Currently viewing the tag: "Liberalism"
Many liberals show their true colors around things like the healthcare debate. Force people to buy private services? Sure, no problem, they’re fine with that. What if you’re against that? Well, then, you must be a reactionary! Meanwhile, did they stand up for universal healthcare? Nope, that’s too radical. Obama “couldn’t do *EVERYTHING* his first term. Just wait until he gets re-elected, then the ‘real’ Obama will come out.” Can we legalise pot (and drugs generally)? They are divided. Only if we tax cannabis at $800 a pound (I’m not kidding). They won’t even touch the subject of any drug besides cannabis.
If you are a liberal and are siding with extremely regressive taxation (the Obamacare “fines”, $800/lb taxes on cannabis, high taxes on cigarettes and alcohol, consumption taxes (which they pretentiously call “sin taxes”) generally) and state coercion to defend private corporations and control people’s self-determination of their own bodies then you are standing on the wrong side of the line.
We should fight to impose steep taxes on the rich and seize the assets of the health insurance and drug companies. That money can be used build a comprehensive, public, single-payer healthcare system (including things like talk therapy, abortion, contraception, medical marijuana, medicinal psychedelics, sex/gender reassignment surgery & medicine, needle exchange, healthcare for soldiers, etc etc – healthcare for each and every community and medical need). We should force the government to legalise drugs and release all drug prisoners. Individuals with the advice and guidance of doctors can decide what to do with their bodies just fine.
“In every political community there are varying shades of political opinion. One of the shadiest of these is the liberals. An outspoken group on many subjects. Ten degrees to the left of center in good times. Ten degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally.”
With everything the Democratic Party has done over the last couple of years, you’d think liberals would have changed their strategy by now. But no. According to MoveOn.org, the valiant working class rebellion in Wisconsin was made possible by 14 Democratic Party apparatchiks. Not inspiration from Europeans, Tunisians, Algerians, and Egyptians. Not union organising. Not working class Wisconsinites themselves. All this is possible, according to MoveOn, because of 14 Democratic Party politicians.
This is opportunism of the worst sort. They are trying to co-opt a mass, popular, working class struggle and assimilate it into the Democratic Party establishment. We can’t let the MoveOn.org staff – or the dozens of other Democratic Party organs and nonprofits – have their way.
“We could be on the verge of losing in Wisconsin” signals a profound misunderstanding of how struggles are actually won. Only after they are won in the streets, only after the balance of forces has tilted in favor of democracy and justice, will politicians support our demands. They do this not out of righteousness but to prevent further demands – to stop the movement from going further. Parliamentarianism is an effort by liberal capitalists to get the working class to stop its own self-organised activity with the promise that politicians will pass reforms for them in return. Turn down the struggle, they say, and all will be fine. “Stand with us and we’ll stand with you”. Unfortunately thats never how it happens.
The rebellion in Wisconsin isn’t “on the verge of losing”. Far from it. Should the budget pass they have threatened a mass, general strike – i.e. a strike of all workers, in all industries, public and private. The return of the general strike to the U.S. among a broad sector of the population (compared to the righteous, but still more narrow general strike of immigrants that took place in 2006), will signal a significant advance of conscious, working class, self-activity and organisation. Should such a mass strike happen, the Wisconsin workers could win what they stand to lose should they give in – and potentially much more.
We should speak out against the opportunism and parliamentarianism which threatens to assimilate popular struggles into the Democratic Party – a party which has been the “graveyard of popular movements” throughout history. Only through organising, education, and mass political protests and economic strikes, can we win a new world.
People are more than welcome to think that my article “We Weren’t Born This Way” criticism of Lady GaGa’s new single Born This Way is one of “worst” things, or even thee worst thing they’ve read on the topic. I’m more than happy to try and answer any and all public criticism I come across when I can find the time. For those who’ve commented on the post itself, I’ve tried to answer questions and criticisms as best as I could. I’ve also responded to people privately and taken note of other public criticism that I still had to respond to in some way. In doing so I’ve noticed a particular type of cultural apologism that I wanted to address. It seems to be quite common, so I figured it deserved at least a short post.
