Building a System-Changing Response to Trump and Trumpism at All Levels
Wednesday, 30 November 2016 00:00 By Gar Alperovitz, Truthout | Op-Ed
People join hands during a protest of Donald Trump's election around Lake
Merritt in Oakland, California, on November 13, 2016. (Photo: Jim Wilson /
The New York Times)
Any serious perspective on how to respond to the election of Donald Trump
must begin by recognizing that his victory flowed in substantial part from
the growing global crisis of capitalism, which demands a specific strategic
response. The response must begin with -- but also go beyond -- the urgent
work of defending, wherever and however possible, the individuals and
communities most at risk.
At the most obvious level, our collective response must build upon the
energies illuminated by Bernie Sanders' "democratic socialist" campaign,
Black Lives Matter, climate justice, the mobilization in Standing Rock
against the Dakota Access Pipeline, the Green Party, LGBTQ activism,
immigration activism, People's Action and many, many other efforts. It must
also find ways to bring such energies together with the community-level
organizing aimed at democratizing the economic system from the ground up,
starting with the development of alternative institutions and building
toward a larger vision.
The Global Economic Crisis
The angry and unpredicted Brexit vote in Britain was clearly related to the
anger that produced the Trump election. Something deeper than the
contingencies of the electoral cycle is at work: both upsets are related in
part to the fact that globalization is destroying jobs and undermining
economic stability in nation after nation, even as the collapse of
traditional unions (the previous muscle behind progressive politics) has
weakened social democracy everywhere.
Anger at this economic decay, exacerbated by longstanding racism and fear of
"outsiders" -- immigrants, Muslims, Latinos, and a host of others -- is
fueling a toxic political mix throughout the world. Almost certainly we will
see further explosions of unexpected political challenge as social democracy
fails to deliver the goods and backing deepens for right-wing movements in
support of Marine Le Pen in next year's elections in France and political
challenges to Angela Merkel's government in Germany.
The global crisis is not likely to lead to a full collapse, as some Marxists
once held (though not Marx himself in certain writings about the United
States, Britain and the Netherlands). Rather, it is likely to be a crisis of
protracted economic decay and deepening pain, punctuated by explosive
episodes and the continuing erosion of legitimacy -- and with it
potentially, too, the slow build-up of a response at all levels, both
practical and systemic in direction.
The Collapse of Labor Power
In the United States, the collapse of labor union strength as the basis of
traditional liberalism has been dramatic: Labor union power has gone from 34
percent of the labor force to a mere 11 percent overall and 6 percent in the
private sector, and it continues to decline. Though many other elements are
involved, organized labor has been the necessary foundation of modern
progressive politics. The right understands this fully: From Ronald Reagan's
dismantling of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization, to
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's all-out attack on public unions, undermining
labor has been a central -- and highly effective -- way to gut the power
base of traditional liberalism. When combined with ongoing conservative
efforts to suppress the vote in communities of color by any means necessary,
the results are disastrous. "Institutions matter," observes historian
Michael Kazin of unions. In addition to contributing directly to the
building of political power, unions "give their members (or audience) a
community in which to learn about politics and discuss ways to tilt the
world in a progressive direction." Without institutional connections,
individuals swim in a lonely political sea, ready to be preyed upon by the
likes of Trump.
We must actively support unions whenever and wherever viable, but they are
not likely to return in strength -- and not only because of hostile
legislation and policy, but because of structural forces at work in the
global economy. Whatever can be done to strengthen unions must be done, but
a new institutional base for a serious progressive direction must clearly be
developed elsewhere.
Lessons From History
We may take some guidance from history. The civil rights movement, the
feminist movement, the LGBTQ liberation movement -- and even the modern
conservative movement (which had limited capacity in the 1940s) -- all
understood that the development of a new political direction can only come
from a long, long struggle. It is a struggle that involves practical
organizing, institution-building and political activism, along with the
build-up, too, of a morally serious vision of a new future direction.
Prior to the 1930s, key elements of what became the New Deal were developed
slowly, step by step, in the state and local "laboratories of democracy" --
as was a new politics that built from the bottom up as it created new
institutions and a progressive liberal vision that, at the time, offered
something to hope for, work for and counter the traditional embedded
corporate power that dominated the final decades of the 19th century and the
first two decades of the 20th.
