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This diary is intended to continue a progression started two weeks ago in a pair of diaries titled "Regaining focus: Growing a progressive majority", parts 1 & 2, combining that progression with observations drawn from the previous diary today, "A REALLY big picture look at at what works--pragmatism vs. ideology in economic development--Pt 1". The purpose is to clarify some basic issues about organizing for long-term progressive political power.
Recap
Before getting started, a brief review is in order. In Regaining focus: Growing a progressive majority-Part 1, I introduced Chris's idea of A Liberal/Reform Coalition, which he introduced in his post-2004 election diary, "Eureka! Or How To Break the Republican Majority Coalition". In that diary, Chris identified a non-ideological reform-oriented segment of the population, which has shown up in third-party presidential campaigns since the Populist era, and argued that liberalism could sensibly be expanded to deal with reformer concerns. In Part 2, I discussed the political foundations of what such a coalition might look like, starting with evidence of the progressive nature of millennial voters as a whole and the example of the Dean campaign and the continued thrust of his 50-state strategy, then moving on to two examples I had discussed during the 2008 primary campaign. First was Jacob Hacker's Great Risk Shift analysis which sees a security focus as enabling and encouraging creative and product risk by managing needlessly crippling risk. Second was Robert Fuller's Dignitarian analysis, a comprehensive framework for an all-inclusive egalitarian politics.
Last week, following a tip from commentator essaywhuman, I discussed Stirling Newberry's "Petroleum Paradigm" analysis, which slices up the electorate along different lines, and does a particularly good job of clarifying the deep, but poorly-understood chasm between Obama and progressive committed to fundamental change. One of the most significant points of this analysis was that both Obama and his more progressive critics are advocates of gradual transition--the difference is gradual transition to what. As Newberry explained it, progressives are committed to a new order, a post-petroleum world that operates by a different logic, while the moderates that Obama represents want a transition to a more stable version of the dying petroleum paradigm--a practical impossibility that's politically quite appealing since it avoids all-out war. In "Triangulating progressive change: Adding Stirling Newberry's 3-polar petroleum politics to the mix". I wrote:
(2) Second, in a passage already quoted above, Stirling perfectly captures the fact that progressives are as much about gradual and carefully-managed transitions as anyone else. They are not about radical jump-off-the-cliff changes. But what they are about is moving away from continued subsidizing of and subservience to the dinosaur special interests that are bleeding us dry:
The second view is that the land casino can continue longer, but only if carefully managed, this is the "Moderate" view. The third view is that it requires careful management to transition away from the land casino, or the "Progressive" view.
This captures perfectly the difference between progressives and Obama, as well as capturing why it's been hard for many progressives to see how he differs from us. |
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| And Now...
In the diary just before this one today, "A REALLY big picture look at at what works--pragmatism vs. ideology in economic development--Pt 1", the major new addition was a clarifying picture of neoliberalism's larger context as part of pattern of top-down, technocratic, social engineering approaches, informed by ideology and largely blind to the more more diverse and messy world of human beings and stubborn facts.
Here are a five of the more salient points that I think can be gleaned from the confluence of these diaries. I am sure there are more you can come up with, but this is a good number to kick off a further conversation:
(1) Obama is not a pragmatist in any ordinary sense of the word--or particularly in the more considered sense of the word discussed in the previous diary. He is an elite dealmaker, and progressives need to be very clear about this. We should stop using the word "pragmatism" to describe what he does, and criticize the use of the word by others. We should promote alternatives such as "deal-making", "insider", "conflict-suppressing," etc. used consciously to highlight that actual specifics of what he is doing in any particular situation. While it's a good idea to counter-brand, it's important not to do so willy-nilly or prematurely. First seek to really understand what is going on. Be as accurate as possible, let accurate counter-branding emerge organically.
(2) There are a pair of strong convergences, between Stirling Newberry's "Petroleum Paradigm" analysis and Kellerman's pragmatism vs. economic ideology analysis. On the one hand, there is a convergence between the top-down social engineering vision, with its "one best way" philosophy, and the moderate, petroleum paradigm preserving political block in Newberry's analysis. The moderate block is dominated by technocratic elites and their supporters and followers. It is enamored of models and solutions that can showered down from on high, and political processes conducted behind closed doors that are more akin to product design meetings than anything most people would recognize as political. Preserving the essential power-relations of the status quo, and trimming things around the edges toward this end are the primary goals. Stylized skill sets are highly prized, and serve to define hierarchies of personal value, regardless of actual real-world consequences. Fundamental rethinking is fundamentally unthinkable.
On the one hand, there is another convergence between the bottom-up, pragmatist/pluralist vision and the progressive block that recognizes the need for a fundamental paradigm shift away from petroleum, and toward a sustainable energy future. Indeed, the very lack of a silver bullet alternative and the need for a multi-facet, multi-level approach to get beyond fossil fuels is indicative of a profound congruity between the post-petroleum worldview and the bottom-up pragmatist/pluralist vision. This convergent worldview doesn't necessarily shun solutions or models from the moderate/social engineering worldview, if they can be repurposed to fit within a more pluralist, open-ended framework. The challenge of this worldview is to develop a coherent, though non-dogmatic and open-ended framework for understanding itself and what distinguishes it from the still-dominant dying worldview it is struggling to escape from.
(3) All the major legislative battles on or potentially on the Obama Agenda can be illuminated by these differences. Preservation of status-quo powers is a fundamental goal and purpose of the Obama's Agenda. It's a feature, not a bug... from Obama's perspective. - In health care, this means preserving the health care companies, even though they add no value whatsoever to the economy.
- In financial reform, it means preserving the big banks, and their mega-bonuses, even though they are actively destructive to the larger economy.
- In climate change legislation, this means preserving all the dirty energy sectors, reigniting off-shore oil drilling, reviving nuclear, and seeking to extend the use of coal for centuries in the future. This is not just destructive to the larger economy, but to the environment, and potentially to the very future of civilization as we know it.
- It's the reason why EFCA has stalled with barely a murmmer, and the heart of EFCA--card check--has been publicly declared dead. There is simply no way to finese this betrayal--at least not yet, and so it has simply been buried.
- It's the reason DADT has been slow-walked, despite overwhelming momentum in its favor.
(4) Progressive counter-organizing on all the big agenda items requires some degree of re-framing, re-conceptualizing, and re-organizing that effectively isolates the very establishment powers that be which Obama has consciously planned to either protect (in health care, finance and energy policy) or appease (with RFCA and DADT).
In the three more complex issue areas, there is a deeper need to work on inter-connecting the issues: Health insurance companies are part of the financial sector. And the financial sector is deeply implicated in the energy sector as well. Re-framing, re-conceptualizing and re-organizing means a process of mental de-colonialization, along side a process of discovering actual, concrete relationships from which a more complicated, sophisticated common understanding can be constructed over time, in the sort of bottom-up pragmatic manner that Ellerman describes.
(5) There is a need for critical analysis along pragmatist lines such as Ellerman describes at even the most local level of organizing. This is not something that can be left to specialists, leaders or experts. The 19th Century populists understood this very well, and placed collective self-education at the core of their organizing. We need to emulate their example, while taking full advantage of the technologocial aids available to us today. This analysis does not take place apart from our political activity, but in an ongoing relationship to and with it. |
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