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NEWS & LETTERS, November 2004Lead - editorial
Bush 'mandate' promises economic and social crises
by Olga Domanski The danger posed by George Bush’s electoral victory on
Nov. 2 is two-fold. One is that he will pursue his reactionary agenda both at
home and abroad more ruthlessly than ever, now that he will claim a mandate
denied him in 2000 when he took the White House by blatant theft. The other is
that the forces who worked so hard to unseat him will now fall into retreat and
depression or even turn to a politics of desperation. It would be impossible to blame the defeat on not
working hard enough. The success of the effort this year to get out the vote
brought a record turnout to the polls, no less than 120 million. But that
turnout reflected the equally determined work of both Republicans and Democrats.
Nor can the defeat be laid solely at the feet of outright Republican electoral
corruption. That is not to say that there were not plenty of
"dirty tricks" that seriously impacted the electoral results. Greg
Palast, a contributing editor to HARPER'S MAGAZINE, who investigated the
manipulation of the Ohio vote for BBC Television, found that if Ohio’s
discarded ballots had been counted, Kerry would probably have won the state. The
same was reported for New Mexico. However the level of the corruption was kept
in check by the massive attempt to prevent the kind of vote stealing and
disenfranchisment that characterized the Florida election in 2000 (complete with
Republican goon squads) which had brought the press to characterize it as
nothing less than the stench of fascism. The fact that the race in Ohio was so razor thin makes
it important not to accept the spin of "mandate" that Bush is giving
his victory. Though Bush obtained the largest number of popular votes of any
presidential candidate, Kerry won very nearly as many--55 million--despite all
the attacks on him as a "dangerous liberal." Nor can it be ignored that the huge number of people who
voted against Bush would have been greater still if many had not been
disenfranchised. The men and women who have been thrown into this country’s
dungeons and stripped of any voting rights (a dozen states do not allow freed
citizens with felony convictions to vote) could easily have changed this from a
razor-thin win for Bush into a clear victory for Kerry. Most important of all, the war in Iraq shows both the
precarious nature of Bush’s victory and the objective obstacles that will face
him in his second term. It is no accident that the go-ahead for unleashing the
bloody attack on Falluja came only a few days after the election. Despite
Bush’s effort during the campaign to paint a rosy picture of the occupation of
Iraq, he and his advisors know that a growing number of Americans oppose the war
in Iraq and want to see an end to the occupation. They knew that launching the
attack on Falluja prior to the election would stoke anti-war sentiment
throughout the country and doom his chances for re-election. Simply put, the occupation of Iraq is causing the U.S.
to sink into a quagmire in foreign affairs on a level not seen since the Vietnam
War. This has created so much fear even in ruling class circles as to where four
more years of Bushism might lead us that a number of rightwing ideologues like
Frances Fukiyama refused to endorse Bush. No amount of rhetoric about "political
mandates" can alter the fact that the occupation of Iraq presents U.S.
imperialism with an objective crisis that will haunt Bush throughout his second
term. POLITICS OF ‘MORAL CERTAINTY’ None of this, however, can hide the fact that the man
who is so passionately and justifiably detested by millions got as many votes as
he did. What is needed at this point is not just to acknowledge the painful
defeat the forces of revolt suffered Nov. 2 but to figure out how the major
questions the electorate faced--such as the war in Iraq, the crisis in health
care, and jobs--could get trumped by something called "moral values."
Masses of people are asking how can anyone associate "moral values"
with someone responsible for 100,000 Iraqi deaths which his administration dares
to call "collateral damage"? How can anyone believe their security
against terrorism is assured by the man who has become the best recruiter for
Osama Bin Laden? What is now clear is that, ever since the Christian
Coalition was ushered into the White House after Bush’s 2000 victory, it has
not been that they have been leading him, but it is he who has been leading
them. It has required considerable skill on his part to use the Christian
Coalition to promote his agenda while not appearing to be so totally in their
pocket as to alienate "moderate" voters. Most of all it took great
skill in playing the "faith card" to convince so many that he was the
man of "certainty" who left no ambiguity about where he stood on all
matters of importance. It was that image of both faith and certainty that
appealed to many who thereby embraced Bush as not a "regular
politician." This "certainty" was recently explained by one
of Bush’s senior advisers in response to a journalist’s question about
whether they saw reality the same way as the rest of the world: "We’re an
empire now," he was informed, "and when we act, we create our own
reality…. We’re history’s actors, and you, all of you, will be left to
just study what we do" (Ron Suskind, "Without a Doubt," THE NEW
YORK TIMES MAGAZINE, Oct. 17, 2004). It is a chilling reflection of Bush’s
Bonapartist mindset and agenda of "might makes right." Such expressions show that the rhetoric of
"faith" and "moral values" is being used to cover over the
barbarism of this society. The Right, however, is not the only factor to blame
for this. Kerry and the Democrats also deserve part of the blame, for they did a
far poorer job articulating a positive alternative to conditions of everyday
life in this country than did the Republicans in mobilizing their conservative
Christian fundamentalist base. If Bush and the Republicans understand anything,
it’s that people want to think that their lives have meaning. Many people are
not satisfied with hearing "pragmatic" answers to political questions.
