What can I know? What must I do? What may I hope?
I can know that my
particular life cycle falls in a period during which the United States has become
the sole imperial power in the world. I
was born at a time when that was not so, and I have lived through both the
decline of the British empire, and the rise and fall of the Russian empire. I don't like the fact that the United States
is currently the dominant world hegemon;
indeed, I would much prefer that there be no nation with that sort of
monopoly of military power. But it is a
fact, and pretty clearly when I will die it will still be a fact. I also know that I live during a time when
international financial capitalism flourishes and is unchallenged by any
alternative, another fact I regret but that I know will still be so when I die.
I know that income
inequality and social stratification have characterized the United States
during my entire life, and that by all measures that inequality has increased
rapidly in the last quarter century. But
I also know that this increase in inequality, which I view with great
disapproval, is in part the result of deliberate governmental policies that it
is at least possible to reverse.
I know that during my lifetime
a number of legal and social barriers to equality have been successfully
contested and to a considerable extent removed -- barriers against people of
color, against women, against gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered
persons. I know that the removal of
these barriers was the result of deliberate and forceful struggle, sometimes violent,
sometimes non-violent. And I know that these social and legal
changes are still resisted by large segments of the American public who would,
if they could, re-impose the disadvantages and oppressions that struggle
eliminated.
Finally, and perhaps most
importantly, I know that major change, whether economic or social, results from
the organization of countless millions, not from the intentions, however
admirable, of the few. I know that
merely electing public officials who share one's goals or principles is never
enough, by itself, to effect salutary change.
Electing those officials is the necessary, not the sufficient condition
of desired change. I know that during my lifetime, the most effective
instrument of collective action -- the labor union -- has been suppressed,
eviscerated, and disempowered, and I know that this too is the result of
deliberate governmental policies that it is at least possible to reverse.
All of these things I
know, and they narrowly circumscribe the possibilities that offer themselves at
this moment in my one and only life cycle.
What, then, must I
do? First, I must choose, in the words
of the old union song, which side I am on.
[Which side are you on?, by
Florence Reece, 1931, written during the Harlan County coal miners' strike.] There is no argument that can establish with
objective validity the correctness of such a choice, Immanuel Kant and John
Rawls to the contrary notwithstanding. I
must decide who my comrades are as I live out the cycle of my life, from boyhood
to old age. I have made that
choice. I have chosen as my comrades the
exploited, the oppressed, the down-trodden, those who labor but are not fairly
compensated, those whose work creates and recreates the fabric of our society. As the Occupy Wall Street Movement would have
it, I chosen as my comrades the 99%, not the 1%, although that hyperbole
overestimates considerably the numbers of my comrades in the United States.
Having made that choice,
I must, it seems to me, do two things that may seem incompatible with one
another but in fact are inseparable parts of the same struggle. First, I must throw my support behind the
national political party farthest to the left that has a realistic chance of
winning national elections, which of course means the Democratic Party. That it has become a centrist party with
little of the working class bias and reformist thrust of earlier years is
deeply regrettable but a fact that must be faced. The failure of Obama supporters to turn out
in sufficient numbers of hold control of the House in 2010 unleashed an assault
on women's reproductive rights, indeed on women's sexuality, that was simply
appalling. A Romney victory, which
fortunately will not occur, would result in further devastation to the economic
and social needs and aspirations of those with whom I have chosen to make
common cause.
But an Obama victory
simply creates the possibility of the real work that must be done -- a ground
level effort, by millions upon millions of men and women, to strengthen labor
unions, recapture state governments, and organize to support any efforts that
have even the slightest chance of success to rein in the imperial ambitions of
America and the depredations of financial and corporate capital.
What may I [reasonably] hope? Not that I will live to see the socialism for
which my grandfather fought. That will
not happen in what is left of my life, and very probably will not happen in the
lifetimes of my sons, although I may at least go to the grave hoping that my
grandchildren will see that day, and will themselves fight to bring it
about. Nor may I reasonably hope to see
the end of imperialism in the world, for it is virtually certain that when
American imperialism passes from the world scene, as it will, another nation
will step forward to take its place as hegemon, one no more likely to place the
well-being of the billions of men and women over its own desire for world
control.
This is where I see the
world and myself in relation to it, as the years of my eighth decade wind
down. I do not think I can say, with
Wordsworth, that to be alive in the dawn of my life was bliss, nor that to be
young was very heaven. I came upon the
scene as the hopes of my grandfather were being dashed, and there have been
more disappointments than moments of triumph along the way. But there have been many, many life cycles
that offered less hope and more disappointment, and I imagine that after I
pass, there will be many more.
3 comments:
This post is an amazing gift to your grandchildren.
Thanks for the post. Doesn't it seem, though, that you're more an anarchist in religion than in politics? Your perception of the world and its future admits of no hope for anarchism becoming an actual reality, and the political actions you advocate are not anarchistic.
sigh. I guess it takes all kinds. And while I am at it, how on earth did I get on the Preferred List of Republican Supporters?
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