in the Oval office. You defend him by exposing the racist character of what is happening. You don't have tp defend every plank in Obama's platform to do so. In fact, you also oppose Obama on a whole range of issues.

You also defend Van Jones' program, Green Jobs, which is at its core a survival program for inner city youth--and that's why its singled out for attack. 'Not strong enough' in this context means that there is not mass political organization of inner city youth on a large enough scale to secure wider allies and defend these programs and keep Jones at his post. The potential is there, but it's not nearly developed enough.

It's not an approach you can fit on a bumper sticker; you have to think things through that can be complicated. But the situation is complicated these days.

i too think the revolutionary left was not in much of a position to defend Van Jones when he is being attacked for formerly being apart of the revolutionary left. It strikes me as ironic that VJ's resignation comes on the heels of so many dems lauding the "lion of the senate" Ted Kennedy. Where were the lions of the democratic party day after day while Jones was being attacked on Fox News? Where are the lions while town hall meetings become organizing platforms for the right. Where are the lions when Obama, yes OBAMA is pushing for a troop increase in Afghanistan that new old war that Obama is escalating.

I too debating more publicly defending Van Jones when my name too can be associated with the lunatic left that is so easily dismissed while Glenn Beck has a frakking TV show.

Still I too felt like many dismissed these attacks quickly b/c we don't agree with Van Jones politics today.

Beyond all this I can't even foresee who the fuck would have stood up and said No. Who. Jon Stewart? Seriously I can only hope that Stewart or Mahar would laugh at the madness of our current administrations repeat failures to stand up for even the BS they supposedly believe in. It's just sickening that this is where we are at. We are fighters. We are. It's time to choose targets. Build campaigns. Strengthen organizations and take to the streets. We are lions. They are paper tigers.

John Stewart back in 2005 reflected the mainstream Democratic liberal desire to demobilize the anti-war movement.

It's worth revisiting.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-september-27-2005/headlines---march-of-the-peaceniks

Cindy Sheehan: The media isn't doing their job

John Stewart: Clearly most of you don't have jobs

Yep. He actually said that.

I work in the Bronx and was part of one of the few green jobs initiative in the country that benefited from the federal stimulus package. We were given a huge increase in our budget for our weatherization program that helped a lot of us from losing our jobs in our non-profit while the for- profit sector was chopping off heads left and right. The program says what it does, hires mostly low income males of color (who have one of the highest percentages of unemployment in this country) and gives them a chance to work on construction related jobs to create energy efficient alternatives for tenants and landlords in low income housing. We were just beginning to implement a collaborative program for jobs, working with weatherization programs, training facilities, youth centers and green worker unions to launch a program and set up a meeting with the green jobs czar. This program would have helped hundreds of young unemployed men in the Bronx, men who were formerly incarcerated and/or do not have the opportunity to go to college. What happens now, well I don’t know.

This is the real cost of this "witch hunt." Van can write a book. The right can keep mobilizing through the many networks, PACs, and secret societies it has that gets at the core of people's souls and makes them believe that anything for the public is anti- Christ. (Or at least create enough of a spectacle so the left can feel utterly defeated and believe a lot of folks think this.) The left can write on their blogs and say I told you so. In the meantime all of us are engaged in further marginalizing those who have the least.

The major difference between the extreme right and the radical left, is that the right has insiders and outsiders. Those pushing their cause within the system and those on the outside building a movement, a culture of resistance to the state. The left is divided on what it wants in the inside, is supported by some social justice organizations that knock on doors and achieve some reformist victories but are severely marginalized from radical left rhetoric, theory. There is some support for the Onion and the Daily Show and a few communist rags that slip under the door but mostly progressives and liberals, do-gooders and even some revolutionaries still see "culture" and “media” as entertainment, while the right is armed with this tool in order to shape the minds of the public and create cultural hegemony.

Here is the challenge. There is no perfect industry to mobilize, and the most organized elements in the society next to progressive workers in collectives or politically advanced unions are social justice activists. We are the ones trying to figure out how to transform the society. There are many socialists out there who are pushing forward reforms in this sector waiting for further direction from revolutionary organizations, but all’s we hear is that we are wrong to fight for schools or low income housing in luxury buildings, or for green jobs, that we must fight for revolution. The right however does not seem to see contradictions with the short term goal of defending landlords and insurance firms and the long term goal of running a capitalist theocracy. The right has vigilante forces that kill “Repugnant” elements and the left struggles with whether or not to defend ourselves. Instead of actively engaging in a strategy to attack the right and be on the offense, we keep pointing fingers at one another and making assumptions on who is truly the more radical leftist and who is a sellout.

In the meantime, the right has its reform agenda down pat and it is closely linked with a cultural strategy with wiggle room of ( less radical) innocuous anti-communist propaganda to ( more radical) new world run by born agains. We have a lot to learn from them.

I think the name "Lani Guenier" is mis-spelled.

[moderator note: <a href="/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lani_Guinier" rel="nofollow">Lani Guinier</a> seems correct.]