In our own time, anew politics must build a new and different institutional
power base, step by agonizing step, along with a compelling new vision of
the future based on a radical democratization of the economy, starting at
the community level and working up. It must be fleshed out with the powerful
and explicit political energies illuminated by Bernie Sanders' "democratic
socialist" campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, augmented
and intensified by the movement-building efforts of many allied groups --
above all, those organizing in defense of the civil rights of the rising new
electorate in what will soon be a nation in which no single racial or ethnic
group can claim the majority.
Unless an energized new fusion of local organizing, institution-building and
national progressive political energies is achieved and steadily brought
together around a compelling and transformative vision, the imbalance of
power illuminated in the recent election is likely to get worse, not better.
Donald Trump will not be the last right-wing politician who will exploit the
deepening economic crisis, fear of immigrants, the collapse of union power
and the lack of deep economic organizing on the left.
Building on "Local Socialism"
That millions of Americans are open to -- and responsive to -- a politics of
"democratic socialism" is an important lesson of the Sanders campaign and of
numerous polls demonstrating such support, particularly among the young who
are building and will build the next politics. What is missing is
recognition that institutional foundations must be established if a
broad-based new politics involving diverse groups and a new direction is to
move beyond sporadic explosions of excitement to the achievement of real
power.
This is where little-discussed "new economy" work going on at the local
level in many parts of the country comes into play: Given the decay,
conservatism and disinterest of the corporate media, there has been minimal
awareness of intense activist efforts to build "democratized" economic
institutions at the local level in diverse parts of the nation. Nonetheless,
in community after community, activists are developing cooperative
businesses grounded in community ownership, community land trusts to
confront gentrification and displacement, city-owned public banks and
community financial institutions in response to the brutal abstractions of
financialization, public broadband companies in many cities, even attempting
the takeover and socialization of electric utilities to deal with climate
change.
Taken together, rather than anecdotally and in isolation, there is a wave of
energy invested in a steadily expanding range of cooperative and "local
socialist" institutions of democratic ownership designed to lift up and
strengthen local economies.
Though the intensity of this growing effort -- and its likely expansive
future trajectory -- have yet to be fully acknowledged, three quite distinct
realities are critical:
The first is that new institutions of democratic ownership are beginning to
suggest the outlines that a radically decentralized, pluralist,
community-nurturing democratic socialist vision might take -- one that
mirrors and extends some of the things Sanders pioneered long ago locally as
mayor of Burlington, Vermont.
The second reality is that the developing trajectory is slowly building a
new institutional power base for a politics that can add strength to -- but
also transcend -- traditional election mobilizations.
The third is that local developments are also beginning to suggest the
direction of overarching, larger and longer-term, system-wide possibilities.
Working Toward a Pluralist Commonwealth
The development of a new local democratic economy buildup is also on track
to converge with the current strictly political mobilization that the
Sanders campaign has demonstrated is possible. It is likely to be expanded
and deepened by the Sanders "Our Revolution" effort, by Sen. Elizabeth
Warren, by Rep. Keith Ellison and by movement activists working on critical
issues at every level throughout the country.
Ultimately, both the local efforts and the national political mobilizations
will have to move beyond the faltering ideology of progressive liberalism in
the United States and social democracy in Europe -- both of which accept the
theory that corporate power at the center of the system can be regulated and
"incentivized" to achieve democratic outcomes. Those days, even at their
best, were limited in their outcomes (the United States ranked last among
advanced systems on virtually every major social and environmental
indicator, even before Trump's victory.)
Ultimately, too, larger institutional power must be confronted. The US
government de facto nationalized General Motors, Chrysler, AIG and, in a
different way, several major banks during the most recent crisis. The
reconstruction of the idea of democratic ownership from the bottom up, along
with a new politics, is the precondition of building a movement and the
basis of a longer-term strategy that understands the need to create -- and
decentralize -- democratically controlled public institutions at every
level, including the very largest.
The diverse and plural forms democratic ownership is already taking -- and
is likely to take -- suggest a vision that might be called a "pluralist
commonwealth."
What is perhaps even more significant than the Trump victory is Sanders'
demonstration that the ideological hegemony that has blocked new and bolder
thinking can be challenged: That millions of Americans voted for a
democratic socialist in the recent campaigns suggests that a compelling and
practical approach that challenges the stale neoliberal consensus in ways
far beyond the initial Sanders program may be viable.
This is especially the case if a new vision of community, in many senses of
the word, is built and put forward from the ground up -- a vision that also
does not duck the larger regional and national questions as time goes on.
