REICH'S MASS PSYCHOLOGY OF FASCISM: SOCIO-SEXUAL PATHOLOGY, SADOMASOCHISM AND DEBATE
(Lecture delivered at Wyoming Debate Cooperative, August 3, 2004, Laramie, Wyoming)

(mpf=Reich's Mass Psychology of Fascism)

"THE FORMATION OF THE AUTHORITARIAN STRUCTURE TAKES PLACE THROUGH THE ANCHORING OF SEXUAL INHIBITION AND SEXUAL ANXIETY." (MPF 25)

Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957) brought the body into psychology; that is, not only did he take seriously the biological urges Freud had discovered, but he also boldly asserted the influence of those urges on the whole of a society.

As a psychologist, he touched his patients during therapy, breaking that wall of words.

Similarly, in debate, there are walls of words. I don't want to break that wall today, but I would like to ask a question: What is the role of repressed or misused sexuality in shaping rhetorical argument?

Others have spoken of repressed desire. The "Nuclear Desire" criticism run by a few teams this year (West GA, Fullerton) says we desire the bomb like we desire other fetishized objects. The social psychology of Lacan speaks similarly of all sorts of utopian fantasies, often including debate advocacies. But Reich is concerned mainly with the interaction of sexuality and materiality--sex and economics. Hence, instead of Marx's "political economy" we have Reich's "sexual economy."

Psychoanalysis reveals the mechanisms of sexual suppression and repression and
their pathological effects in the individual. Sex-economic sociology goes
on from here and asks, For what sociological reason does society suppress
sexuality and does the individual repress it? (MPF 23)

A little longer ago, a team from the University of Southern California argued that debate was a "theater of pain," and following the work of Marquis de Sade, pointed out that we love to talk about pain in debate, that much of what happens in debate rounds is sexual, masturbatory, and that to authentically live this, we might want to advocate violence in debates (with the hint that such rituals would make us less likely to hurt one another outside of debate).

So if I were writing a book about Reichian social analysis, I would entitle it:

NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND RIDING CROPS: THE REPRESSION OF SEXUALITY AS KEY TO WARMAKING AND BRUTALITY

For Reich, the following four things feed on each other:
1. Strong paternal authority
2. Sexual repression
3. Authoritarian personalities
4. Reactionary political ideologies

It's an uncomfortable fact to point out that people found fascism very, very sexy.

Reich borrowed from Freud the notion that the "repression of infantile sexuality is the rule in 'civilized man'". Furthermore, that "human morality, far from being of supernatural origin, results from the suppressive measures of early infantile education, particularly those directed against sexuality" (MPF 22).

However, Reich lamented that the sociological implications of these discoveries were blocked by Frued's resistance to mass-social explanation based on his theories. Because Freud dismissed Marxism, he also dismissed any attempt to combine a study of mass political economy with the study of repressed sexuality in individuals.

But for Reich, this separation made no sense, since he saw in Germany an entire generation of fascist-friendly people who were obviously struggling with their own repressed sexuality.

So Reich proposed the following:

"THE FORMATION OF THE AUTHORITARIAN STRUCTURE TAKES PLACE THROUGH THE ANCHORING OF SEXUAL INHIBITION AND SEXUAL ANXIETY." (MPF 25)

Reich asks us to consider the caseof a working class woman, the wife of a worker. "Her economic situation is the same as that of the revolutionary worker's, but she votes fascist" because "the anti-sexual, moralistic structure of a conservative woman makes it impossible for her to develop a consciousness of her social position, it ties her to the church..." and thus refutes the basic Marxist notion that one's social position absolutely determines one's revolutionary consciousness. Of this hypothetical case, Reich concludes:

...the suppression of the gratification of primitive material needs has a
result different from that of the suppression of the gratification of sexual
needs. The former incites rebellion. The latter, however--by
repressing the sexual needs and by becoming anchored as a moralistic
defense--paralyzes the rebellion against either kind of suppression. (MPF
25-26)

Reich mentions the peacock-like military uniforms, the use of attractive women in recruitment ads, rhythmically perfect parades, as ways in which repressed sexuality can be slowly and carefully extracted from people, to unconsciously satisfy (but not completely satisfy) sexual urges people often don't even know that they have.

Thus: "Sexual inhibition alters the structure of the economically suppressed individual in such a manner that he thinks, feels and acts against his own material interests." (MPF 26)

For Reich, moralistic sexual repression is vital to solidifying class hierarchy:

Since one does not enjoy the economic position of the upper middle classes but
at the same time identifies oneself ideologically with them, the sexual moral
ideologies must make up for the economic deprivations." This is partially
completed through the patriarchal family, in which a sexually repressive father
is submissive to his boss, but then "in turn reproduces submissiveness to
authority in his children, especially his sons. This is the basis of the
passive, submissive attitude of middle class individuals toward Fuhrer figures.
(MPF 44-45)

Put another way:

The establishment of economic freedom of the working people
goes hand in hand with the dissolution of the old institutions, especially the
sexual ones, a process of which the reactionary individual is afraid.
Specifically, the fear of 'sexual freedom'--which in reactionary thinking is
represented as 'sexual chaos'--checks the longing for freedom from economic
exploitation. (MPF 50)

So far, we have explained why sexually repressed societies are susceptible to authoritarianism, but we haven't yet explored the link between authoritarianism and sado-masochism.

Sexual energy, repressed, must go somewhere. For some it becomes mystical, or religious energy. For others, it becomes political energy, given to hierarchy. In either case, it takes on a sadomasochistic brutality, because it is a distorted, frustrated kind of energy. Even the most loving sexual acts involve a kind of "violence" or "violation," a violation to partners' vulnerability even by consent. But unactualized sexual energy cannot control or mediate that violence. Thus, repressed desire becomes, through self-fulfilling prophesy, perverted sexuality: "...sexual stasis...the dammed-up sexual energies seek an outlet through all kinds of pathological channels...This distorted, disturbed, brutalized and debased sexuality in turn supports the very ideology to which it owes its existence." (MPF 75)

Reich suggests that religion is often a substitute for sexuality--

The religious feeling, then, is the same as
sexual feeling, except that it is attached to mystical, psychic contents.
This explains the return of the sexual element in so many ascetic experiences,
such as the nun's delusion that she is the bride of Christ. Such
experiences rarely reach the stage of genital consciousness and thus are apt to
take place in other sexual channels, such as masochistic martyrdom. (MPF
133)

The war-making tendency is an urge to manufacture and use weapons designed not merely to strategically neutralize an enemy (after all, we do not manufacture "weapons" that put everyone to sleep or temporarily paralize them), but to inflict pain and suffering, to destroy many people and inflict the torture of witnessing that death, as well as the physical pain of the survivors:

Man constantly reproduces the machine-like organism by his kind of education,
science and philosophy of life. This biological crippling is reaching the
pinnacle of its triumphs in the scientific, mathematically exact, machine-like
killing of today. As mechanistic philosophies and machines alone cannot
kill, sadism also comes into play; sadism, this secondary drive born of
suppressed nature, the only important characteristic which distinguishes man's
structure from that of the animal. (MPF 295)

THE ROLE OF WOMEN

Imperialistic wars require that there be no rebellion in the women against the
function that is imposed on them, that of being nothing but child-bearing
machines. That is, the function of sexual gratification must not be
allowed to interfere with the child-bearing function. (MPF 90)

It's pretty clear that, for Reich, there was no solvency for oppression and violence as long as sexual desire was repressed by binaristic and metaphysical notions of morality. In "Further Problems of Work Democracy" Reich wrote:

As long as [compulsory sexual repression] prevails, genuine democracy and
responsible freedom remain an illusion. Helpless subjugation to chaotic
social conditions is the hallmark of human existence. The murder of the
living triumphs in compulsory education and war.

WHAT ABOUT NOW? THIS ISN'T NAZI GERMANY

Now, consider: What has changed since Reich? Are we more "liberated?"

