SolidarityEconomy.net's Carl Davidson debates Mark Solomon, Committees of Correspondence for Democracy & Socialism on the left, the movement to defeat the right and the future of socialism

Mark Solomon - A Progressive Majority: What it is and How to Build It At the Jack London Museum in the Sonoma foothills, there's a large poster on display from around 1907 advertising a talk by Jack London on "The Coming Crisis." If ever there was an always timely, all-purpose and perennially relevant topic, that's it. When we tote up outrages like an administration that abets environmental disaster, a budget resolution that shreds the last vestiges of decent social payments, worsening carnage in Iraq, insane threats to nuke Iran; a White House knee-deep in corruption, chicanery and contempt for the Constitution; a House bill that criminalizes millions of undocumented workers and those who help them; festering brutality, torture illegal rendition and denial of human rights to prisoners held across the world; near-genocidal widespread joblessness and incarceration among African American males; aggressive campaigns to undermine reproductive choice, gay marriage and other personal decisions - the crisis isn't just coming. It’s here. But crisis always provokes response - the most visible at the moment, the awakening of undocumented immigrants and their supporters demanding a fair and secure path to citizenship. Their huge demonstrations have shaken Congress and have signaled the emergence of a potentially powerful component of progressive struggle with great significance for forging coalitions to defeat the right. As the Iraq war grinds on with steadily rising death and injury to civilians and military, demonstrative action will surely grow as counter recruitment and other anti-war efforts are growing. Recent referenda in Wisconsin and various opinion polls show deep antipathy for the war running through even traditionally conservative regions. Iraq remains a crucial, potentially determining issue, especially in the forthcoming elections. Lingering outrage over Katrina with its inseparably linked racism and poverty uncovered in the wake of the hurricane, a health care crisis, wage stagnation, dead end jobs, deeply rooted government corruption, disquiet over unilateralism and preventive war - all of these factors, and more, have contributed to Bush's plummeting polls and are the basis for building and consolidating a progressive majority. Another crucial element enhancing such prospects is the emergence of fissures in the dominant right wing coalition. The Iraq quagmire has nearly ruptured the right's consensus about the use of US military power to unilaterally dominate the global system and radically reshape the Middle East. The immigration issue has for the moment sundered the alliance between corporate bigwigs hungering for cheap labor and xenophobic nationalists. Bush's reckless run up of debt has alienated fiscal hard-liners. A solid front of religious conservatives that formed the backbone of the anti-abortion movement has weakened, especially among Catholic clergy who have broken from the right wing consensus to support undocumented workers. Exposure of rampant Republican corruption has brought down Tom DeLay; the Abramoff scandal has begun to engulf other Republicans while the Plame affair is now creeping into the Oval Office itself. Prospects for a progressive majority are also influenced by events around the world. Zbigniew Brzezinski has said that Bush is facing a global "populist tide" capable of stifling the administration's foreign policy objectives. That tide runs through Latin America where new and varied forms of struggle against corporate globalization is led by new and imaginative left and progressive coalitions. The tide is running through Europe from the winning alliance of unions and youth in France that saved job protection, to a center-left coalition that defeated Berlusconi in Italy. The tide also runs through Africa, Asia, the Middle East and the Pacific Islands where daily battles take place against the ravages of the global system and against US imperial ambitions. At times that resistance is complex and even regressive, but the general trend against the hegemony of corporate globalization and US military power is unmistakable. A progressive majority is more than numbers. It is an organized, unified, coherent force able to impact the political process and ultimately overcome the dominant corporate politics - connecting constructively with the rest of the world and promoting a domestic culture of democracy and justice. A progressive majority must be a coalition of center and left. The center generally has no systemic political philosophy save pragmatism whereby it tends to shift around issue-by-issue, at times pressured from the left or right. It is moderately liberal, does not see US global policy as necessarily imperialist, but often opposes the negative consequences of US foreign adventures. Domestically it favors government intervention to curb the worst corporate abuses and social ills while not seeing government as a sure vessel of big business and military power. The left, clearly smaller, embraces many currents but generally shares a systemic critique of the dominant system and a consistently critical estimate of US foreign policy. Under present circumstances where the bankruptcy of the right is exposed and where it is beset by mounting difficulties and growing resistance, the left can influence the center to join with it to forge a common minimum program to alter the country's political course. A center-left coalition needs to formulate that broadly agreed upon common program that accommodates the holistic outlook of the left and the pragmatic outlook of the center. The three essential components of that program would most likely be a) a constructive global policy for peace and environmental survival; b) economic