Facing the Challenges of the Trump Era
Clearly, the first challenge of the Trump era is to defend and protect those
most threatened -- including Latino and Latina, Black and Muslim
communities, the gay and transgender communities, and the women who will
likely face a Supreme Court hostile to their basic right to control their
own bodies.
The second is to work to achieve whatever limited gains may still be
possible through traditional political efforts. The deeper challenge,
however, is not simply political (though it is that.) It is profoundly
existential: to recognize, personally, the depth of the crisis we face and
the need to deal with, rather than avoid, its demands. The old ways are now
dying and are unlikely to be rebuilt in significant ways.
Even as resistance is mobilized, unless a much more serious politics is
steadily developed -- one that does not ignore "current" possibilities, but
one that is also profoundly aware of the need to move thoughtfully beyond to
deeper institutional and systemic change -- there is little likelihood the
powerful forces gathering around Trump in the United States and others even
more dangerous in other advanced systems will be seriously challenged.
As we do the necessary work of defending those most in danger, and seek to
slowly build a new coming together of traditional progressive politics with
the institutional development of a radically decentralized community-based
vision, it may accordingly help to reflect on the position of civil rights
workers in Mississippi in the 1930s and 1940s, the decades before the
movement became a movement -- a time of acute brutality and danger. As in
the prehistory of all great eras of change, activists in that moment
consciously worked to lay down the institutional foundations as well as the
politics of a transformative new direction. This sort of work takes time and
commitment for the long haul. Sometimes it is darkest before the dawn.
Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.
GAR ALPEROVITZ
Gar Alperovitz, author most recently of What Then Must We Do? Straight Talk
About the Next American Revolution, is cochair of the Next System Project
and cofounder of the Democracy Collaborative. Alperovitz was deeply involved
in the teach-ins on the Vietnam War.
RELATED STORIES
System Change, or There and Back Again: Capitalism, Socialism, Fascism
By Richard D. Wolff, Truthout | News Analysis
System Change and Non-Reformist Reforms
By Gus Speth, Speakout | Op-Ed
Labor's Stockholm Syndrome: Why Unions Must Stop Backing Anti-Labor
Candidates in the Primaries
By Andrew Tillett-Saks, Truthout | Op-Ed
________________________________________
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Building a System-Changing Response to Trump and Trumpism at All Levels
Wednesday, 30 November 2016 00:00 By Gar Alperovitz, Truthout | Op-Ed
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. People join hands during a protest of Donald Trump's election
around Lake Merritt in Oakland, California, on November 13, 2016. (Photo:
Jim Wilson / The New York Times)
. Any serious perspective on how to respond to the election of Donald
Trump must begin by recognizing that his victory flowed in substantial part
from the growing global crisis of capitalism, which demands a specific
strategic response. The response must begin with -- but also go beyond --
the urgent work of defending, wherever and however possible, the individuals
and communities most at risk.
At the most obvious level, our collective response must build upon the
energies illuminated by Bernie Sanders' "democratic socialist" campaign,
Black Lives Matter, climate justice, the mobilization in Standing Rock
against the Dakota Access Pipeline, the Green Party, LGBTQ activism,
immigration activism, People's Action and many, many other efforts. It must
also find ways to bring such energies together with the community-level
organizing aimed at democratizing the economic system from the ground up,
starting with the development of alternative institutions and building
toward a larger vision.
The Global Economic Crisis
The angry and unpredicted Brexit vote in Britain was clearly related to the
anger that produced the Trump election. Something deeper than the
contingencies of the electoral cycle is at work: both upsets are related in
part to the fact that globalization is destroying jobs and undermining
economic stability in nation after nation, even as the collapse of
traditional unions (the previous muscle behind progressive politics) has
weakened social democracy everywhere.
Anger at this economic decay, exacerbated by longstanding racism and fear of
"outsiders" -- immigrants, Muslims, Latinos, and a host of others -- is
fueling a toxic political mix throughout the world. Almost certainly we will
see further explosions of unexpected political challenge as social democracy
fails to deliver the goods and backing deepens for right-wing movements in
support of Marine Le Pen in next year's elections in France and political
challenges to Angela Merkel's government in Germany.
The global crisis is not likely to lead to a full collapse, as some Marxists
once held (though not Marx himself in certain writings about the United
States, Britain and the Netherlands). Rather, it is likely to be a crisis of
protracted economic decay and deepening pain, punctuated by explosive
episodes and the continuing erosion of legitimacy -- and with it
potentially, too, the slow build-up of a response at all levels, both
practical and systemic in direction.