Marcuse, on sexuality in advanced industrial society: Just when we thought we had liberated ourselves from victorian sexual mores, along comes late capitalism to distort and commodify our sexuality. Marcuse wrote Eros and Civilization in 1955. In that book--

...he offered a dramatic re-interpretation of Freud's theory of repression and criticized Freud's stress on the genital organization of sexuality and on heterosexual intercourse. According to Freud,
adult sexual development is a progression from oral and anal eroticism in
infancy to the final adult stage of genital sexuality. In response, Marcuse
proposed sexual liberation through the cultivation of a "polymorphous perverse"
sexuality (which includes oral, anal, and genital eroticism) that eschews a
narrow focus on genital heterosexual intercourse.
Marcuse believed that sexual liberation was achieved by exploring new permutations of sexual desires,
sexual activities, and gender roles--what Freud called "perverse" sexual
desires, that is, all non-reproductive forms of sexual behavior, of which
kissing, oral sex, and anal sex are familiar examples.
Marcuse was himself heterosexual, but he identified the homosexual as the radical standard bearer of
sex for the sake of pleasure, a form of radical hedonism that repudiates those
forms of repressive sexuality organized around genital heterosexuality and
biological reproduction. "Against a society which employs sexuality as a means
for a useful end," Marcuse argued, "the perversions uphold sexuality as an end
itself . . . and challenge its very foundations." http://www.glbtq.com/social-sciences/marcuse_h.html

This may or may not have been an appropriate response to the commodification of sexuality in the wake of repressed desire. Marcuse is somewhat responsible for the role of sexual liberation in the 1960s; he played a role similar to Foucault in that respect. But it seems like "sexuality as an end in itself" was even more marketable than nuclear family, father-knows-best sexuality.

SEX ECONOMY AND THE MORAL IMPERATIVE: DO THESE SAME REPRESSED DESIRES LEAD US TO ENACT NORMATIVE CLAIMS?

So some speculative thoughts here:

Is a moral imperative a manifestation of your desire to control me?

Think of the way we utilize deontological imperatives in our criticisms, and essentially how the call for the ballot is a call to "punish" the other team. Ritualized, public punishment.

WHAT ABOUT UTILIZING CONSTRUCTED THREATS OF VIOLENCE AS RHETORICAL WARRANTS?

Is debate really a theater of pain? And specifically, is there a biological context to this?
--research speculating that male debaters like big impacts like nuclear war.

WHAT WOULD DEBATE LOOK LIKE IN A SOCIETY WITHOUT AN AUTHORITARIAN SEX ECONOMY?

WHO IS WE?

This is what Wesley Clark said at the Democratic convention in his very appealing speech:

“I am an American soldier. Our country has been attacked. We are at war. Our nation is at risk. And we are engaged in a life-and-death struggle against terrorists.... As we are gathered here tonight, our armed forces are in combat.”

Each of these sentences contain certain rhetorical acts of identification with something called the United States. Identification is a powerful and foundational rhetorical act, and one is justified in questioning the thing with which the speaker identifies. In 1990, as plans were being made to attack Iraq, and before I knew much about socialism, I commented to a friend in the Socialist Workers Party that I had heard someone say "We have to stop Saddam," yada yada yada. The friend replied: Next time, ask, "Who is we?"

That response is a good way to approach Marxism from the inside out. For "We have to stop Saddam" could easily mean the "we" of those of us who would never make such decisions, or it could mean those of us who are conscripts for either side of the battle, or it could mean "we Americans," those who identify with America as a nation, a kind of really big family. And it's an insidious kind of process, forgetting that you do it, never knowing or giving much thought to who "we" is. From there, when you start thinking about that, you then think about how you really don't get to make these monumental decisions, and maybe you'd do it differently, and isn't it true that all you really know about Iraq and Saddam is stuff you read in the papers or hear on radio or TV? And when you read more complex literature, journals or independent press, for example, you start to notice it's much more complicated than it is on TV. And again, it strikes you that you're being made part of a "we" that doesn't really mean you.

Now, you might have people you love over there in Iraq or Afghanistan, and you certainly aren't against them--you don't wish harm on them. You want them to come back safely. In fact, once you start to realize that "we" aren't making the decisions together on how and when to fight, or who goes to fight and for how long, your concern for those people grows. It grows even as others accuse you of being against those people. And then it hits you: Somebody on the other side probably feels just as scared, frustrated and disaffected--in the case of a citizen of Saddam's Iraq, probably much more so--and it hits you that the ones you love and the ones they love are shooting at each other over disagreements and bad behavior none of you--none of us--had anything to do with. So who is "we?"

Is it a noble thing to stop Saddam? Sure. Would we reach a consensus on that? Sure. Maybe we'd even elect leaders, just like we do now, but maybe in a world where we have a hell of a lot more input. Where we not only could deliberate on such questions but also talk about how such situations start in the first place. Now, I attend the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Laramie, and our minister, Joe, is one of the wisest men I have ever met. And he's tough on you, and can talk sense into you. I think if he sat down with two world leaders who wanted to kill each other, they'd leave that room feeling sheepish and repentant. But the world isn't run in such a way that encourages people like Joe to talk to world leaders. Why? Isn't Joe "we?"

Now maybe "we" need to be governed by elected officials who can make all those decisions for us. That's cool, you'll notice few Marxists denying that people are good at different things and that smarts is smarts. It's really an irrelevant argument, because long ago, like back in 1776, "we" decided that the process of rulemaking mattered as much, if not more, than the rules themselves. Think about what Jefferson or Madison would say if Washington had committed troops to Tripoli using the argument that Tripoli was raising a legion of fire-breathing dragons and had to be stopped or they'd fly over here and burn us all to a crisp? Even if there was some other legitimate cause, like the Lybian leaders were killing and torturing their own people, Jefferson and Madison would probably invoke the spirit of procedural justice--for them, the Constitution--to object to the manner in which support was drummed up for the invasion. And in any event, everything we know about Washington indicates he wouldn't lie (or err on the side of suspect intelligence) to shove off a bunch of men and ships to the other side of the world. Obviously, what the founders of the USA wanted was accountability through checks and balances. In all fairness, they may not have been willing to consult "the people," and certainly gave the appropriate officials the power to declare war, and other officials the power to engage it. But one reading of their Constitution and their other writings is certainly a world where such decisions are transparent and involve genuine public deliberation, and a world free of legalized corporate bribery of these decisionmakers of whom the founders expected so much.

The examples and stories I've used here not only explain the sentiment (not the mechanics) of Marxist criticism, but also the "link of omission" and counterfactual critical theory that is Habermasian criticism. Some may not believe the two are complimentary, but I do. One explains why those concerned with procedural democracy find the current system unjust and unworkable. The other explains why it is so, and what prevents us from changing it. In both cases, "we" begin with the question "Who is we?"

82070

I pulled up roots in the back yard
while you cleaned the small card table
I chopped down overgrown thistle
while you chopped fresh tomatos
I pounded a path of chicken wire
while you planted wildflowers
and we tried to make something grow grow grow
on these 7000 foot towers

The Giving of Reasons
 
Comments at the 4th annual Wyoming Forensics Institute, Pre-Tournament Assembly, July 21, 2004, Laramie:

Like many of you, I stand in absolute awe and admiration for the minds and the hearts of the people you have been listening to tonight.  I stand in awe of what they do, and of what we all do.  And it's funny--what we do seems so very esoteric, so very unique, to other people.  But we are engaged in the study of something as fundamental to the human condition as eating, building, art.  Our subject is not merely communication, but the giving and receiving of reasons. 

I drove to DIA a few days ago to pick up Brian Norcross, one of UW's coaches.  Of course, when you leave camps like ours, you realize there's a world out there, and you find yourself in possession of unexpected tools to assess it.

So I was listening to the news on the radio and here's what I heard: Three brand new Habitat for Humanity homes were burned to the ground on the same night, before the new families could move in.  Who would do that, I thought, and why?  Then I heard that a nun, in full habbit, had been mugged.  She had been carrying $80.  I heard an update on the parents in Riverton who are alleged to have beaten their 15-month old child to death.  My son, Andrew, is 15 months old and I can't fathom this at all.  In fact, all these acts seemed not only evil to me, but alien.  Otherly.  Without reason. 

Of course they were without reason, and were so by their very nature.  Oh, I don't mean they were without explanation.  There are explanations for criminal, pathological and violent behavior.  I don't think American policymakers spend nearly enough time seeking those explanations.  What I mean is, by their very nature, those acts were without that gesture of justification that emerges in contexts of respect and the valuing of other people.  Because that's what giving reasons means.  Not just saying something about your claim, or your act, but being committed to making sense and bringing your good will to other people.

