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2. The Paradox of Social Democracy:

The American Case

Robert Brenner

A New Social Democracy?

A very long time ago - in the Paleolithic days of the new left of the later 1960s - few red-blooded radicals would have been caught dead inside the Democratic Party. This was the era?! the student and anti-imperialist movements, of 50s; of the mlhtant Black movements, of SNCC, the Black Panther Party, and the League of Revolutionary Black Work~rs; and of t~e nasc~nt rank and file movements among industrIal and publIc servIce wor­kers. In those days, it was strictly the po~itic~ o~ the s~reets and of mass direct action. 'Power to the people deftmtely dId not mean 'part of the way with RFI<.' The Democratic Party was reco?nize,d as firmly wedded to American imperialism, as expressed In LBJ s Vietnam War not to mention Harry Truman's A-Bomb over Hiroshima or his Cold War or Kennedy's Bay of Pigs. Moreover, despite the fact that workers, Blacks, and the poor did v~te, in their majority, for the Democratic Party, that Party was ~Iewed as clearly pro-capitalist, anti-working class, and antJ-Bla.c~, Neither workers nor Blacks controlled, nor even much partIcI­pated in the Democratic Party. So, it was hardly surprising to the 60s radicals that the Party never tried to repeal the .vi~io~sl~ anti-labor Taft-Hartley Act, that it refused to seat the MISSISSIppI Freedom Democratic Party at its 1964 convention in place of the arch-segretationist offic~al dele~ation,. a~d. that t~e Kenne?y presidency failed to achIeve a SIngle sIgnIfIcant pIece of socIal legislation. .

Indeed, the one lesson that the new left ilbsorbed, at .least superficially, through its rather vague notions1of corporate lIber­alism and participatory democracy, w~s that the labor burea­cratic, party politico, service profeSSIOnal,. and .B~ack petty bourgois elements which constituted the core of offICIal reform­ism could never be counted on to put into effect even their own

32

The Paradox of Social Democracy: tile Americall Case 33

programs. Left to their own devices, they would find a way to compromise with 'the powers that be.' The first generation of the new left grew up on the rather crude slogan of 'never trust a liberal,' and their successors did not foresake that credo. The accepted premises, therefore, for an effective new left politics were understood to be an organizational and political indepen­dence from the forces of official reformism, a reliance on militant direct action to impose reforms from the outside, and the sort of direct democracy inside the movements which was anathema to the party, labor, and Black bureaucratic forces that dominated the Democratic Party and the official institutions of liberalism.

Today, in the Democratic Party, nothing fundamental has changed since the 60s. But in most other respects, we live in a different political world. Above all, the mass direct action move­ments which made reforms possible and which provided the material basis, so to speak, for the rise of radical organizations and ideas have suffered more than a decade of disastrous decline. In connection with the deepening crisis of the inter­national economy, the secula~ decline of American manufactur­ing, and the accelerating offensive by employers against all sections of the working class and the poor, the decline of the movements is the overriding factor determining the political universe of the left. The militant mass movements which moti­vated hundreds of thousands of people to strike, to demonstrate, to sit-in and to sit-down in the 60s and 70s - these were, and are, the only real sources of power for the left. These movements provide the indispensable basis for actually winning reforms and imposing policies on the government - above all in periods like this one of economic contraction. In consequence, they provide the critical condition for making left perspecti ves realistic and, in this way, the necessary basis for winning people to a left worId­view. For, as a rule, people will not maintain a political perspec­tive - no matter how empirically and logically compelling­unless they can see a more or less immediate possibility of putting it into practice. The decline of mass direct action move­ments over many years, and especially the collapse of rank and file working-class organizations, is thus the overriding reason for the disarray of the left, as well as of liberalism, and it has opened the way for massive confusion.