When those opposed to Bush fail to show how a change in present policies will
affect the overall meaning of their lives, the door gets left open to the Right
to appropriate the language of "meaning" and "morality." Raya Dunayevskaya, the founder of Marxist-Humanism,
addressed a similar problem in the 1980s when she said that relying on politics
alone cannot reverse the retrogression that has dominated this country since the
election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. "The two-fold problematic of our age is," she
wrote in 1987, "1) What happens after the conquest of power? 2) Are there
ways for new beginnings when there is so much reaction, so many aborted
revolutions, such turning of the clock backward in the most technologically
advanced lands?" Answering these questions, she insisted, cannot be
achieved by relying on politics alone. It has instead become necessary to fuse
political opposition with a philosophy of liberation that expresses not just
what we are against, but what we are for. Not only Kerry and the Democrats, but much of the Left
which recognizes their shortcomings, has yet to rise to this challenge. While
many opponents of Bush will no doubt respond to Kerry’s defeat by arguing for
more centrist and pragmatic politics, the real lesson of this election is that
the Right has learned how to make use of the philosophic void that defines so
much of contemporary politics. While the cracks that have appeared within the ruling
class are important to watch, the forces of revolt and what the campaign on
"moral values" has meant to their development are what demand
examining. WHERE ARE FORCES OF REVOLT? It is first of all clear that in this election Bush
managed to twist "moral values" to mean "keep gays and women in
their place." Of the 11 states that passed propositions to ban gay
marriage, nine (all but Michigan and Oregon) went for Bush. At the same time, it
is important to remember the huge outpouring of women to Washington, D.C. in
April for the March for Women’s Lives, where all sorts of questions concerning
truly human relations came forward and showed the coalescence and enormous
diversity of the marchers. (See "Women make history in massive rally,"
NEWS & LETTERS, May 2004.) That the issue of gay marriage was nevertheless
so successfully used to propel Bush to a victory proves the importance of a
continuing battle to project Women’s Liberation as a life and death question
and Gay Liberation as a matter of both human and civil rights. So successfully was the gay marriage issue played by
Bush that he no doubt imagined that it would bring many older, more conservative
Black voters to his reactionary agenda. Yet the approach failed. Blacks turned
out in record numbers and went overwhelmingly for Kerry. The solid 90% of the
Black vote against Bush reaffirms the long history Black masses in this country
have consistently played as a vanguard for all the forces of revolution. (See African-American
vote) The labor vote was the most telling in breaking with its
historical record not only in states like Ohio, which eventually went to Bush,
but also in those like Minnesota and Wisconsin which Kerry won by the slimmest
of margins. That one out of every four jobs lost in the U.S. during Bush’s
tenure was lost in Ohio, and he still carried the state, reflects the effect of
de-industrialization, globalization, and the resulting weakening of the U.S.
labor movement. Important objective changes have occurred in the structure of
U.S. capitalism that the Republicans have made use of. However this does not mean that labor is no longer a
major factor in U.S. politics. Bush just barely carried Ohio. While organized
labor is not the force it once was, large numbers of workers still came out
against Bush. Bush’s forces, however, proved better organized than Kerry’s,
in large part because they proved better at mobilizing their base than did
Kerry, who continued to defend free trade and neoliberalism during the campaign. That organized labor has lost much of the force it once
had has made it easy for the media to participate in effectively censoring
labor’s active opposition to the status quo, thus making it seem even weaker
than it really is. Few know that many of the largest labor organizations in the
U.S. passed resolutions demanding that U.S. troops be brought home from Iraq.