I'm one of those in debate that thinks the line-by-line, structural methodology of the activity actually makes it more conducive to ethical behavior than the unstructured alternatives offered in the "real" world.  I believe what we do could teach millions of people how to better give and receive reasons, and in doing so, help people better understand and accept one another.  At the same time, I believe the exploration and enactment of new formats of debate also provides both ethical and intellectual relevance to projects designed to improve the world.  The most beautiful debates I have seen, the very few best ones, exemplified everything from music to drama and dialogue to multiple languages to near-incomprehensibly fast debate and demanding levels of intricacy, to slow, methodical debate.  What makes them all good is that the debaters give reasons...not merely provide warrants, but speak to the souls of their audiences.

There is a difference between the inability to give reasons and the refusal to do so.  The hungry person in front of you begging for food may lack the capacity to give reasons; you ought to still feed that person.  But when administrations, governments, organizations, fail to give reasons, that isn't due to some physiological problem. 

In a world of fairness, in a world of creativity and intellectual excitement, reasons flow like water.  Everyone is happy to give them, compelled to give them.  Other people receive them gratefully, giving back some of their own.  Like water, people's reasons flow and blend together, or separate into complimentary streams moving in the same direction. 

In a world of mutual suspicion, paranoia, and scarcity of goods (either naturally or by design), reasons are commodities to be hoarded, disguised, hidden, refused.  Anyone might be a threat to you.  Your giving of reasons also risks your having to change, and you can't do that without pain--revolutionary pain. 

In a world where all people are acknowledged to have equal and genuine value, the giving of reasons is the giving of gifts.  In a world of extreme hierarchy, some people are entitled to reasons and not others.  Some people's reasons are entitled to be half-assed, while others are required not only to be perfectly constructed, but constructed in subordination to the needs of others. 

The failure of public institutions to provide public reasons ALWAYS hurts others, ALWAYS signals a decrease in the quality of political life, and often results in unnecessary suffering, and the infliction of pain on innocent people for the sake of comfort and convenience among those refusing to reason.  

I have to believe that we, speakers and debaters, are part of whatever alternative must emerge to fight this absurd, unjust system.  Regardless of our styles, our preferred arguments, or our paradigms, we are all capable of in some way cutting against this enforced scarcity of reasons. 

As you compete with each other tomorrow and on Friday, and as you leave here to go back to your regions and speak, strategize and win, try to remember this view of reason-giving and reason-receiving.  Toss your arguments to one another like precious jewels rather than throwing them like cutting stones.  Catch each other's arguments and open them and watch them grow, placing them next to yours, even as you ask for ballots and wins.  Demand and beg for the giving and receiving of reasons in every forum and place you find yourselves. 

Remember, also, the words of Emmanuel Levinas: "All generous thought is threatened by its own Stalinism."  As you give and receive reasons, suspend your self-certainty and give equal weight the attempted justifications of others--not equal argumentative weight, but equal ethical weight.  For, as Jurgen Habermas says, it is in that process, that giving and receiving of points and counterpoints in communication, that we find that commonality that unites us all even underneath our radical, violent differences. 

We have been incredibly lucky to discover and share reasoning together for the past two weeks.  You should all be incredibly proud of yourselves and thankful for each other.  I am thankful for each and every one of you. 

Idiot of the Week:

The film incites terrorism??? Sounds like this guy has serious intellectual defects...and may be committing libel!

DECORAH, Iowa (AP) - The president of a company that owns movie theaters in Iowa and Nebraska is refusing to show director Michael Moore's ``Fahrenheit 9/11.''

R.L. Fridley, owner of Des Moines-based Fridley Theatres, says the controversial documentary incites terrorism.

Fridley said in an e-mail message to company managers that the company does not ``play political propaganda films from either the right or the left.''

``Our country is in a war against an enemy who would destroy our way of life, our culture and kill our people,'' Fridley wrote. ``These barbarians have shown through (the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001) and the recent beheadings that they will stop at nothing. I believe this film emboldens them and divides our country even more.''

``Fahrenheit 9/11'' won best picture at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival and has grossed millions of dollars at the box office. Moore won an Academy Award for an earlier work, ``Bowling for Columbine.''

Critics accuse the film of being an unfair and inaccurate portrayal about President Bush's policies before and after Sept. 11, 2001.

Read for yourself

Redline Rants, a republican blog, has posted a transcript of the first 43 minutes of Fahrenheit 911, with promises of more to come.

Although some of the subsequent commentary is absurdly stupid (one reader opines that Moore "should be brought up on treason charges"), the availability of a transcript may aid the numerous not-so-stupid debates going on. The host is also soliciting corrections to make the transcript more accurate. The project itself seems sincere.

Laramie July 4 Activities

For those in Laramie reading my journal, you already know that Washington Park will be the center of July 4 activity in town tomorrow. Here's Leslie from Stand Up for Peace--they'll have a booth there tomorrow, sounds like it will be fun for the kiddies...

Stand Up for Peace will have a booth in Washington Park on July 4. We'll be on the northwest end of the park so, please, stop by and see us. We'll be helping the young ones make "pinwheels for peace" and will be having a raffle for 1) "The Peace Book," 2) a bag of buttons & other goodies, and 3) an XL SUFP t-shirt. Plus, of course, we'll have lots of free literature and our excellent selection of buttons, patches, and bumperstickers for sale.
If you have some time to spare and would like to help with the booth, come by and give us a hand!!!

Victory for Utah Miners!

This week's front page story from The Militant--doubly happy for me because I'm from Utah (even lived in Price for three years) AND because it's a victory, however small, in the middle of the belly of the beast!!!

You can read more articles here providing the background of this inspiring struggle.

‘On toward victory in union election in August,’ Utah miners say

BY ANNE CARROLL
AND GUILLERMO ESQUIVEL
HUNTINGTON, Utah—In a major breakthrough for the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) organizing battle at the Co-Op mine here, the union received a draft settlement from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that orders C.W. Mining Co. to reinstate all of the 75 miners who were illegally fired last September. With most of the Co-Op strikers back to work before mid-July, the chances increase that the UMWA will win the NLRB-mandated union election that will be held sometime in August, workers report.
On June 21, two bosses from the Co-Op mine hand delivered letters to the striking miners giving them an unconditional offer to return to work. The letter stated that workers must let the company know by July 6 if they are returning to their jobs and that they must report to work no later than July 12.

“It’s a victory: we won the right to go back to work,” said striker Domingo Olivas. “All the work we’ve done up to this point puts us in a good position to win the UMWA inside the mine. We hope the miners who are already working inside will be with us.”

“Rather than reporting separately, we will all march together to the mine on July 6 and let the Co-Op bosses know we are coming back united,” said Bill Estrada, one of the strike leaders. “We are inviting all strike supporters to Huntington to march with us that day and celebrate. Fifteen retired UMWA members were the first to tell us they will be there. We look forward to doing everything possible to win the union election in August.”

On Sept. 22, 2003, 75 coal miners were fired from their jobs at the Co-Op mine, owned by C.W. Mining. They were fired because they had contacted the UMWA about getting a union organized at the mine. The miners were being paid between $5.15 and $7.00 an hour with no benefits.

A company union has existed at the mine for many years. Workers have submitted evidence that the officers of this “union” are bosses and are related to the Kingstons, the wealthy family that owns the mine.

The strikers report that the settlement agreement from the NLRB clearly states that any type of intimidation or harassment of pro-union miners by the Co-Op management is illegal. The document states that the agreement must be visibly posted at the mine for 60 days.

This is important because this is what led to the wholesale firings last September, workers say. Prior to that date, the miners had been talking to UMWA organizers about how to get a real union organized at the mine. Bosses began harassing and suspending the miners for this activity. They had cornered miners alone underground and questioned them about “the meetings they were having with the UMWA.”

The bosses also tried to disrupt a meeting the strikers had organized outside the mine, and had threatened workers, most of whom are immigrants from Mexico, with sending the immigration police after them. When they learned of the company threats, the strikers changed the time and location of that meeting. When the miners returned to Huntington after their gathering, they say they saw the bosses standing in front of the old location waiting for the meeting to begin.