and social justice; c) defense of constitutional and human rights. A common program does not imply unprincipled compromises that can only reduce the coalition to an ineffectual echo of the dominant political culture. Quite the contrary, a coalition of center and left has to grasp the interconnections between issues. It has to forge unbreakable connections among issues of class, racial and gender justice as well as peace and economic survival. Within the amalgam of left and center there must be a convergence of diverse social forces - trade unionists, communities of color, white collar workers, immigrants, women and men, gays and straights, old and young who recognize in the coalition's concerns a strong responsiveness to their needs. Thus, an organized progressive majority that stands with undocumented workers also demands a living wage, union rights and massive jobs programs for all - undercutting corporate divide-and-conquer strategies seeking to pit oppressed nationalities against each other. To suggest that such an interconnected basic program, linking for example the struggle against racism to economic justice and peace, would not enlist support of the center is defeatist and does not reflect the possibilities of this political moment. At the same time, a progressive majority is not, nor can it become, a vessel of ideological uniformity. An anti-imperialist outlook, for example, cannot be a compulsory condition imposed by left forces. For the anti-war component, in particular, a clear distinction has to be made between a broadly based peace movement and an anti-imperialist movement. Failure to make that distinction sows division and ironically undercuts the building of a majority capable of stopping imperialist wars. This does not imply that the left should abandon efforts to advance a systemic analysis aimed at influencing the coalition. The near-dissolution of the peace movement after the Vietnam War ended was due in significant measure to the failure of much of the movement to grasp a deeper understanding of imperialism and its aggressive nature. The left has a big role to play in educating, in advancing a transforming political culture and in deepening the politics of the progressive majority. But those objectives must never become conditions for forming and sustaining coalitions. Such a posture is a prescription for disaster. The April 29 "March for Peace, Justice and Democracy" in New York City is a significant milestone toward building a progressive majority. The convergence of major peace, environmental, civil rights, women's labor, youth and veterans' groups to engage together in a broad multi-issue demonstration can be a starting point for launching similar forms from the grass roots to the national level. Every effort should be expended to make the march a resounding success. (It should be noted that the need for a coalition of left and center forces that could minimally coordinate a calendar of activities is also underscored by April 29. On that day, the Democratic Party had called upon its supporters to engage in a nation-wide "neighbor-to-neighbor" canvassing effort. Such conflicts like this might in the future be avoided with cooperation and coordination.) Developments such as the April 29 March, embracing diverse constituencies and a range of interrelated issues, can have a major impact on the absolutely crucial 2006 and 2008 elections. That organized progressive majority is an independent movement that impacts the electoral process by advancing those issues with clarity and persistence. The coalition would inevitably embrace a variety of views toward electoral politics and the two-party system. But it would be united in its stand on the issues. That itself would have measurable, powerful impact on the coming elections. The strength of anti-war sentiment and activity has already compelled would-be-again Presidential candidate John Kerry to advance a rigid timetable for the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq and for politicians of both parties to edge away from Bush's deadly war policies. The building of a progressive majority does not have to depend solely upon the actions of the leaders of national organizations. At every level, activists can a) submit resolutions to their trade unions, political action groups, religious, senior, women's student, civil rights, gay, etc., organizations calling for programmatic cooperation with other progressive groups; b) petitions and Internet appeals to all progressives can be launched to advance a common program; c) meetings, conferences, symposia of the broadest range of progressive groups can be organized to forge cooperation; d) articles, leaflets and brochures aimed at promoting a cohesive progressive majority though a common program can be produced and disseminated; e) coalitions at local and regional levels can be organized around one or more crucial issues as a basis for building a more permanent, organized progressive majority. The stirring of progressive activism is a hopeful sign. But hope is not enough. Greater cohesion and cooperation across wide political and social lines are needed. There is need for a new spirit of unified struggle guided by a commitment to the issues that are links to pull the entire chain of victory for peace and justice. Let's dedicate ourselves to achieving that victory. Carl Davidson responds to Mark Solomon - Shaping Direction, Exercising Leadership: Critical Issues for Building a Progressive Majority Mark Solomon’s call for a progressive majority does a good job spelling out the various political and economic conditions that make such an undertaking both possible and imperative in the period ahead. I’m wholeheartedly supportive, but I think ‘the devil is in the details.’ How successful we will be, if we succeed at all, depends a lot on how we approach what we used to call ‘the subjective factor,’ meaning the things that we can actually do - on the level of strategy, tactics, policy, program and organization - where we can make a difference. I don’t think Solomon would disagree with that point, nor do I think he would even necessarily disagree with much of the critique of his call I’m going to offer. You can’t say everything you want in a short paper. So this is not meant as a harsh polemic, but as a strong nudge to get a much-needed discussion going among all concerned. I’ll state up front that I have no problem with multi-class alliances, left-center coalitions, popular fronts, or even temporarily but timely alliances, direct or indirect, with factions among the imperialists. Rather than shy away from these things, I’m very much in favor of them and believe we can’t win much without them. But for that reason, I also believe it is very important to set aside illusions and to be very clear about what we are fighting for and what our capacity is to get it. If we don’t, we can face major errors, of both the ‘left’ and ‘right’ varieties, that can derail the project or prevent it from ever leaving the station in the first place. Let’s start with what I consider the ‘left’ error: our ‘anti-corporate’ politics. This is a popular phrase on the left, but I think it is vague, empty of content, and has, for far too long, kept us on the margins by distorting our assessments of the political and economic arenas. For example, there are roughly 8 million corporations in the US, including the less than 20,000 that are publicly held. Are we against them all? And even among the publicly held corporations, the large majority of them employ less than 100 workers. All of these corporations want to make profits from their workers, and many are backward politically and economically. Many, however, are more mixed, and some even pursue relatively progressive goals, in and out of the marketplace. Some might say, ‘Well, we don’t mean all these folks, we just mean the BIG corporations.” Very well, what do we mean by ‘big?’ The bottom line is that it’s rather arbitrary; and it doesn’t really matter, because you’ll find a range of perspectives and the top as well as at lower and broader levels of corporations - in different proportions, to be sure, but a range nonetheless. It’s better to cluster corporations by their public policies and their business plans, rather than simply by their size. Here’s my point: If you want to build a left-center coalition against the right, along with all the popular forces, there are a good number of corporations, of all sizes, that also belong in it, in one form or another, and are critical to its growth. Simply being ‘anti-corporate’ won’t do. We need to segment the business world, especially in answering the first question of strategy, ‘Who are our friends, who are our adversaries? To do so, we need a contending, positive transitional program on how the country should develop, both politically and economically, in order to be able to differentiate friend from foe, and unite all who can be united, within and among all classes and other groupings. We need to set out a ‘low road’ and a ‘high road’ for the business world, and then wage struggle to see where the chips fall among them. With that preface and for the sake of brevity, I’ll now pose three topics. My first issue with Solomon’s paper is how he describes ‘the center:’ ‘The center generally has no systemic political philosophy save pragmatism whereby it tends to shift around issue-by-issue, at times pressured from the left or right. It is moderately liberal, does not see US global policy as necessarily imperialist, but often opposes the negative consequences of US foreign adventures. Domestically it favors government intervention to curb the worst corporate abuses and social ills while not seeing government as a sure vessel of big business and military power.’ I would agree that there are a number of trends and groupings in the center, and they often waver, case-by-case. But I would also argue that almost all of them do share a systemic politics: redistributionist liberal capitalism. They see government as a tool to redistribute wealth downward to ward off crises, provide a safety net for the weakest and thus strengthen social stability. They also believe in having a military to defend the country and a foreign policy to defend US interests and project the values of liberal capitalism globally. They will oppose certain wars or conflicts, but generally speaking, they are not anti-intervention abroad. In a way, they hold Samuel Gompers’ view when he was asked to define his ideology for the American workers: ‘More,’ was his one-word answer, but he meant it broadly, as in more wages and benefits, more schools, more health care, more leisure time, and more peace in the world. Setting the matter of pragmatism aside, which is a far deeper philosophy than is often thought, I think the center is relatively clear about where it stands and what it wants. The tougher question is, where does the left stand and what does it want? As part of building the broader left-center alliance, the left has to become more united itself - not in one organization, that’s hardly on today’s agenda - but certainly united around a strategy and program as best as we can. As Ho Chi Minh was fond of putting it: ‘the harder the core, the broader the front.’ This leads to the second issue, the ‘right error,’ and it concerns the nature of ‘the left’. Here, Solomon doesn’t say much: “The left, clearly smaller, embraces many currents but generally shares a systemic critique of the dominant system and a consistently critical estimate of US foreign policy.” Later he uses anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist and ‘holistic’ as descriptors, but not much more. I appreciate his problem, since one can describe ‘the left’ in various ways, almost all of which are less than satisfactory to most on the left. But who’s ‘in’ or ‘out’ of one’s conception of the left is not the real issue here. Instead, it’s what is the strategy and program that we want to distinguish ourselves from the center’s liberal redistributionism and global interventionism? I think we need to raise the bar - not by sticking a slogan about a little defined ‘socialism’ here and there, but by developing a counter-hegemonic transitional program of radical structural reform that goes beyond liberal redistributionism. While it can’t be spelled out here, it’s already being done, at least in segments, in a number of places. I would argue that its core values, which are measured on a global scale rather than just within one country, are consistent democracy, sustainable development and the expansion of popular control of society across the board - in the market economy, in politics and in the culture. We need to help gather the critical forces among our close allies, get to work, and put out a left ‘High Road’ program and fight for it. Then we can see how all those who consider themselves ‘on the left’ sort themselves ‘in’ or ‘out’ of this left pole within the broader alliance. Here’s another way to see this issue: One obvious task of the left-center alliance is to defeat the right, in a variety of ways, partially and completely. But within the alliance, all trends naturally want to grow their own strength, if only to better enhance their influence in winning the alliance’s immediate goals, not to mention future battles. If we don’t have a program of the left, even if limited in scope, it’s doubly difficult to bring out positive change and adjustment in the common program of the broader alliance. Otherwise, the program of the center will tend to become the program of the alliance. And as we saw in 2004, that’s an event that often leads to the defeat of both left and center. In brief, we would become the wagging tail on the dog of liberalism - the road to perdition, for sure. Solomon gives a brief description of his estimate of topics for the program of the left-center alliance: ‘The three essential components of that program would most likely be a) a constructive global policy for peace and environmental survival; b) economic and social justice; c) defense of constitutional and human rights.’ The problem is there is no content here. This could be the outline of talking points for almost any of the 2008 presidential candidates. Unless some actual measures are offered up - ‘Out Now’ from Iraq, equal funding for every child in school, oppose the repeal of Roe v. Wade - it’s probably better to say nothing at this point. I agree with Solomon that compromises are inevitable in such a coalition. The question is what kind of compromises? But we can’t answer that unless we have, first, a good deal of unity within the left on a starting position, and, second, an estimate of our strength at the appropriate time. This leads to my third point, the matter of the left’s organizational nature and strength. “The building of a progressive majority,” says Solomon, “does not have to depend solely upon the actions of the leaders of national organizations.” He then lists appropriate activities - resolutions, petitions, meetings, articles, coalition-making. All these points are valid, but the emphasis is wrong and he leaves one out: the base community. It would be better to start off stressing the building of the base community - at work, at school, in the neighborhood - and then say building the progressive majority ‘does not depend solely on the grassroots, but involves wider alliances at the citywide, state, national, and international levels.’ This is elementary, but it needs to be said. If you don’t have organized forces on the ground that you can deploy, then you have little or nothing with which to approach another group for the job of coalition building. At best, you can be a catalyst or facilitator for two or more groups who do have some troops to bring together. But catalysts and facilitators without a base community, fortunately or unfortunately, have little power to have an critical impact on the coalition’s outcome or direction. One reason this is important is the different strengths of the left and the center. To put it bluntly, the strength of the center politicians and groups is mainly their money. (And they know how to use it. We in Chicago recently saw first hand how the money power of the ‘center’ DLC destroyed a substantial left-liberal grassroots antiwar insurgency in the IL 6th District primaries this year.) Our strength is ‘people power’ in grassroots organization - in voters, strikers, protestors and activists of a wide variety of talents. Without the base communities, though, all we have are ‘letterhead coalitions’ with a DC offices, staff and bank accounts. While I would pay careful attention to working with these 'letterhead' groups and elected officials, on their own they are not even going to mobilize a progressive majority, let alone bring it to power as something other than global capital ‘with a human face.’ In brief, I don’t think we get anything at the top that’s not a reflection of the strength we have accumulated at the base. To close here, this leaves us with an important and ongoing question we have debated since the founding of CCDS. What should be our most basic unit of mass organization in our communities - not the local coalitions, but the group we bring to the local coalition to be our voice and our troops within it? Is it a neighborhood socialist club? A peace and justice group? Or what? That takes us beyond the immediate topic here, but at some point, better sooner than later, we will have to, since it’s very much connected. Mark Solomon Responds Thanks to Carl Davidson for making an important contribution to advancing the effort to build a progressive majority. His theoretical knowledge, political depth and organizational experience all came into play in his critique of my article on a progressive majority, thus helping to sharpen issues and needs as well as directly helping me to tackle my own muddles and vagaries. Carl is right that I would not disagree with the need for an unsparing analysis of what we in CCDS and on the left in general can actually accomplish on the critical planes of strategy, policy and organization. Nor would I disagree with his contention that the forging of that majority requires a “base community,” of organized left forces and left program as mandatory starting points upon which to seek alliances. But his paper raises some questions that have to be explored; questions that go to the nature of the politics we advocate and the agencies we view as essential to forging a progressive majority. Carl argues that “anti-corporate” (his quotation marks) politics constitutes a “left” error; denying a proper place within a progressive majority for significant corporate clusters that “pursue relatively progressive goals in and out of the marketplace”. Surely there are corporations, and corporate officials, concerned about ecological survival, clean energy, sustainable growth, a stable world, a diverse work force etc., that may relate to a progressive program reflecting such views. Any broad and politically mature alliance should welcome such forces. Not to do so would constitute a self-inflicted sectarian wound. At the same time, is “anti-corporate” politics fully negative? Can it be separated from defeating the right? Isn’t a growing public animus toward corporations a key path to opening exploration of deeper systemic change? Opinion polls show that majorities across social lines view corporations as vessels of greed and unfairness. Some ninety percent believe that big business has too much influence over government while only two percent consider corporate executives “very trustworthy.” Despite media disinformation, perceptions of the assaults on public health by pharmaceuticals, profit gouging by oil companies, downright criminal practices by WorldComm, Time Warner, Bristol Meyers, Hallliburton, Tyco and many more, leave little room in the public mind for the complex sorting out of the corporate world’s good, bad and ugly. Liberals tack more to the left on corporate assaults on democracy than perhaps on any other issue. William Greider recently attacked “the demands imposed by capital and corporations that stunt or stymie the full pursuit of life and liberty in this complex industrial society.” Robert Borosage has written; “corporations build not only the ideological arsenal of the right but also the money wing of the Democratic Party.” He goes on to say that corporate influence has been pivotal in government-fomented undermining of the labor movement and in spawning the virulent racism and sexism that produced Reagan’s “welfare queens” and Clinton’s “welfare reform.” That raises a larger question not explicitly addressed in Carl’s paper: the claims of class and race in building a progressive majority. The working class may be all over the left-right-center ideological map, as Carl has claimed. But ultimately, the objective relationship of that class (including, of course, its huge awakening immigrant component) to capital makes it the most reliable agency in framing the issues that bind a progressive majority. Similarly, the right’s racist and sexist core mandates the resolute commitment of a gathering progressive majority to nurture its unity and breadth by making anti-racism and anti-sexism institutionalized aspects of the coalition. We can agree on the need to develop “a contending positive transitional program,” among other things to assist in sorting out corporate friend and foe. But we should also be alert to confusing and vitiating the opposition of broad circles to dominant corporate practices. There are some questions regarding Carl’s definition of the center. Rejecting my view that the center has no systemic political philosophy, Carl claims that there is a systemic centrist politics: “redistributionist liberal capitalism” joined to “a foreign policy to defend US interests and project the values of liberal capitalism globally.” Isn’t that definition dated and out of step with recent shifts in the outlook of much of the political center? It is more an echo of Arthur Schlesinger’s “Vital Center” of the late forties (or the “cold war liberals” scorned by the sixties’ New Left) that heralded the cold war assault on the Henry Wallace Democratic Party left. Ultimately, the embrace of “US interests” by erstwhile liberals led many of them inexorably to the right: promoting militarization, global anti-communism (now the “war on terror”), hostility to national liberation movements, etc. For many, that foreign policy outlook eviscerated their liberal domestic views, especially opposition to affirmative action. . Today there is a resurgence of sorts of this viewpoint. New Republic’s Peter Beinart’s “The Good Fight: How Liberals - and Only Liberals - Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again,” tries to resurrect the muscular “internationalism” embedded in the containment doctrine pressed by Truman, Humphrey, Kennedy and Johnson. (This trend is replicated in Great Britain in the “Euston Manifesto” that rejects the alleged anti-imperialist ravings of the far left while opposing perceived regressive and reactionary regimes.) This trend has not always been consistent – especially when its “internationalism” degenerates into neo-colonial quagmires, prompting this “center” to complain that the containment doctrine had been misapplied. That happened with Vietnam, where a segment of that current broke with the war and joined left and center-left forces in an uneasy antiwar alliance. To a considerable extent that is happening again with Iraq – making it possible to forge at least temporary alliances with such