by Peter
LaVenia
The
Democratic Party of my lifetime – the coalition of Wall St finance
capital and identity-politics voters that arose during the 1980s and
90s – is dead. It has been killed, quite ironically, by the revenge
of class politics – the kind once championed by the Democrats.
Decades of economic misery and the hollowing-out of vast segments of
the American economy, which the Democratic Party participated in
gleefully, has led to the inchoate rage which found expression in the
fun house mirror version of class struggle politics: Donald Trump.
Barack
Obama’s presidency will be seen as the high-water mark of this
Democratic Party. The reign of finance capital, on the rise since the
1970’s and the shift within capitalism from productive industry to
the financialization of everything, grew to a point where Obama used
the machinery of state to not only rescue finance capital after its
2008 collapse but to extend its rule by crushing any attempts at a
left-Keynesian solution to the crisis. Occupy Wall Street, a
class-conscious response to austerity politics, was exterminated by
Democratic mayors under dictates from Obama’s White House.
Obama’s
electoral coalition was driven by the professional class that had
arisen to manage the various segments of the financialized economy.
Since they derive significant benefits from late capitalism, the
professionals eschew class-struggle based politics. What this group
wants is a slow expansion of individual rights. The liberal illusion
is that this gradual expansion of rights is inevitable, that progress
is slow-but-steady, and more radical attempts to deal with the
economic system are unwanted or impossible. It is a perfect illusion
for professionals within capitalism to have: moderate progress and no
need to mention class. Capital very well accomodated itself to these
demands during the Obama years and showed itself willing to
incorporate same-sex marriage, marijuana legalization, etc. The point
is not that these gains are insignificant – they are indeed
important – but that they do little to address the larger
inequalities within capitalism and have been used to split
professionals from the working class.
Thus the
collective trauma of the liberal class after Trump’s win is very
much that of a group illusion being violently shattered. Every
subclass manifests ideological justifications for its position, and
the wrenching defeat of Hillary Clinton – who had the full might of
the media apparatus behind her – shows there are no longer enough
votes to continue mining in new sectors of the identity-politics
class. This class reaction to defeat is a comical extension of
itself: talk of fleeing the country is only possible because they are
credentialed professionals with portable skills across international
borders. Working class individuals are to be left behind to resist,
or be crushed by the new regime.
Indeed it
was that working class of the Rust Belt that handed the Democratic
Party its defeat. Trump is no savior of workers, but he understands
what successful elites have from time immemorial: to win the backing
of a disaffected working class means you acquire a strong base of
support against other elite factions. The inchoate rage of the
working class (many of whom voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012) is a
product of a half-century of structural decline coupled with
conscious policy decisions that decimated the workforce. Clinton
signed NAFTA, Obama failed to press forward on card-check
unionization rules, and none of them moved to repeal Taft-Hartley. It
is also a product of post-war order that took apart class-struggle
unions and attacked class struggle parties, making it nearly
impossible to organize in the private sector. Until mid-century there
was a healthy class-conscious culture buoyed by labor and socialist
media, organizations and education. Its loss has opened a space for
the rise of a right-wing that gives a distorted voice to working
class concerns.
Many will
point to Bernie Sanders as a rebuttal to the terminal decline of the
Democratic Party’s drift into the party of identity politics and
Wall St. It is true that Sanders voiced a social-democratic agenda
warmly received by workers and a good part of left-leaning
petty-bourgeois Americans. But remember: the professional
identity-politics voters in the Democrats fiercely rejected Sanders.
He won states with large working class populations not tied to the
professional identity-politics class, and he usually needed support
from independents in open primaries to do so. Class-struggle politics
can be tied to expanding personal freedoms, but it is anathema to a
professional class and party whose existence depends upon the
largesse of finance capital.
Class, then,
has had its revenge on the illusions of the professional caste. This
likely signals the terminal decline of the Democratic Party. Hemmed
in by campaign donors from moving left and by the ideology of its
party functionaries, there will be little room for it to maneuver in
Trump’s America. The capitalism of the early 21st century also
prohibits a return to the classic social-democratic bargain of
mid-century. While social-democratic programs like a massive public
works plan for full employment, income redistribution and social
programs are still possible within capitalism, but the old alliance
of labor and a section of big capital will not materialize because
capital no longer needs or wants to use those programs to create and
sustain profits by developing a mass of well-paid workers in
production industries.
Thus any
group implementing reforms on the left will be immediately challenged
and forced to either radicalize towards socialism or acquiesce to the
demands of capital. The Democrats cannot do this and will remain
boxed into their strongholds; within Congress a Sanders (or Warren)
will be allowed to posture while in the minority but will not be
allowed to build a platform to take the party in a more leftward
direction. Trump, because he is bourgeois, will conversely be
permitted to throw sops to workers in exchange for their electoral
support. It is a cruel return of working class politics that cannot
be won without building a radical left party capable of challenging
the system at the ballot box and in the streets.
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