The settlement explicitly prohibits any of these practices, workers say. It states that the employers must refrain even from watching the workers, or from giving them the impression they are being watched, while participating in union activities.

On Sept. 23, 2003, the UMWA filed charges with the NLRB stating that all 75 miners were fired illegally for union activity. The national labor board upheld the charge in its ruling.

The NLRB made the decision nine months into the workers’ strike, which has continued to win broader support in the labor movement throughout the country.

The miners also reported that the draft settlement includes a back pay order, the exact details of which are being negotiated and may be settled in court. The settlement reportedly states that employees have the right to pursue any legal claims they may have against the company because of loss of wages or other benefits.

Strikers said that as soon as they received the news, they began contacting all the miners who were fired. Many of the miners had taken jobs in other cities and are in the process of driving very long distances back to Huntington by July 6. A striker who went to Idaho and has been working in the potato fields for several months, for example, informed the strike leadership committee he plans to be back.

Other strikers have gotten jobs at other mines in the Utah area, and a number have indicated they will return to Co-Op.

The NLRB has set a hearing for July 20-22 in Price, Utah, to determine who will be eligible to vote and the time and place of the union election.

After the strikers and their supporters march to the mine office on July 6, everyone plans to meet at the town hall in Huntington for food, refreshments, and a celebration.

For more information, contact the UMWA office in Price at (435) 637-2037 or (435) 650-2019. Solidarity messages to be read at the rally can be faxed to the UMWA at (435) 637-9456.

"It's a very nuanced strategy"

Just as I was contemplating how troubled I am by the rude and omni-brutal tone of every current American political conversation (including the various ones taking place on our side), I had a pleasant experience reading this:

Mainly, I am happy the word "nuanced" is associated with a political movement, and I am intrigued by the forthrightness necessary to assert such heresy on cable news...

GP Presidential nominee David Cobb, on Nader and political strategy, answering the decidedly un-nuanced questions of CNN's Judy Woodfruff:

COBB: Well, I have nothing but absolute respect and admiration for Ralph Nader. As I've said many times, I'm a lawyer because of Atticus Finch and Ralph Nader.
Ralph Nader and I both absolutely agree on the need to break out of this corporate-controlled politics and the corporate-controlled nature of both the Democratic and the Republican Parties.
But, Judy, Ralph and I have a disagreement on the best way to do that. In this election cycle Ralph is running an independent campaign. It's his right to do that. And I think it's shameful that all the shenanigans are taking place to prevent Ralph Nader from being on the ballot as an independent. But myself and the Green Party are committed to building an independent political force to challenge the Democrats and the Republicans because there has to be an opposition party that will continue after the November election no matter who wins.
[...]
You know, Judy, what I've said is, I want to run a strong, aggressive and smart campaign that will both grow the Green Party and culminate with George W. Bush out of the White House. It's a very nuanced strategy. But it's one that I think is in the best interest of the country and it's in the best interest of the Green Party.
[...]
And the truth of the matter is, that John Kerry voted for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. John Kerry voted for the Patriot Act. John Kerry voted for NAFTA. John Kerry opposes single payer universal health care. John Kerry opposes raising the minimum wage to a living wage. I'm going to be willing to criticize John Kerry on taking positions that progressives cannot support, and that progressives would like to see enacted. That's the reason so many more progressives at the grassroots level are actually joining the Green Party.
At the same time, I'm going to acknowledge the truth of the matter that as bad as John Kerry is on all these issues, George W. Bush is qualitatively worse. The difference between John Kerry and George W. Bush may be nearly incremental, but it is not inconsequential. I trust the voters to hear the truth, and make up their own minds.

And on his own class identity:

I grew up in grinding poverty in San Leon, Texas. I've washed dishes. I've been a construction worker. I'm a genuine working class person who lived the American dream. You know, Greens are ordinary people trying to do something extraordinary which is to build a genuine movement that will take our country back from the corporate hooligans who have literally hijacked it.

Read the entire piece, and see if you feel that same kind of...well, refreshed feeling. Of clarity, honesty, humility. Traits that may not score you points with the sparts (or at a bar for that matter), but which, in fact, are appeals to a universal civility and respect unseen in the fallout from the Nader-GP debacle. Even Nader's patient re-explanations of his relationship to the two-party system seem like so much double-talk in comparison.

Woodruff's questions betrayed her desire to stay on scandal. But David, Ralph is mad! He's mad at you, David!

But David Cobb strikes me as a smart, down-to-earth, honest activist. It must be impossible not to have enemies in the Green Party, and surely people's competing representations will come to the surface. More troubling, many among the left will get sucked into their own unique brand of personal attacks and waste valuable energy that could be spent building new parties AND defeating the worst president since Hoover. At the risk of sounding like the suede denim secret police, we ought to try and emulate Cobb's civility, at least to each other, and maybe even to our adversaries, since it's always nicer to beat them with a smile on your face.

Debate Season Never Really Ends, Say Experts

Come next week, I may not be posting with the frenzy I've had as of late. About 85 high school students from ten states will attend the Wyoming Forensics Institute, sharpening their skills in team debate, lincoln-douglas (1-on-1) debate, and other competitive speech events. A week after they leave, over 150 college students and instructors will convene on Laramie for the fifth annual Wyoming Debate Cooperative, a non-profit collective for competitive debaters in NDT/CEDA and NPDA debate. These projects are busier and longer than anything we do during the regular school year. I imagine blogging will be a refreshing, but rare distraction.

A good critical review of F911

Jason Steck and I rarely agree on anything, but his review of Fahrenheit 911 is very well written and argued. Obviously I disagree with a couple of points, but I largely agree with his description of Moore's rather forced argumentative style, and Moore's tendency to truncate his arguments (how much that's possible in filmmaking aside, since Moore chooses his arguments as well as his genre). Maybe Moore just thinks he deploys enthymemes effectively, but he would do well to ask fewer rhetorical questions and lay out his case point by point. It's not hard to do when dealing with the Bush administration.

I strongly disagree with the assertion (Jason attributes it to a student) that Moore exploited people's suffering. For me, sustained viewing of that suffering is a vital part of the message, perhaps a conduit to ethical understanding, and also is fair game in a political argument (eg, sustained and agenda-driven representations of those who suffered under Saddam--I'd have no objection to that). More about that in the second item below.

But Moore is often sloppy, and Jason capitalizes on that with cutting precision. And once again, I'm right: This movie has created a higher level of dialogue on every side.

Moore, F911 and the question of exploitation

Some have argued that Moore exploits Lila Lipscombe's tragedy of first encouraging her children to join the military, then losing her son, then questioning WHY her son and others were deployed to Iraq.

Herein lies a real epistemic and ethical paradox. One looks at those scenes and one thinks "she's being exploited" or "her pain is being exploited," which is functionally the same. The problem is that any "objective" meaning of exploitation only makes sense within certain systems perspectives, and "subjective" experiences of oppression are, um, subject-dependent.

There are, I would think, at least two ways to determine whether someone is being exploited:

1. You can construct definition and criteria of exploitation that makes sense within your system of social explanation: Marxism and certain forms of Feminism do this. You then also need a working definition of "false consciousness" in order to account for those who do not "feel" exploited, but nevertheless are from the perspective of your system. Having constructed the definition/criteria, you can then apply it to the situation, and determine whether someone is being exploited.

2. You can rely on persons themselves to express their exploitation. That is, you can take a pre-ontological ethical approach (via Levinas perhaps) of saying: If the other person says she is exploited, then I must assume she is, and the meaning of that is something I need to draw from our communication.

Obviously both approaches are problematic. You might apply some other, older tests too, such as Kant's question of whether one is being treated as a means or an end. But that seems to go back to the question of how that person sees herself, and/or how one can functionally place her in a systemic examination of how she is being treated.

Was Lila Lipscombe's tragedy exploited to make a political point? Or was it utilized, with her blessing, to make a political point? Who owns her tragedy and her pain? Every report I have read shows her to be enthusiastically embracing the film and her role in it, and she even seems willing to "exploit" her own exposure to participate in more political activism. A couple of bloggers out there have insisted she's being exploited, but their statements don't even come close to filtering through the kind of criterial tests I laid out above.

Of course, one might argue that she is, herself, exploiting her own suffering. That is a different argument, to which one might respond that she has the right to do so just as we would, and that we don't enjoy the right to judge her until we experience what she has experienced. I don't know how to resolve that question.