forces against the war. However, the reactionary kernel embedded in the “defense of US interests” most likely consigns a good part of that center defined by Carl to implacable opposition to a progressive foreign – and domestic – policy. In the wake of Vietnam, a significant segment of the Humphrey-ADA contingent, as ever committed to “fighting communism,” went over to the neo-conservative right. That’s where the likes of Jeane Kirkpatrick and a host of others live today. Observers like H.D.S. Greenway of the Boston Globe and Helena Cobban of the Christian Science Monitor have commented that a consequence of the Iraq adventure is the long term weakening of centrist support for US military interventions. That is a long way from anti-imperialism, but in view of the fact that clashes over foreign policy have often been the primary obstacles to cooperation between left and center, this is a significant development and a harbinger of better days ahead for coalition building. Carl’s critique provokes an important exploration of what we mean by the center and where to seek alliances. For the sake of advancing discussion, I would argue that the broad center would be represented by the National Council of Churches and community-based liberal religious organizations; the AFL-CIO, the NAACP, scores of professional and service organizations, those white workers who supported Jesse Jackson in the eighties, etc. Perhaps we also need to consider literally millions who characterize their views as “moderate” and how that fluid and unstructured public relates to efforts to build a progressive majority. I agree strongly with Carl that we need to organize that “base community” of left forces on the basis of a shared programmatic vision that gives coherence and unity to the left itself and serves as a basis to negotiate, and ultimately cooperate, with the center. Perhaps at this point we need to be even more measured and concrete in taking modest and realistic first steps. That might constitute an initiative to launch discussions with those socialist groups that are oriented towards building broad progressive alliances. Such discussions could, of course, explore what Carl identifies as “core values” in a transitional program: deep structural democracy, sustainable development, popular control of all productive activity and culture. But should such concepts, largely developed in academic circles, become the sole basis, even on the socialist left, for formulating a program? Some might argue that a first-step left program would have to be more immediate and less abstract - for example: universal health insurance, restoration of labor’s right to organize, vast expansion of public sector spending on education, heath, housing, etc., a living wage in a (relatively) full employment economy, advancing and strengthening laws against racial and gender discrimination, abolition of nuclear weapons and all weapons of mass destruction, reversal of discriminatory trade policies, etc. In any case, we agree that the left needs a unified starting point with which to approach center forces. (By the way, perhaps Carl’s criticism of a suggested agenda for a left-center alliance - peace and environmental survival, economic and social justice, constitutional rights - was a bit harsh. It was only meant as an opening framework for discussion of deeper and more detailed issues.) Thanks again to Carl for his challenging critique that spurs us all to think harder and act with greater clarity and resoluteness. Let’s keep it going. Mark Carl Responds - The Upside and Downside of 'Anti-Corporatism': More on the 'Progressive Majority' Discussion Mark Solomon: Carl is right that I would not disagree with the need for an unsparing analysis of what we in CCDS and on the left in general can actually accomplish on the critical planes of strategy, policy and organization. Nor would I disagree with his contention that the forging of that majority requires a 'base community,' of organized left forces and left program as mandatory starting points upon which to seek alliances... At the same time, is 'anti-corporate' politics fully negative? Carl Davidson: Of course not, few things are. Generally speaking, the history of US corporations, past and present, is full of spilled blood and outrages, not to mention the exploitation in the 'normal' functioning of all of them - 'exploit' in the strict sense of 'used for profit.' But that's not really the point here. I posed the strategic question, 'Who are our friends, who are our enemies?' in the fight against the right - and we can raise the same question in the fight for socialism as well. The problem, to my way of thinking, with 'anti-corporate' is it's neither here nor there. In the fight against the right, it's too 'left' or narrow, in the sense that we have already agreed in the previous round. In the fight for socialism, it's too 'right' in the sense of vagueness and avoiding a positive affirmation of what socialism means in today's world, given the crisis and collapse of much, but not all, of 'second wave' socialism. The same can be said of 'anti-capitalism' or 'anti-imperialism.' If we mean by these terms raising people's consciousness about the nature of corporations, or capitalism, or imperialism, then fine. I have no problem with that. But that still doesn't deal with the question of strategy or tactics. MS: Can it be separated from defeating the right? CD: In a critical sense, yes. It has to be, if we are to avoid the 'left' cul-de-sac. In the immediate and even transitional task of defeating the right, we have to segment the business community, or capitalist class, and I suggested the 'High Road / Low Road' formula or, roughly, 'productive capital vs. speculative capital' as a starting point. This is not unlike what Dimitrov did in his day, targeting not all corporations or all imperialists, but segmenting and narrowing the target