The Collapse of Labor Power
In the United States, the collapse of labor union strength as the basis of
traditional liberalism has been dramatic: Labor union power has gone from 34
percent of the labor force to a mere 11 percent overall and 6 percent in the
private sector, and it continues to decline. Though many other elements are
involved, organized labor has been the necessary foundation of modern
progressive politics. The right understands this fully: From Ronald Reagan's
dismantling of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization, to
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's all-out attack on public unions, undermining
labor has been a central -- and highly effective -- way to gut the power
base of traditional liberalism. When combined with ongoing conservative
efforts to suppress the vote in communities of color by any means necessary,
the results are disastrous. "Institutions matter," observes historian
Michael Kazin of unions. In addition to contributing directly to the
building of political power, unions "give their members (or audience) a
community in which to learn about politics and discuss ways to tilt the
world in a progressive direction." Without institutional connections,
individuals swim in a lonely political sea, ready to be preyed upon by the
likes of Trump.
We must actively support unions whenever and wherever viable, but they are
not likely to return in strength -- and not only because of hostile
legislation and policy, but because of structural forces at work in the
global economy. Whatever can be done to strengthen unions must be done, but
a new institutional base for a serious progressive direction must clearly be
developed elsewhere.
Lessons From History
We may take some guidance from history. The civil rights movement, the
feminist movement, the LGBTQ liberation movement -- and even the modern
conservative movement (which had limited capacity in the 1940s) -- all
understood that the development of a new political direction can only come
from a long, long struggle. It is a struggle that involves practical
organizing, institution-building and political activism, along with the
build-up, too, of a morally serious vision of a new future direction.
Prior to the 1930s, key elements of what became the New Deal were developed
slowly, step by step, in the state and local "laboratories of democracy" --
as was a new politics that built from the bottom up as it created new
institutions and a progressive liberal vision that, at the time, offered
something to hope for, work for and counter the traditional embedded
corporate power that dominated the final decades of the 19th century and the
first two decades of the 20th.
In our own time, anew politics must build a new and different institutional
power base, step by agonizing step, along with a compelling new vision of
the future based on a radical democratization of the economy, starting at
the community level and working up. It must be fleshed out with the powerful
and explicit political energies illuminated by Bernie Sanders' "democratic
socialist" campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, augmented
and intensified by the movement-building efforts of many allied groups --
above all, those organizing in defense of the civil rights of the rising new
electorate in what will soon be a nation in which no single racial or ethnic
group can claim the majority.
Unless an energized new fusion of local organizing, institution-building and
national progressive political energies is achieved and steadily brought
together around a compelling and transformative vision, the imbalance of
power illuminated in the recent election is likely to get worse, not better.
Donald Trump will not be the last right-wing politician who will exploit the
deepening economic crisis, fear of immigrants, the collapse of union power
and the lack of deep economic organizing on the left.
Building on "Local Socialism"
That millions of Americans are open to -- and responsive to -- a politics of
"democratic socialism" is an important lesson of the Sanders campaign and of
numerous polls demonstrating such support, particularly among the young who
are building and will build the next politics. What is missing is
recognition that institutional foundations must be established if a
broad-based new politics involving diverse groups and a new direction is to
move beyond sporadic explosions of excitement to the achievement of real
power.
This is where little-discussed "new economy" work going on at the local
level in many parts of the country comes into play: Given the decay,
conservatism and disinterest of the corporate media, there has been minimal
awareness of intense activist efforts to build "democratized" economic
institutions at the local level in diverse parts of the nation. Nonetheless,
in community after community, activists are developing cooperative
businesses grounded in community ownership, community land trusts to
confront gentrification and displacement, city-owned public banks and
community financial institutions in response to the brutal abstractions of
financialization, public broadband companies in many cities, even attempting
the takeover and socialization of electric utilities to deal with climate
change.
Taken together, rather than anecdotally and in isolation, there is a wave of
energy invested in a steadily expanding range of cooperative and "local
socialist" institutions of democratic ownership designed to lift up and
strengthen local economies.
Though the intensity of this growing effort -- and its likely expansive
future trajectory -- have yet to be fully acknowledged, three quite distinct
realities are critical:
The first is that new institutions of democratic ownership are beginning to
suggest the outlines that a radically decentralized, pluralist,
community-nurturing democratic socialist vision might take -- one that
mirrors and extends some of the things Sanders pioneered long ago locally as
mayor of Burlington, Vermont.