Is Moore exploiting others in the film? Or is he simply exploiting the pain created by the tragic geopolitical and class relations that surround and contextualize us? Is he exploiting the suffering Iraqis whose images he deploys in the film? Again, I am not sure how one could make such a judgment absent either a theory of exploitation, or a localized knowledge of the subjects themselves.

So while one should be concerned about exploitation, about the use of others' pain to further one's political agenda, carrying that concern over into a critical judgment against Moore's rhetorical choices also risks silencing or disregarding the choices, feelings, and identities of those moral agents that you're concerned for in the first place. For the record, I am not comfortable condemning Moore for it, but I am also not entirely comfortable with the fact that he does it so much in F911.

It seems to me that the ultimate exploitation here is captured by Moore's summation at the end of the film. If Iraq did not pose an immediate threat to the United States, and if whatever moral principles justifying the invasion to depose an evil dictator are applied inconsistently and without a legitimate accompanying national conversation among those affected by the decision to invade, in short, if the U.S. deployed its soldiers when not absolutely necessary, then our soldiers, and innocent Iraqis, and all of us, have been exploited. Perhaps Moore is exploiting that too. You can direct your critical judgment against him for that. I prefer to direct mine elsewhere.

Unlucky at Any Speed: Nader is Toast...and Who Is David Cobb?
(latest in my electoral struggle)

Nader/Camejo's failure to gain Green Party endorsement at the GP convention this weekend has sapped a great deal of my remaining enthusiasm for that ticket. Nader's choice of Peter Camejo, a former Marxist and one of the most visible leftist activists in politics today (after a respectable performance campaigning against Governor Kindergarten Cop in California) came too little too late, and instead, the faithful, intelligent, party-liner David Cobb will be the Greens' candidate for President. Cobb will likely name Pat LaMarche as his running mate. The biggest loser here may be Camejo, who could have been the Greens' presidential candidate, but now will have to trapse around ten or so states as the VP candidate of the Reform Party!

The GP convention was partially a referendum on whether and how to support John Kerry, partly a final message from the Greens to Nader, and partly an acknowledgment that the heart of the current Green Party is in its plethora of new members who, like David Cobb, only recently abandoned the two-party system. If it is not radical enough, then Nader's candidacy (at least the way he has played it) is even less so.

Reaction has been mixed. Joaquin Bustelo, writing for "Frontlines: The newspaper of the Left" calls Cobb a "shamefaced Kerry supporter" and writes with disdain that Cobb has:

no claimed connection to social or protest movements. He says he discovered the evils of the two-party system in 1996 [...] Over the past few months Cobb ran a stealth campaign in which he held virtually no public meetings or rallies -- not that he could draw any sort of crowd had he tried.
Instead, he focused on lining up green apparatchiks and delegates by pissing in their ear about how Nader was taking money from racists, on the one hand, and would refuse to share his list of contributors with the greens, on the other. [...]
Even taking this into account, however, the success of Cobb's campaign for the nomination must be chalked up largely to Nader. After having put the party on the political map and won for it ballot lines all over the country, in 2004 Nader has consistently refused to accept responsibility for the party's course nor even tried to influence it in a positive direction.

I am having a hard time understanding how Bustelo can be so hard on such an obvious GP success story (although I have deleted some of Bustelo's less relevant and more personal attacks; the full text is here, and you may notice that Bustelo seems more concerned about Cobb's hairline than his platform, which is never mentioned).

On the other side, this AP story shows a lot of reason behind the pro-Cobb sentiment:

...Cobb has touted himself as a homegrown Green who would work to build the party from the ground up, while Nader has maintained he is not a member of the party and does not plan to join.
Cobb went out of his way to praise Nader in accepting the nomination, but said later the vote was a sign the Green Party "has gotten out from under the shadow of a man who has probably cast a larger shadow than any other living American."

One LBO-talk member assured that listserve: "I gave David Cobb a crash course on Marx, Joan Robinson and Nick Kaldor and the intertranslatability of economic terminology a la Quine. I was with him in CA on 9/11. He *knows* the problem is capitalism." Of course, there are ways that potential Cobb voters can and should verify this. And one can certainly "know the problem is capitalism" and still be mistaken about whether one should support the Democrats.

The key here is that Cobb epitomizes, and actually delivered on, the ideals that Nader promised. We've all heard the stories that

...circulate about Nader's aloofness, his refusal to share his mailing lists with the Greens, his ignoring suggestions from staff. For a man who has dedicated his life to the nitty-gritty of consumer safety, Nader has stirred up a lot of strong passions.
"Nader is an icon in the movement but he does not share my vision of grass-roots democracy," says Anita Rios, who co-chairs the party's diversity committee. "He doesn't understand about working with people, grabbing people by the hand one by one," she says, getting agitated. "We don't need some rich white guy with a Harvard education leading us."

Cobb, like Nader, is a lawyer, and isn't presumed to be doing too badly for himself. The chief difference between Nader and Cobb seems to be more interpersonal than ideological, at least so far as the GP rank-and-file are concerned. Since I have always been reluctant to condemn Nader for being a "cold person" (something far too many touchy feely liberals will prioritize), this difference doesn't automatically win me over to Cobb. But in some ways, his unassuming honesty is refreshing.

Although he "knows the problem is capitalism," Cobb believes Bush is at least a problem, if not the problem: "My primary goal," he says, "is to grow and build the Green Party, but my secondary goal is to have George Bush out of the White House." Cobb justifies his two-fold strategy (increase Green exposure, get rid of George Bush) in a relatively simple way: "John Kerry," he says, "is a corporatist militarist, but George Bush is a genuine threat to the planet."

It's been difficult for me to admit what many others seem to have seen better than me. Nader has made mistakes that will cost him whatever he was trying to get--from all of us. Still, I wish more of Nader's critics would actually read his positions, if only to see how much they differ from-- and how good they look in comparison to-- what Nader manages to get out in 30-second soundbites. Hearing him speak is kind of the best of both worlds; with more time, he can reach deeper into the causes of things, and his platform is, realistically, the best solution among all the allegedly unattainable ones. But I fear that this time around (likely his last time around), he comes off as a kind of buffoon, a crazy spoiler, possibly even a liability for his own causes--many of which I enthusiastically share.

Fahrenheit 911

I am admittedly partisan and irritated about the attacks on Michael Moore, but that supercharged malignment is nothing new. For as long as we've had films, we've had blatantly political filmmakers, and political editorializing, whether in form or effect, has always existed in art. All the while, one could hear shrill voices around the artists and their artifacts, squawking that the artists and the artifacts ought to be neutral, fair and balanced, respectful of their leaders and patrons. Unlike Berthold Brecht, Moore won't be questioned by the House Un-American Activities Committee, and while I hope he has hired some security, it's unlikely that he'll be lynched or even tarred and feathered. True, Glenn Beck's radio show spent the better part of three hours on Friday engaged in a "Find Something Fatter than Michael Moore" contest, and Bill O'Reilly compared Moore to Joseph Goebbels, both of which seem pretty low; still, it could be a whole lot worse (and will perhaps be considerably worse, in this and other ways, if George W. Bush manages to etch out a second term).

Perhaps it's easier for me to blow off the more juvenile criticism directed at Moore because Fahrenheit 911 opened to sold-out theaters all over the country, including my own home of Laramie, Wyoming. I felt exhilarated when I heard our showing had sold out, because the dialogue inspired by the film, evident before, during (grr) and after the film is precisely the kind of thing Laramie needs. In contrast to what you've probably heard about the film, it raises, doesn't lower, the intellectual and moral levels of political discourse in America. Viewed mainly by those of the same general political orientation as its director, but by a substantial amount of other viewers curious to see "the other side," Fahrenheit 911 is the sensible answer to another controversial film, The Passion of the Christ. Call this "The Passion of the Poor and Working People Economically Conscripted to Fight in a Bullshit Corporate War." It may not be Moore's best, but it works, is working. People are talking politics (many for the first time), Bush is in trouble, and I no longer feel like I live in a pliable, demoralized funny farm.