Well over five million men and women belong to those unions. The maps of red and blue staring us in the face as the
election returns came in showed that Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia,
which used to be considered "border states," are increasingly becoming
part of the electoral map of the South. Whereas Nixon and Reagan rose to power
by relying on the "southern strategy" of appealing to racism and a
narrow definition of "moral values," Bush is trying to spread the
politics of the southern conservatism ever further northward, as a central part
of the Republicans’ effort to secure permanent control of U.S. politics. YOUTH AND THE LEGACY OF VIETNAM Of all the forces of revolt, however, it was the Youth
who were targeted the most fully in an effort to get them registered and to
vote. The efforts of everyone from Michael Moore to Bruce Springsteen and Eminem
did increase the youth vote substantially. And they went overwhelmingly to
Kerry. But while their votes increased from the last elections, so did those of
almost every other segment of the population. It might be more fruitful to look at the youth dimension
as a force of revolt in terms of what it has meant historically. That is what
makes it important to look at the Vietnam War which this year suddenly became
the other war fought about, as seen in the campaign rhetoric against Kerry. The
truth is that Kerry’s struggles against the Vietnam War could have become a
way to link up with the concerns of today’s youth IF Kerry himself had
addressed the lessons learned from Vietnam. However, he did not do so. He sought
instead to position himself as even a firmer supporter of "pre-emptive
war" than Bush himself. Situating today’s drive for war in the context of what
happened in Vietnam would have made it easier to place today’s opposition to
Bush in an historic framework, by pointing to the very long haul it has been to
defeat the forces of reaction in this country that never give up but take on new
forms at significant moments. It would be hard to imagine until today a president more
viscerally hated than Richard Nixon, against whom the anti-war protests kept
increasing the more he continued the war in Vietnam, even daring to invade
Cambodia. And yet, as Bush has done today, Nixon won a second term in 1972 with
more votes than he had won in 1968. The truth is that it took both the Watergate
scandal and the never-ending activities of a new generation of revolutionaries
to end the Vietnam war and eventually bring Nixon down. (See "Politics of
Counter-Revolution: Watergate and the Year of Europe," NEWS & LETTERS,
June-July 1973.) Nixon’s defeat in Watergate, however, did not prevent a
renewed emergence of the Right. What Marxist-Humanism singled out as the needed response
to Nixonism was to recognize that movement activity had to be rooted in a
philosophy of revolution. The inseparability of revolution with a philosophy of
revolution is the banner that the founder of Marxist-Humanism, Raya Dunayevskaya,
unfurled in 1973 with her book PHILOSOPHY AND REVOLUTION: FROM HEGEL TO SARTRE
AND FROM MARX TO MAO (republished last year).That the retrogression has deepened
since Nixon left office--into Reaganism and now into Bushism--has only made the
working out of a unity of philosophy and revolution more urgent than ever. WHAT LIES AHEAD? There is no doubt whatsoever that Bush is gearing up to
bring his agenda down on our heads. He will be helped by the additional seats
Republicans have won in Congress. With both the Senate and the House of
Representatives more tightly controlled by the Republican Party, it greatly
increases the dangers ensuing from all three branches of government being in
these same reactionary hands. It is a chilling prospect to know that Bush will soon be
able to appoint at least one and possibly as many as four new justices to the
Supreme Court, which will jeopardize not only abortion rights but all sorts of
questions from the environment to the most basic civil rights. Most threatening is the possibility that those who came
out to oppose Bush will draw the wrong conclusion from his election--that is,
that the time has come to retreat from unfurling a banner of a total uprooting
of this racist, sexist, class ridden society. Withdrawing from the struggle to
make real changes in this country assumes many forms. The sudden immediate
increase in applications for immigration to Canada was only one such overt
expression of that withdrawal. Another more likely expression will be the
argument that what is needed is a more pragmatic or a more centrist politics to
win next time. The well-known playwright Tony Kushner put it right when he said it would be "bad news for the Left" if we begin paying attention to all the noise that "the country has been completely remade into a conservative Christian nation." The most dangerous expression is that some who recognize
the futility of choosing between the "lesser evil" of different wings
of the ruling class will resort to the politics of desperation. That is what the
Weather Underground represented in the 1970s. Today it takes a very different
form--the assumption that any enemy of Bush is our friend. This appears in the
failure to recognize the twin threats represented by Bush and Osama Bin Laden.
Thus, too many radicals now excuse and identify with the politics of terrorism
in the Middle East. (See Resistance or
retrogression?) As against this kind of withdrawal, we are seeing new
determination not to retreat. Advice had been circulated even before the
elections to hit the streets on Nov. 3, no matter who won. A wide number of
spontaneous protests did occur. In Chicago, an anti-war protest crossed paths
with the striking City College teachers and together they marched to the center
of the Loop. In New York the War Resisters League marched from Ground Zero to
the Stock Exchange to protest the war. Other, larger protests are already being
organized through the internet. What will be important is whether the determination not
to succumb to Bush by continuing the movements against him will accompany a
determination to work out a philosophically grounded alternative to this system
as a whole. That is not a task that we can shift onto the shoulders of
spontaneous movements. It is a task that faces those on the revolutionary Left
who are serious about reversing the political direction of this country. Now is
the time to.get down to the hard work of articulating a comprehensive
alternative to capitalism. There was never a more urgent time for that kind of
activity of thinking and doing. |
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