The second reality is that the developing trajectory is slowly building a
new institutional power base for a politics that can add strength to -- but
also transcend -- traditional election mobilizations.
The third is that local developments are also beginning to suggest the
direction of overarching, larger and longer-term, system-wide possibilities.
Working Toward a Pluralist Commonwealth
The development of a new local democratic economy buildup is also on track
to converge with the current strictly political mobilization that the
Sanders campaign has demonstrated is possible. It is likely to be expanded
and deepened by the Sanders "Our Revolution" effort, by Sen. Elizabeth
Warren, by Rep. Keith Ellison and by movement activists working on critical
issues at every level throughout the country.
Ultimately, both the local efforts and the national political mobilizations
will have to move beyond the faltering ideology of progressive liberalism in
the United States and social democracy in Europe -- both of which accept the
theory that corporate power at the center of the system can be regulated and
"incentivized" to achieve democratic outcomes. Those days, even at their
best, were limited in their outcomes (the United States ranked last among
advanced systems on virtually every major social and environmental
indicator, even before Trump's victory.)
Ultimately, too, larger institutional power must be confronted. The US
government de facto nationalized General Motors, Chrysler, AIG and, in a
different way, several major banks during the most recent crisis. The
reconstruction of the idea of democratic ownership from the bottom up, along
with a new politics, is the precondition of building a movement and the
basis of a longer-term strategy that understands the need to create -- and
decentralize -- democratically controlled public institutions at every
level, including the very largest.
The diverse and plural forms democratic ownership is already taking -- and
is likely to take -- suggest a vision that might be called a "pluralist
commonwealth."
What is perhaps even more significant than the Trump victory is Sanders'
demonstration that the ideological hegemony that has blocked new and bolder
thinking can be challenged: That millions of Americans voted for a
democratic socialist in the recent campaigns suggests that a compelling and
practical approach that challenges the stale neoliberal consensus in ways
far beyond the initial Sanders program may be viable.
This is especially the case if a new vision of community, in many senses of
the word, is built and put forward from the ground up -- a vision that also
does not duck the larger regional and national questions as time goes on.
Facing the Challenges of the Trump Era
Clearly, the first challenge of the Trump era is to defend and protect those
most threatened -- including Latino and Latina, Black and Muslim
communities, the gay and transgender communities, and the women who will
likely face a Supreme Court hostile to their basic right to control their
own bodies.
The second is to work to achieve whatever limited gains may still be
possible through traditional political efforts. The deeper challenge,
however, is not simply political (though it is that.) It is profoundly
existential: to recognize, personally, the depth of the crisis we face and
the need to deal with, rather than avoid, its demands. The old ways are now
dying and are unlikely to be rebuilt in significant ways.
Even as resistance is mobilized, unless a much more serious politics is
steadily developed -- one that does not ignore "current" possibilities, but
one that is also profoundly aware of the need to move thoughtfully beyond to
deeper institutional and systemic change -- there is little likelihood the
powerful forces gathering around Trump in the United States and others even
more dangerous in other advanced systems will be seriously challenged.
As we do the necessary work of defending those most in danger, and seek to
slowly build a new coming together of traditional progressive politics with
the institutional development of a radically decentralized community-based
vision, it may accordingly help to reflect on the position of civil rights
workers in Mississippi in the 1930s and 1940s, the decades before the
movement became a movement -- a time of acute brutality and danger. As in
the prehistory of all great eras of change, activists in that moment
consciously worked to lay down the institutional foundations as well as the
politics of a transformative new direction. This sort of work takes time and
commitment for the long haul. Sometimes it is darkest before the dawn.
Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.
Gar Alperovitz
Gar Alperovitz, author most recently of What Then Must We Do? Straight Talk
About the Next American Revolution, is cochair of the Next System Project
and cofounder of the Democracy Collaborative. Alperovitz was deeply involved
in the teach-ins on the Vietnam War.
Related Stories
System Change, or There and Back Again: Capitalism, Socialism, Fascism
By Richard D. Wolff, Truthout | News AnalysisSystem Change and Non-Reformist
Reforms
By Gus Speth, Speakout | Op-EdLabor's Stockholm Syndrome: Why Unions Must
Stop Backing Anti-Labor Candidates in the Primaries
By Andrew Tillett-Saks, Truthout | Op-Ed
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