The film is, of course, competently entertaining. Once could, I suppose, enjoy it without thinking too much about politics. My very political friend Rob Fergus wrote that "the funniest parts of the movie were more cute than anything, less ironic or even sarcastic than earlier films, though brutally anti-Bush." Rob mentions the Bonanza send-up, which produced a very primal belly laugh from the whole audience, and a feeling of high school-style satire. I think this is an important point about what separates Moore from other pundits. He has an undeniable silliness that mitigates his militancy, and is a rhythmically methodical humorist.

Moore is at his best when, passive-aggressively, he confronts or is confronted by those in power--members of congress, security guards, Bush himself. In Fahrenheit 911, he spends the obligatory time trying to petition congressperson to send their own children to Iraq, fending off Secret Service agents who inexplicably guard the Saudi Embassy in Washington, following two Marine recruiters to the shopping mall. I was struck by the odd, localized places in Moore's films where genuine humor emerges (perhaps a humor more heartfelt and important than the Bonanza or Peter Gunn sendups), and nothing epitomizes that better than the facial expression of the endless supply of politicians and bureaucrats--Moore doesn't so much lampoon them as allow them to lampoon themselves. Of course, Moore's ability to draw attention to facial expressions also allows him to effectively pull off his "seven minutes" argument, the disturbing scene where George Bush displays total befuddlement, or perhaps something else, when informed that the nation is under attack.

But Fahrenheit 911 shows a newer Moore. We see more seemingly mundane scenes of everyday life than in his previous films, and long, uncomfortable takes of family members (both Iraqi and American) weeping and cursing their oppressors, feeling cheated that their sons and other loved ones were killed for reasons that had nothing to do with them. This is where Moore has never been better. Scenes of dead, mutilated children, including one being placed in a truck full of bodies, will lead viewers through politics into intimate morality--a morality which asks Alyosha's question in the Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov: Would you torture and kill one small child to save the world (albeit from an evil but rather incompetent dictator). Even a reviewer at foxnews.com was moved by story of Flint, Michigan mother Lila Lipscombe, who

sends her kids into the Army for the opportunities it can provide — just like the commercials say — and lives to regret it. Lipscombe's story is so powerful, and so completely middle-American, that I think it will take Moore's critics by surprise. She will certainly move to tears everyone who encounters her.

As another reviewer writes, "Moore minimizes his presence and places his arguments center stage" and I believe that's an accurate description of a notable difference between Fahrenheit 911 and its predecessors. So all things considered, this film made me laugh, cry, and think, which at least makes it better than A Beautiful Mind, which only really made me cry--a lot.

What do we say about interpretable facts, clear instances of spin, selective histories? My only question is why we are ourselves so selective, and spin so much, when doing so. There isn't much more to it than that, really. On every message board I'm on, there is at least one Moore-hater who is livid, spitting bile all over Moore, for daring to market propaganda as documentary. There are pointless discussions about the definition of a documentary. Again (say it with me): these condemnations and hair-splittings are selective, arbitrary, their adherents driven by their own transparent political biases. It's one thing to have a discussion about the extent of the Saudi ruling class's influence on Bush (given the substantial financial connections that undeniably exist), or the problematic Saudi response to the September 11 attacks. It's unreasonable, however, to hold Moore up to standards of intent and precision that the Moore-haters would never force upon the Bush administration. At least Moore's facts are, verifiable and falsifiable, available for public scrutiny, unlike the web of half-truth and secrecy he so effectively attacks. By all means, let's bring everything out into the open and sort the facts out, eh? Eh?

What about Moore's treatment of the Saudis? Xenophobic? Perhaps. I will say, insofar as this kind of populism sometimes relies a foreign or outside enemy, Moore deploys this effectively albeit, perhaps, unthinkingly. But his emphasis is on the relationship between the Saudi ruling class and a section of big U.S. money, connected by each sides' oil interests. Both countries' rulers are content to make Iraqis the whipping boys and girls in the dialectic of hegemony and resistance. And if the Saudis are overplayed as sinister, it's only in the larger context of a cynicism each of these ruling classes have helped to create, with Bin Ladins allowed to fly out of the country when nobody else could fly, and references to Saudi Arabia getting deleted from government reports on the September 11 attacks. It would take a certain sophistication in political theory and ethics possessed by neither Moore nor, apparently, Ralph Nader, to avoid seeming a little nationalistic when talking about the sinister entangelements of our leaders.

It doesn't surprise me that I am more excited about the political space this film has opened up than the artistic excellence of the film itself. There is a whole lot to enjoy about the movie if you're a political junkie of any orientation, and if even half of Moore's allegations about Bush are true, this only confirms that Bush is the worst president of our generation. I strongly suspect that many more than half are true. But although nobody should ever say the truth is unimportant, the ability to speak it is at least as important, and that's what makes Moore's style and success especially significant.

If I Had A Hammer

Just got off the phone with the immortal Pete Seeger. One of our high school debate institute co-directors worked for an organization affiliated with Mr. Seeger, and arranged a donation of 100 copies of a book Mr. Seeger wrote on activism and music. So they needed a shipping address, and instead of getting some underling to call me, Pete Seeger did it himself, and we talked for an hour, about civil rights, folk music, kids, politics, and debate. I neglected to tell him that we shared the same church (Unitarian Universalist) but somehow I feel like that wouldn't have been very relevant.

At 85 years old, he certainly had his wits about him, and he even sang a few bars of music for me. His chief concern about politics today seems to be information overload and an over-serious attitude on the part of many activists. The solution: more music, more satire, more invitational playfulness. He told me a great story about marching in Alabama in the 1960s, hearing spontaneous or long-passed-on marching songs, and him trying desperately to write down the words while he was marching.

So I am in a kind of activist/folk music lover euphoria right now and am likely to remain so for the rest of the day. I've never talked to a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame before, let alone the father of political folk music in the second half of the 20th century. And by golly, he called me!

In the spirit of the dialogue I am trying to start, however, I have reprinted below an essay by Joel Kovel, who has faced off against Nader more than once. Kovel maintains that there is a huge difference between Democrats and Republicans, a difference that is more than worth compromising our more radical demands and tendencies...

Green Follies
by Joel Kovel

Published on Wednesday, June 23, 2004 by CommonDreams.org

A shocking scenario is unfolding before our eyes which, if carried through, will constitute the greatest mistake made by the left in many years. A small but very determined fraction of the Green Party is prepared to package Ralph Nader with Peter Camejo, the Green
Gubernatorial candidate in California in 2002 and Nader's just announced Vice-Presidential choice, in a drive to capture the Green's "endorsement" (Nader is not eligible for the party's nomination) in the upcoming national convention this weekend in Milwaukee. Camejo's presence on the ticket undercuts the objection that Nader has no real connection to the party's base, and it touched off the internet equivalent of jubilation on the lists controlled by Greens of this persuasion.

"Imagine hundreds of thousands of Greens hitting the streets all across the country energized by the strongest progressive ticket in a generation," waxed one such Naderite, omitting to ponder the fact that a strenuous petition campaign for Nader barely managed to clear 300 signatures among Greens. But in one of those flukes tossed up from time to time by history, it may actually turn out that a tiny coterie could squeeze an endorsement out of the convention . . . which could turn over the 22 state ballot lines controlled by the Greens to Nader/Camejo . . . which could result in toss-up states like Oregon, Wisconsin and New Mexico going over to the Republicans. . . which could give us four more years of you-know-who.

Nader has been straining to argue that he will pull in as many disaffected Republican as Democratic votes. But the selection of a Vice-Presidential candidate demonstrably to his left puts the quietus to that dubious line of reasoning. The only practical "success" he can now have will be to bring W. back to the White House. Remember the nursery rhyme about how, for want of a nail, the battle and then the war was lost? Well, the same could be said for the scenario now unfolding, except that what is wanting now is political intelligence and a sense of proportion among some Greens who should know better.

The Naderite Greens scoff at such arguments, having convinced themselves that the chief thing in this world is to defeat the Democratic Party so the Greens can take over rightful ownership of the Progressive side of the political spectrum. To this fraction, the Democrats are like the image of Moby Dick in the mind of Captain Ahab: the concentration of all evil in the universe. Thus you will learn, if you read their unending email postings, that criticism of Nader is a plot engineered by the Democrats, that Kerry is a greater danger than Bush because he will be more effective, that the notion of "anybody but Bush" is a sign of cowardice, and that the real problem is not Bush but "Bushism," a new word for a phenomenon as old as G.W. Bush himself, namely, that both mainstream parties share in the crafting of US imperialism.

