Re: Nick Cohen on Thomas Frank

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>]

Marvin Gandall wrote:
>
>
> Let's suppose the US dollar collapsed, interest rates spiked, defaults and
> bankruptcies soared, unemployment rose to double digits, and the modern (non
> Kansan) US working class --  government employees, retail clerks, medical
> [CLIP] etc. -- were suddenly faced with the unexpected loss of their jobs, income,
> homes, health insurance, and in a rising number of cases, their marriages
> and mental health. Don't you agree:

> 1. They would demand a political resolution of the crisis by their local,
> state, and federal governments.

Not necessarily. In the first stages such a collapse would be felt as an
act of nature, something bigger than any human institution, including
the government, and would generate individualism and/or small scale
collective responses: cf. those on a lifeboat in a great storm.

> 2. That in this environment, they would favour the Democrats, which many
> already support, over the Republicans.

Not necessarily. They would favor whichever party was _not_ in power. If
it were a Democrat, they would surge to the Republican side, regardless
of policies advocated by either party. Someone noted recently on this
list or lbo that Gore lost a million or so votes in 2000 because of bad
weather, spontaneously blamed on the party in power.

> 3. That the Democratic leadership, both to advance its political fortunes
> and in the interest of preserving the capitalist system, would craft
> emergency spending programs to address the growing popular demand for
> relief.

No! It was only after the fact (and never very vigorously) that
Roosevelt did this in the '30s. He campaigned in 1932 on balancing the
budget. He was retreating by 1939 on the advances his administration had
made (e.g., the WPA was scheduled to be replaced by the PWA).

> 4. That if the party ranks deemed the leadership response inadequate, they
> would first seek to change the leadership and the program rather than leave
> the party -- particularly if a party left wing, as is likely, would have
> developed in tandem with the social crisis.

Possibly. I think probably not, but this is getting us into an area
where predictions get very vague.  If the "left" wing were led by
someone like Jerry Brown we might have, for the first time, an actual
threat of something like fascist despotism coming from the DP.
>
> 5. That if a new left party were to displace the Democrats from the outside,
> it would be after rather than before the internal process in the DP was
> exhausted and the party split apart.

Neither, unless a sufficient number of leftists had been working
independently of the DP for five to ten years.
>
> Why, in particular, do you think the DP leadership "would not or could not"
> resort to extreme fiscal and monetary measures to revive the economy -- up
> to an including the (temporary) nationalization of the banks and other key
> sectors? Until very recently, the Japanese were contemplating these kinds of
> emergency measures. Whether the DP could succeed in righting capitalism
> again is another matter, but you are suggesting that because the US is now a
> net importer rather than exporter of capital, it wouldn't have the means to
> do so. Could you please explain further, because the US still represents a
> huge market, and if anything, the higher level of global integration and the
> lessons of the 30s, would make a coordinated response by the Asians,
> Europeans, and US to the crisis more rather than less likely.

I think Yoshie tried to reach too far here (crystal-ball gazing), and
you are doing the same. I.e., we just can't even speculate usefully on
some of these issues, given the radical transformation of fundmental
conditions you have hypothesized. All one can say is that effective left
action under those circumstances (either to advance its own programs or
to protect bourgeois democracy against some form of populist
dictatorship) would bepossible only if a core independent of the DP
existed, and no core will exist as long as so many leftists stick to the
DP. The CPUSA had not grown much between 1922 and 1934, but it had
existed and had built up a cadre and linkages. Following the ABB line
(or, more accurately, The DP Now and Forever line) no such cadre and no
such linkages will have been created.

There will not even have been enough hypothetical discussion among
leftists about how we should operate under such hypothetical conditions.
(Note, on this list and on lbo it is in _practice_ forbidden to even
discuss revolution unless one can show that revolution can occur now!
The expectation is always that next year and next decade will be exactly
the same as now, so that if revolution is not certain now, it will never
be even vaguely possible. Whether various people know it or not, when
they demand a "scenario" for revolution they are denying that conditions
will ever change.)

Carrol


>
> Marv Gandall