Recently the Common Dreams
website hosted a conversation with some of their more prominent writers titled A Conversation with Common Dreams: 'Given the Status
Quo, What's Needed?' Many of the writers were adamant that what was needed to break the current
impasse was a movement. Neither the existing political parties nor the current
batch of politicians is up to the task. We could not rely on politicians to
lead this society forward until they could be assured that it was politically
safe to do so. Regarding the necessity for a movement, John Nichols, a
progressive writer for whom I have great respect, pointed out that from
Jefferson’s time, through the progressive movements of the late 19th
and early 20th centuries to FDR’s New Deal, we have seen progressive
movements rise and make a difference for human well-being. He was of the
opinion that we were on the verge of another such an event.
As I listened to John I asked myself why these periods of great benefit
to the ordinary citizen did not last, being as (supposedly) politics in a democracy
express the will of the people?
Take the end of the New Deal under Ronald Reagan. Granted there was an
existing stagflation. Why would people, many of them Democrats,, support Reagan
who had made it clear that it was his intention to break the unions and take
the American economy back to the unregulated capitalism of the 19th
century. Was an “aw shucks” friendly persona enough to do this? Was a cheery
“New morning in America” enough to do it? Was a temporary stall in the
capitalist economy enough to do it? The social safety net was in place. There
was no depression. Why were masses of people willing to transfer their
well-supported trust in government for the self-centeredness and human
disregard of a corporatist America?
This, I believe, is the kind of question progressives have to answer if
they are to create the permanent economic equality that must prevail if this
country and this world are to be able to deal effectively with the massive
changes society increasingly faces as humans seek to survive the ecological
conditions and the untoward social structures they have created.
Does this fact mean that progressivism cannot go beyond periods of power
and that, like capitalism, it has cycles? Our last progressive era was that of
the New Deal. It was brought to an end during a period of economic stagflation
by Ronald Reagan who persuaded Americans that the stagflation could be brought
to an end only by turning the economy and people’s well-being over to the
private sector, aka the corporations. To
show the way he broke the airline controller’s strike by bringing in military
air traffic controllers. What we and the world have gone through in the Great
Recession is a direct consequence of the American citizenry’s willingness to
give up all that had been achieved by the New Deal in order to solve a much more
transitory problem.
In contrast to much of what was said during the Common Dreams “conversation,”
I believe progressives must find a way to make progressivism much less
transitory, especially with the need for economic sustainability so imperative.
It is wise to remember that, with the rapidly increasing ubiquity and lethality
of modern weaponry, economic stability is becoming an imperative for human
survival.
Progressives need to develop, offer, and push a program for sustained
progressivism.
For example, when I think of how the catastrophe that was Ronald Reagan’s
election and deleterious regime could have been avoided, I think of the
preemptive measures that should have been in place when stagflation hits a
capitalist economy. As we have reserve funds and pre-developed plans for
dealing with natural disasters, so we should have for economic disasters. These
should be triggered by stipulated situations and conditions. If society is to
retain its multiplicity of interests and energy, this kind of support for
economic downturns should be broad and continuously in place.
This kind of solution requires planning, as does any
complex situation, but we have been fed the myth that planning is
anti-democratic; that it does not permit the freedom that innovation requires.
The political Right puts planning down as dictatorial control ala Russia’s
planned economy. The pejorative distinction used to be their command economy
versus our demand economy.
The capitalist countries never did acknowledge the accomplishments of the
Soviet Union. In less than 70 years they moved from a largely feudal society to
putting the first satellite into orbit. Along the way they moved their entire
manufacturing establishment east of the Ural Mountains to avoid losing it to
the Nazis in World War II and then defeated the Germans. The Soviet Union’s
passage from feudalism to an industrial economy can be compared with the nearly
200 years it took the capitalist countries of Europe and America. Of course, it
can be said that they had the accomplishments of capitalist industrialization
to point the way. While there is obvious truth to that, it should be remembered
that the capitalist countries did everything they could to impede Russia’s
economic development, including military invasion.
The lesson to be learned here is that both Russia and now China have
demonstrated effectiveness at dictatorial economic development. Unless the
democracies of this planet demonstrate far more responsiveness to marshaling
the effort to meet the massive challenges of global warming, impending food and
water shortages, and excessive population, mankind may turn to the demonstrated
ability of dictatorships to secure its continued survival. Certainly planned
economies will become increasingly necessary as the above-noted impending
catastrophes unfold.
But planning requires a perspective; some idea of what
the goal is. The political Right has a fairly simple task in this matter, as
traditionalists usually do. Pick a traditional belief, make it the goal and do
what you have always done. Progressives have a much more difficult task
because, in aiming to improve society, we have to be sensitive to the
implications of the conditions that confront humanity and figure out ways in
which humanity can endure and perhaps flourish in the changed conditions and
then figure out how best to bring those changes about. An example of this
difference can be found in Hoover’s approach to the Great Depression, namely,
let capitalism take its course and Roosevelt’s approach of creating new public
programs to deal with the effects of the Depression at all its various levels.
These ranged from the Civilian Conservation Corps for unskilled young men, to reforming agricultural
practices, to writer’s projects, to major infrastructure construction. This
difference in the complexity of the tasks of the political Right and Left has
always pervaded American politics and may account, in part, for more frequent Republican
than Democratic governance.
As to the nature of a Progressive, some Progressives, people like Cornel
West, believe it is necessary to articulate a Progressive value system
analogous to the Right’s use of “values” as a political tool. While at some
point this may be desirable, I think we should begin elsewhere. Any value
system, if we are to avoid the horrific consequence of value systems based on
human fantasy and the religious conflict they so frequently spawn, must be
based on reality. I suggest this process should begin with the necessity that
humans must live in harmony with the planet they inhabit. This is the only home
we have ever had and long before we seek habitat elsewhere in the universe we
shall have perished if we continue to devastate our home. This planet is the root
of whatever commonality we have as a species, a commonality that is essential
to our survival. We must keep constantly in mind that we humans are our own
worst enemy, accounting for more death and destruction than nature has ever
imposed on us. The solutions to the massive problems that confront us are to be
found within us, if they are found at all.
As an example of developing a Progressive perspective, we might use the
work of Lester Brown dealing with the impact of humanity’s suicidal use of the
earth. We humans now know enough to undertake this project of environmental
harmony. We also know enough about the demands such an adjustment would make on
long-standing human beliefs regarding such matters as the right to have as many
children as one wants, the right to possess whatever one can legally acquire
and the right to enjoy whatever possessions we manage to garner. Our species
living in harmony with earth will demand material and psychological adjustments
bigger and deeper than mankind has ever experienced, and this in the context of
the deadliest weaponry we have ever developed. Deep and persistent thinking
will be required for such a foundational effort of Progressivism. Matters such
as global warming must be made the concerns of daily living and social planning
and inform the founding documents of our changed public institutions.
There is an old gospel song containing the line “This
world is not my home, I’m just passing through.” This is the mentality that
must be vigorously challenged along with the commandment to go forth and
multiply. Such cultural sentiments must not be seen as innocent sentiments, but
as dangerous misconceptions. That this world is our only home should be one of
the major mantras of Progressivism.
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