The Naderite Greens can't seem to understand that a necessary concept may not be sufficient to explain what is taking place politically. In fact, they don't really reason politically at all, but reduce politics to economics. Because both mainstream parties are tools of big money (think of the $100 million Kerry has raked in by running as a centrist Republican), big money is the puppeteer pulling their strings. And as big money demands militarism and imperialism, then its puppet parties will dance its dance. But politics is about much more than economics. It also includes struggle over the way people live, the way governments achieve legitimacy, and the conditions that allow or block change. These things really matter and they cannot be reduced to a simplistic economic formula. The Naderite Greens pass them by, because if they admitted that there can be real differences between the mainstream parties, they might have to give up their fantasies about party-building and their attachment to the charismatic Nader.

The problem is, however, that a very big difference between Democrats and Republicans has evolved over the past generation or so. It has taken root in the Bush administration, who have every intention of making it a permanent feature of the political landscape. Look at Bush, at Rove, and at Ashcroft, and you can see the newly malignant face of big business linked with a massive social base of Christian fundamentalism. Its inner logic points to the demolition of the Constitution and the replacement of the Republic--however compromised this may be - by a theocratic brand of fascism, in which the space for political change will shrink drastically, and the lives of those who do not fit--women, homosexuals, Muslims, anyone in the crosshairs of the police apparatus - will be greatly worsened. Nobody in their right mind can say that the wretched Democrats promise the same.

Nader seems incapable of grasping this qualitative distinction, and his loyal band of Greens goes along, caught up, for the third time, no less, in hero worship, and oblivious to the fact that the essential principle of Green politics is grassroots democracy. The Greens have a perfectly respectable candidate in David Cobb, who rose through the ranks. But because Cobb has shown some sensitivity to the extreme danger posed by another Bush administration, the Naderites attack him as a virtual agent of the Democratic Party as they fantasize about the great social movement Ralph Nader is going to unleash in America.

A lose-lose situation looms. To the extent that Nader succeeds, so does Bush. And in any case, the left will emerge weaker and more divided from this Quixotic escapade. Once again the left has become its own worst enemy.

---
Joel Kovel ran against Ralph Nader in the 2000 Green Party presidential primary in New York and California, and was the Green Party's candidate for US Senator from NY in 1998. His two most recent books are Red-Hunting in the Promised Land and The Enemy of Nature.

Problems with Camejo
(part two of my election year struggle)

Last year, in the midst of the California recall vote, the World Socialist Web Site published Peter Daniels's firm and dogmatic criticism of Peter Camejo; he's a capitalist, an ex-quasi-anti-trostkyist-stalinist, didn't criticize the invasion of Iraq OR Bush ENOUGH in the Gubernatorial debates, weak on economic policy, and doesn't shower (just kidding about the last one).

This does not change the fact that he is the hardest left candidate of national prominence. It just makes that fact a bit more depressing for people on the left. Yeah, Camejo deals in money. He decided that was something he could do well, and responsibly, and there is no evidence to suggest he hasn't. Clearly, he no longer considers himself a Marxist.

On face, I don't believe that should be some kind of litmus test for the socialist left. A commitment to a political method, or even a world view, doesn't preclude an honest search for like-mindedness in a pluralist political world. We can't afford to be drawing those kinds of lines. We have to extend a trust unfamiliar to traditional political life--especially for radicals.

However, the WSWS, in its typical precision, goes much further. Analyzing Camejo's plan for California, Peter Daniels points out that Camejo answers vast inequalities in income and taxation with an obscenely incremental tax increase for the wealthy. He calls for "responsible" budget cuts. His agenda is no different from any left-Democrat. And they have some things to say about how earlier positions and sides he took as a member of the Socialist Workers Party reveal a kind of political opportunism that makes his current alignment with the Greens as predictable as it is disappointing.

I share the WSWS lack of enthusiasm for the Green Party agenda, when compared to a genuine anti-capitalist agenda. Still, I am not ready to say that a socialist agenda would not need a Peter Camejo. Capital exists now as an ingenuine and destructive substitute for the collective energy of a healthy society. Nothing in my reading of Camejo suggests he would be anything but a faithful, innovative and engaging organizer in such a society.

Here is a curious line in the article:

Camejo has taken pains to display his credentials as a defender of the profit system and allay any fears that might be aroused by his socialist past, including his campaign for the presidency in 1976 as the candidate of the Socialist Workers Party. His rival candidates and the media, for their part, have maintained a studied silence on his past identification with socialist politics.

As for Camejo's willingness to allow for progressives to vote for Cruz Bustamante in the Gubernatorial race:

Camejo all but dropped his stance of independence from the two major parties, openly encouraging Green supporters to vote for Bustamante on October 7 by saying he would “understand” if they did so to stave off a Republican victory.

It seems to me that the WSWS lacks it own "understanding gland" -- but only when it chooses to. Their writers' treatment of cultural issues, their acknowledgment of the uniqueness of the American democratic experiment, even little things like holding up John Kennedy as an example of the eloquence of an earlier period of bourgeois politics, all set them apart from the glazed-eyed Sparts and company whose style and mannerisms have put off so many potential allies. Their editorial staff has managed to produce a consistent flavor of writing, both elegant and accessible, and politically inviting. So why dismiss Camejo's acknowledgment that some Californians who found the prospect of Governor Kindergarten Cop particularly unpalatable might have voted, however ignorantly, for the person they thought most likely to stave off that groping disaster?

Perhaps the reason the electoral stance of the WSWS is so different from the subtlety of other sections of its political analysis is the Fourth International's insistence that class matters. The working class needs working class candidates, with class-centric policy proposals and a commitment to spend more time in the streets and workplaces than boardrooms and the beltway. For Daniels, Camejo's campaign in California

serves the basic aim of the Greens: to utilize the recall drive to secure a place within the political establishment in California and the US as a whole.

Now, many on the left would be extremely happy if the Greens did just that, and my motivation for wanting to vote for Nader and Camejo is to "establish" the Greens--a decidedly imperfect party whose national prominence would nevertheless constitute a paradigm shift in contemporary political life. But Daniels actually turns that argument on its head, concluding:

The Green Party is a bourgeois party. It has no genuine independence from the major parties of the capitalist ruling elite, nor could it, given its programmatic basis. The party is defined by its reformist perspective, which is rooted in and reflects the outlook of dissident elements within the middle classes. It can, in the end, play only a reactionary role, serving as a political lightning rod to divert social discontent along channels that are harmless to the essential interests of the ruling elite, while helping to keep the working class politically subordinated to the parties and politicians of big business.

According to this logic, a prominent Green Party would make this worse for those who wanted to open up spaces for more revolutionary parties. I'm not sure I agree with this argument. It seems the analogous argument that refutes that one is the notion that the existence of politicians like David Duke and Pat Buchanan open up space for mainstream rightists to move further to the right--an argument I've frequently heard Trotskyists make. I don't know if the "release valve" objection to reformism trumps the importance of a progressive break in the two-party system and the promotion of a strong anti-corporate agenda, especially in the absence of the kind of working class leadership necessary for the struggle against capitalism to take hold in general political consciousness.

But I doth protest too much. The WSWS is 100% right about one thing: Camejo has himself abandoned class as an explanatory postulate, rallying point, identifying marker, in his politics, making him an appropriate candidate for an upper middle class political party like the Greens. Similarly, Nader's reformism has long suffered from the same sin of omission. If I vote for Nader and Camejo, I am certainly not voting my class or my class perspective, nor am I necessarily advancing fundamental breakdown of economic hierarchy in America. And of course, I am doubly cursed by those who insist I am helping George W. Bush in his quest for another 4-year ransacking.

(to be continued)

Nader-Camejo: Why Now? Why Not?

(first of a series)

As promised, the beginnings of a conversation for those who believe: (A) that it is not a matter of controversy whether Bush needs to vacate the White House by January 2005, and (B) that John Kerry is a piss-poor alternative, the alternative of a settled, slowly decaying distopia at best and, at worst, Bush with a northeastern drawl. What should we do? Should we vote for one of the smattering of smart, committed activists running on various third party tickets--Walt Brown of the Socialist Party? The Socialist Equality Party (keepers of the great WSWS.org site)'s Bill Van Auken? Martin Koppel, a competent editor and writer for the Militant and a cordial, disciplined activist, is at the head of the Socialist Workers Party ticket. I would and will happily consider arguments for voting for any of these comrades.