on 'the most reactionary, most chauvinist elements of finance capital' - the 'Low Roaders' of his day, if you will. This is beyond the scope of this discussion, but even in a strategy for socialism, not just defeating the right, we have to segment the world of capital. Take the 'third sector' of nonprofits, some of which have amassed huge quantities of capital. They have a right, center and left, and there is no reason, at least theoretically, why the left and center nonprofit corporations couldn't be an ally even for a long period of socialist reconstruction. MS: Isn’t a growing public animus toward corporations a key path to opening exploration of deeper systemic change? Opinion polls show that majorities across social lines view corporations as vessels of greed and unfairness. Some ninety percent believe that big business has too much influence over government while only two percent consider corporate executives 'very trustworthy.' Despite media disinformation, perceptions of the assaults on public health by pharmaceuticals, profit gouging by oil companies, downright criminal practices by WorldComm, Time Warner, Bristol Meyers, Hallliburton, Tyco and many more, leave little room in the public mind for the complex sorting out of the corporate world's good, bad and ugly. CD: Yes, but what do you make of it? Here I'm rather orthodox, in the sense that I see this spontaneous 'anti-corporatism' as not unlike the spontaneous 'trade union consciousness' that emerges from the struggle between worker and employer. We work within it, but we don't bow to it or tail it. It is the task of revolutionary education, in the context of mass practice, precisely to transform this consciousness into something else, into revolutionary class consciousness, at least among the advanced fighters. And I mean 'class consciousness' in Lenin's sense, of understanding all the classes, their factions and their interplay, including race and gender, not just a heightened sense of 'workerism.' MS: Liberals tack more to the left on corporate assaults on democracy than perhaps on any other issue. William Greider recently attacked the 'demands imposed by capital and corporations that stunt or stymie the full pursuit of life and liberty in this complex industrial society.' Robert Borosage has written; 'corporations build not only the ideological arsenal of the right but also the money wing of the Democratic Party.' He goes on to say that corporate influence has been pivotal in government-fomented undermining of the labor movement and in spawning the virulent racism and sexism that produced Reagan’s 'welfare queens' and Clinton’s 'welfare reform.' CD: Yes, but these writers paint with too broad a brush. What do they make of their favorite corporations? Even though problematic, look at what George Soros alone did to fund the effort to oust Bush in 2004, or what Bill and Melinda Gates are doing with health in the third world, or what Google is doing to help Gore around ecology? Even more important, what strategic solutions do they pose? In brief, they cater to the spontaneous anti-corporatism, and fuel it, but they come up short in strategies and alternatives, don't they? MS: That raises a larger question not explicitly addressed in Carl’s paper: the claims of class and race in building a progressive majority. The working class may be all over the left-right-center ideological map, as Carl has claimed. But ultimately, the objective relationship of that class (including, of course, its huge awakening immigrant component) to capital makes it the most reliable agency in framing the issues that bind a progressive majority. CD: Not 'may be' all over the map. The working class, qua class, IS all over the map politically today, despite its 'objective relationship' to capital. We might think it OUGHT to be, as you put it, 'the most reliable agency framing the issues,' but is it? Which speakers for it from which sectors? Is the working class, as a class, framing the issues most reliably on immigration? Perhaps some parts of it, such as Latinos, in a relative sense to some other grouping in some other classes, but generally speaking, I don't think so, at least, for the class or the labor movement as a whole, in any practical leading role. Believe me, I would like nothing more than for the working class, even its more advanced contingent, to 'frame the issues' in a radical or revolutionary way, and take the lead. I've seen it happen in how the VVAW folks in the 1960s brought a proletarian perspective into the antiwar movement, then and now, or how the Black workers movement in Detroit in the 1970s had an impact on the Black liberation movement then, so I know it can happen. But I'm long past thinking there's anything 'automatic' or 'objective' about it, at least in the sense of dogmatically insisting on it in broader alliances when it has yet to actually emerge in practice. MS: Similarly, the right’s racist and sexist core mandates the resolute commitment of a gathering progressive majority to nurture its unity and breadth by making anti-racism and anti-sexism institutionalized aspects of the coalition. CD: Here we agree. The right is using, first, the restoration of an eroded patriarchy (anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-feminism), and second, racist chauvinism, especially towards the Black poor, immigrants and Muslims worldwide, as its spearhead battering rams. And the most prominent starting points for a wider alliance against the right are the women's rights organizations, the Black church and prison rights groups, and the immigrant rights groups. Starting with our base communities in the peace and justice movement, we can form alliances with these forces, and build upwards and outwards from there. MS: There are some questions regarding Carl’s definition of the center. Rejecting my view that the center has no systemic political philosophy, Carl