Gregory White (@GregKills) runs the blog Auditory Love, a music blog based out of Calgary. According to White, my article is one of the “worst” he’s read on the topic of GaGa’s new song. Fair enough. The reason? I, along with others, are taking the song too seriously, that I am “over-analyzing every single word”. White’s website 23-word blog description includes, among other things, that he’s a “Gaga en†husias†. Hallelujah.”
This isn’t very particular to White, nor is Lady GaGa the only artist with a gaggle of fanatical fans who go into a craze whenever they come out with a new single or album. This phenomenon is very widespread. Capitalism, in its push to commodify every aspect of our lives, tends to estrange us from the very culture we participate in, reducing our participation, as social subjects, to an alienated form: that of the wage slave, the cultural spectator, the cultural consumer. We feel like we are a part of the culture from which we are deeply alienated, we feel attacked when people bring up the slightest criticism of that culture.
Moreover and despite the fact that we are alienated from the very culture whose existence rests on our active support, capitalism turns us into the fiercest of apologists for the mythologies which uphold our own oppression and exploitation. People like White most often see no contradiction between claiming that many people are taking GaGa’s song “too seriously” and “over-analyzing every single word/movement” and his pseudo-religious support of GaGa (“Gaga en†husias†. Hallelujah.”) in in the form of dismissal of serious analysis and post after post after 3-500 word post of uncritical GaGa apologism.
With GaGa using racialised terms like “orient” and “chola” in her songs, or doing an publicity campaign for the anti-gay, anti-union, anti-immigrant Target Corporation, people who have even the slightest progressive inclinations should seriously reconsider continuing the constant apologism for her music – and the products that public figures try to sell us more generally (remember that Lady GaGa is part of a business, and that some of her concert tickets can cost you the cool, anti-poor price of $178 a piece). Rather we should take a critical stance towards the culture that serves to uphold our own oppression and exploitation. Our liberation is infinitely more important than any one artist or song – and music under socialism will undoubtedly be much better anyway.
As I’ve tried to make crystal clear, this isn’t about White or any of the other people who responded critically (or sarcastically: “Dude I’ve always said being queer is like hating brown people[.] Now I have proof, check it.“) to my article, or to other forms of cultural critique put forward by progressives. Rather this type of apologism is structural - it is built into the system, it is a necessary result of the setup of modern capitalist hegemony. Without such intellectual apologists for the ideology which supports the capitalist order, capitalism couldn’t survive. But just because this isn’t about this or that individual action, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t combat apologism and liberalism wherever it rears its ugly head. We should. People can resist participating in apologism if they understand how it operates in our society.
Liberalism is a system of thought which convinces good people to support structures that produce the effects they so rightly oppose. It convinces them that you can negotiate with the ruling class – you can’t. They are evil and have different material interests than you do. You have to force them into submission today, and socially annihilate them tomorrow. That’s the only way to win our freedom. Explore socialist politics today!
“Liberal democracy is not authentically pluralist because it avoids conflict and seeks consensus. The latter is the only means to prevent competition between individuals, the fundamental principle around which liberal society is built, from degrading into chaotic and criminal anarchy. Recognition that there is no alternative to the existing world as it is, i.e. capitalism, is expressed through consensus. Conflicts of interest are thus only conflicts of particular and partial interests that can and must be reconciled. The good technocrat is able to offer solutions, after having heard the lobbyists advance their arguments. Radical political parties hinder more than contribute to the achievement of consensus. Consensus assumes that all subversions can be diluted and ultimately absorbed. The ideal is thus “bipartisanship” as found in the United States, in which the two parties are joined together on the main principles even if they address different supporters (above all not social classes!) with different tastes. Consensus is imposed on everyone. The Constitution is sacred and it absolutely unimaginable that it is possible to replace it with another one (which is not the case in Europe!) and private property provides the inviolable foundation for the permanence of this mode of social organization (no horizon beyond capitalism is imaginable). In contrast, the very definition of democracy is the right to innovation, invention, and imagination. Since nothing in the current social organization is sacred, democracy becomes subversive by nature. Subversion is the driving force of social transformation. Radical democrats do not like consensus, and when it appears to be operating in their society – in situations of war, for example – they are suspicious of its destructive effects on the critical spirit.” - Samir Amin, The World We Wish To See: Revolutionary Objectives in the Twenty-First Century.
Socialist Politics:
Recommended Readings