Four years ago, I proudly voted for Ralph Nader and Wynona LaDuke, and although I did so in a solidly Republican state, I encouraged votes for him everywhere. I did so knowing that, if a gun were held to my head, I'd have chosen Gore over Bush. I even did so knowing that Bush probably lacked what little egalitarian conscience slept unstirred in Gore's rigid brain. I did so because the Green platform, and Nader's, differed radically from the Democratic party platform, and as a matter of principle, I felt one should vote for what one could predominantly agree with, even if, as I believed, that vote was more for the purpose of protest and coalition building than for a realistic choice of president.

At the time I rejected arguments from those left of Nader who correctly pointed out that Ralph was no socialist. I rejected those to the right of Nader (whether they knew they were or not) who correctly warned of the consequences of another Bush in the White House. I was all Eugene Debs: "It's better to vote for what you want and not get it, than to vote for what you don't want and get it." I reject the notion that Nader cost Gore the White House; the primary blame should go to the crooks who, by deploying false felon records, cost Gore thousands of votes in Florida. But more importantly, a society which holds my political conscience hostage to the ruling class is a society that deserves bad presidents. And so I could proudly say, for the last four years, Don't Blame Me, I Voted for Nader.

Things are considerably more uncertain for me this time around. As a matter of policy choices, those of George W. Bush will be qualitatively worse than those of John Kerry, on the whole, and the undesirable impacts of those policies will cross many class lines (although the poor and working class will suffer disproportionately, as we do under any administration). Bush is a particularly brazen, stupid, uninspired little man. Worse, he willfully surrounds himself with empire builders and criminals of the highest caliber. This administration has behaved like a one-term administration, aware that they can only go so far, determined to push the country as far to the right as possible, pulling out all the stops to reshape the world in their image. Their purposes may be sincere (although that doesn't explain all the lies; even Marx and Engels insisted that the communists not hide their aims), but regardless of their intent, the end result has been a less democratic nation and a substantially uglier and more unscrupulous world.

Four years ago, progressives were asked to jettison all other considerations to "prevent" the first four years of the above scenario. We were asked to hold our noses and vote for the archetypically cynical Democrat, a candidate with substantial financial holdings in both big oil and big tobacco, who supported the death penalty, who wanted to lock up pot smokers even though he himself had spent a couple of years doing bong hits in his living room, who, as we all predicted, went rhetorically leftward when he thought it mattered, and remained, by all significant measures, a bourgeois right-centrist. (The Al Gore of today? A different picture entirely. One is at least tempted to like him for his fiery, antiestablishment rhetoric. Still, one can't be too careful.)

One cannot discount the significance of Nader's choice of a veep. He may have accepted the Reform Party's endorsement in order to court disaffected conservatives, but Nader has chosen Peter Camejo, a former presidential candidate for the Socialist Workers' Party, and (despite the sectarian, ultraleft rantings about him) a committed leftist whose "socially responsible investing" makes him no worse than the advertising department of The Nation. Camejo is the real deal, quite possibly the most leftward public figure at this level of national political exposure. His Marxist-honed intelligence and analytic discipline, combined with a natural rhetorical flair forged in decades of grass roots activism, is more Debs than Nader. He outshone his opponents in the California Gubernatorial debates almost effortlessly.

This Saturday, the Greens will choose their Presidential nominee, and there is still a real possibility that the honor will go to David Cobb, a truly great activist and longtime builder of the Green Party, who has promised to nominate a female as his running mate. Delegates like Ted Glick believe this would be a much better choice than Nader, even with Camejo on that ticket:

A Cobb nomination will give us a Presidential candidate who is 100% committed to using his campaign to build upon what we have already accomplished this year and carry it forward not just until election day but post-November 2nd and into the coming years. No one except perhaps Ralph Nader knows what will come out of his Independent campaign. [recent LBO-talk post]

Although these reasons don't seem extremely well-developed, and seem to ignore the presence of Camejo on the ticket (as well as the extensive, well-articulated and thoroughly leftward catalog of Nader's positions on the issues at votenader.org), all progressives should wait and see what happens in Milwaukee this weekend. Speaking for myself, if Nader does not receive the Greens' endorsement, this will be cause for a reevaluation of where I ought to orient myself politically in this very important election cycle.

I say this acutely aware of the limits of electoral politics. I know that real change comes from mass movements as well as the endless interpersonal conversations that occur in workplaces, classrooms, churches and bars. I realize that Corporate America will pick a winner, and that this is unlikely to change in response to mere electoral agitation. But I also know that the electoral stage is a political space and that, in fulfilling the first half of Debs' dictum, "voting for what you want and not getting it" can be a powerful educator and motivator for more effective politics down the road. What I will not do, regardless of my eventual endorsement decision, is make a virtue out of necessity by falling into the tempting trap of seeing John Kerry as a savior, a hero, or a friend to people like me. Too many of my comrades gave Clinton a free pass; if you love everything George W. Bush stands for, thank Clinton, and the soft left, for smoothing the road for him.

(to be continued)

Right Hand Man
(on behalf of all the right hand men of dictators throughout history, because nobody can do it all by themselves)

share with me your perfect vision
I will be your right hand man
I will give life to your language
I will start the process rolling
funny how you visionaries
don't always have the stomach for a fight
I will be your right hand man

share with me your perfect vision
people need your clarity
people want to do the right thing
people want some discipline
sometimes need to be reminded
sometimes need a little kick

Others want the glory celebration
I just want to enact your vision
others want to run the show
I just want to help you make it go
others need material compensation
I'll make a vow of poverty
And I have the courage to do
all those things you could not do
Share with me your perfect vision
Let me help you make it real
You have ideas I have steel

Yoshie Furuhashi's Critical Montages is my favorite web journal these days. I have read Yoshie's posts for years on LBO-Talk, because they are always well-written, calm, and correct, as well as a fountain of information and connection.

Yoshie's report on Bill O'Reilly's shift on Iraq (and some interesting commentary on Nader and other candidates) fits well with a montage of my own. For the last several weeks I have written posts attempting to describe, in a self-consciously fragmented way, the fragmentation of bourgeois politics; the ruthlessness of their bulldogs, the transitive nature of their arguments.

But Yoshie's article identifies another area of focus at least as important as watching the ruling class bumble around.

the very fact that O'Reilly arrived at the conclusion that "[t]he faster we get out of there, the better" based on his own conservative premise and reasoning -- America went to war with "very good intentions," and "[w]e gave them a chance like we gave the South Vietnamese people a chance," but "[t]he majority of the Iraqi people do not appreciate what we've done for them" -- is quite significant. It's an index of how unpopular the occupation of Iraq has become.
The John Kerry camp should take heart from the conclusion of the O'Reilly speech at the Economic Club -- O'Reilly all but endorsed Kerry

And we should learn from why it's possible that O'Reilly would endorse Kerry. It's time to ask some questions about what we're voting for, why we're voting, what we hope to get out of it; and, given whatever imperfect answers to those questions, we need a conversation about Kerry, Nader, and anti-imperialist struggle.

Does Kerry get a free pass like so many Nader-Haters were eager to give Gore in 2000?

Does Nader get a free pass on immigration, as Yoshie implies? Do we forgive his conservatizing, nationalist rhetoric? What about Nader and sexual orientation issues?

I think Nader has been unwarrantedly maligned. I fundamentally deny that he cost Gore the election, and I am not sure what Gore would have gotten us beyond better-engineered and more well-hidden warfare. But I also agree with Yoshie, who writes:

Now that the tide of public opinion has turned against the occupation of Iraq, as O'Reilly's remarks demonstrate, leftists should turn up the heat on Nader as well, not just on Bush and Kerry, holding the only anti-occupation candidate in the race to a higher moral and political standard.

So in the weeks to come I'll be seeking input, and writing my thoughts on Eugene Debs's immortal wager: "It's better to vote for what you want and not get it, than to vote for what you don't want and get it."

Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.
Paulo Freire