claims that there is a systemic centrist politics: 'redistributionist liberal capitalism' joined to 'a foreign policy to defend US interests and project the values of liberal capitalism globally.' Isn’t that definition dated and out of step with recent shifts in the outlook of much of the political center? It is more an echo of Arthur Schlesinger’s 'Vital Center' of the late forties (or the 'cold war liberals' scorned by the sixties’ New Left) that heralded the cold war assault on the Henry Wallace Democratic Party left. CD: I don't think so, especially if you update your view of redistributionist liberalism through the lens of globalization. I divide the top ranks of the ruling class today into 'globalists' and 'hegemonists', depending on whether they are mainly trying to maintain a 'unipolar' world or accommodate to a 'multipolar' world. The 'center', by its nature, has a top, a middle and a bottom, running the range of imperialists down to ordinary working-class voters and nonvoters. In this sense, the Clintons, Kerry, Soros, et al, at the top, are 'center' voices of the globalist faction among the imperialists, as opposed to the hegemonist faction headed by Bush today. In this sense, our goal is certainly to win over the 'bottom' and 'middle' sectors of the center, and find ways to work with as much of the top as we can. In fact, doing our work at the center's base will enhance our prospects at the center's 'top.' MS: Today there is a resurgence of sorts of this viewpoint. New Republic’s Peter Beinart’s 'The Good Fight: How Liberals - and Only Liberals - Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again,' tries to resurrect the muscular 'internationalism' embedded in the containment doctrine pressed by Truman, Humphrey, Kennedy and Johnson. (This trend is replicated in Great Britain in the 'Euston Manifesto' that rejects the alleged anti-imperialist ravings of the far left while opposing perceived regressive and reactionary regimes.) This trend has not always been consistent - especially when its 'internationalism' degenerates into neocolonial quagmires, prompting this 'center' to complain that the containment doctrine had been misapplied. That happened with Vietnam, where a segment of that current broke with the war and joined left and center-left forces in an uneasy antiwar alliance. To a considerable extent that is happening again with Iraq - making it possible to forge at least temporary alliances with such forces against the war. CD: I agree, but again, I see this as best explained by the emergence of a globalist or transnationalist sector of capital, distinct from traditional multinationals, and their conflicts with both the 'sole superpower' mentality and the strictly nationalist sectors of capital in each country. MS: However, the reactionary kernel embedded in the 'defense of US interests' most likely consigns a good part of that center defined by Carl to implacable opposition to a progressive foreign - and domestic - policy. In the wake of Vietnam, a significant segment of the Humphrey-ADA contingent, as ever committed to 'fighting communism,' went over to the neo-conservative right. That's where the likes of Jeane Kirkpatrick and a host of others live today. CD: Yes, but now they're dissolving PNAC (Project for a New American Century), the Neocon home base and lobby for war with Iraq, splits have emerged, and some are heading back to the Democrats. MS: Observers like H.D.S. Greenway of the Boston Globe and Helena Cobban of the Christian Science Monitor have commented that a consequence of the Iraq adventure is the long term weakening of centrist support for US military interventions. That is a long way from anti-imperialism, but in view of the fact that clashes over foreign policy have often been the primary obstacles to cooperation between left and center, this is a significant development and a harbinger of better days ahead for coalition building. CD: I agree, but all the more reason to develop a 'high road' approach to globalization, rather than American nationalist isolationism or protectionism. MS: Carl’s critique provokes an important exploration of what we mean by the center and where to seek alliances. For the sake of advancing discussion, I would argue that the broad center would be represented by the National Council of Churches and community-based liberal religious organizations; the AFL-CIO, the NAACP, scores of professional and service organizations, those white workers who supported Jesse Jackson in the eighties, etc. Perhaps we also need to consider literally millions who characterize their views as 'moderate' and how that fluid and unstructured public relates to efforts to build a progressive majority. CD: This is OK for starters, even though I would put 'white' workers who voted for Jesse on the left rather than the center. MS: Some might argue that a first-step left program would have to be more immediate and less abstract - for example: universal health insurance, restoration of labor’s right to organize, vast expansion of public sector spending on education, heath, housing, etc., a living wage in a (relatively) full employment economy, advancing and strengthening laws against racial and gender discrimination, abolition of nuclear weapons and all weapons of mass destruction, reversal of discriminatory trade policies, etc. CD: These are all fine, but they are limited to expanding political and social democracy, or wealth redistributionism. What's ignored here are the critical areas of popular control in the market economy and the creation of wealth. And these latter areas, important for their own sake in empowering the working class, are also critical to the transition to Economic Democracy and a new 21st century socialism. This is where we need to break new ground, and where a left can distinguish itself. That's my point.

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