Unable to suck mass movements out of their thumbs, the majority of leftists in the U.S. for more than a decade have relentlessly searched for substitutes, new social agencies and new

34

political strategies. By the late 70s and early 80s, there had issued inside the left - though nowhere else in society - a broad commitment to move in the direction of a 'new social demo­cracy.' In late 1978, Doug Fraser, presi!1ent of the United Auto Workers (UAW) and a self-styled socialist, revealed that there was a 'one-sided class war' going on against thk American working class. He subsequently withdrew from SecrJtary of Labor John T. Dunlop's Labor Management Advisory cioup (whose explicit function was indeed to manage labor) and convened the 'Pro­gressive Alliance,' a new multi-constituency organization ostensibly designed to 'revive the spirit of Selma and the sit­downs,' support grass roots organizing efforts, and bring the disparate movements together. The Progressive Alliance drew large numbers of liberal and social democratic officials from the women's, Black, environmental, and consumer groups, as weD as from the unions, to its first meeting. I A short time later, the New American Movement (NAM), the last surviving organiz­ation of the new left, merged with the DemocraHc Socialist. Organizing Committee (DSOC) , the official social democratic organization in the U.S. and a member of the Second Inter­national, to fonn the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). In the meantime, since the early 70s, the overwhelming majority of those who had survived from the Black movements of the 60s had immerSed themselves in a single-minded electoralism, aiming to . capture key offices in the cities both north and south. By 1984, Manning Marable, a well-known Black writer and a national officer of DSA, was hailing this tendency, too, as a new (Black) 'social democracy. '2 Indeed by 1984, all wings of this new social democracy had found their fore-ordained home inside the Democratic Party. Almost the entirety of the American left, in one incarnation or another, participated in the 1984 election in support of the Democratic Party candidates. The campaign of Jesse Jackson for president constituted the near-exclusive focus of the left's organizing efforts throughout the election year.

Not surprisingly, the proponents of this new social democratic strategy have justified their approach in terms of a return to realism. 'We were ultra-left,' say the ex-Maoists, who have fore­saken the 'New Communist Movement' in order to invade the Harold Washington and Jesse Jackson campaigns. 'We have to get out of the sandbox into the real world,' say the ex-CP real­politikers who have joined DSA in order more effectively to implement the old popular front line inside the Democratic

The Paradox of Social Democracy: Tire American Case 35

Party. What all this means, in brief, is that to be practical you have to relate to the Democratic Party, since that's where the action is.

\roponents of working in and for the Democratic Party argue, ,¥, that because the Party has been historically and is today lite

,party of the mass movements and the party of reform, it must be ~ central vehicle for left struggle. These progressives point to IN! lact that a majority of working people, Blacks, and other ~sed groups, even now, generally vote Democratic. But they fail to distinguish between the passive, priva te, and indivi­

I' dualist act of voting and the active, collective, power-creating act "of organizing to confront the employers or the government. The

.' 'pro-Democratic Party progressives also notice, quite properly, that the unions, the official Black organizations, and the offical women's organizations constitute the backbone of the Demo­cratic Party. But they fail to distinguish between the interests of bureaucratic and middle-class elements which dominate these organizations and which represent them inside the Democratic party and the very different interests of the rank and file and working-class elements which constitute the membership of these organizations but play essentially no active role inside the Democratic Party. The new social democrats point out further that the stated programs of the 'left' Democratic Party officials, Black politicos, and trade union leaders are generally at the left extreme of the political spectrum in the U.S. today, and that, if implemented, these programs would amount to a giant step forward for the American people. But they fail to ctistinguish between talk and action, what's on paper and what's imple­mented. They simply ignore the near-total incapacity not only of Democratic Party Congressional majorities, but also of fully fledged social democratic governments around the world, to impose reforms upon capital throughout the period of crisis which began in the early 70s. Nor do they recognize how totally committed these parties have been in power to austerity and attacks on the working class. Finally, those who would rebuild social democracy in the U.S. point out that social democracy in general, and the Democratic Party in particular, has appeared as the 'vehicle' of those great waves of reform which have, period­ically, shaken the advanced capitalist countries. But they fail to distinguish between the immediate legislators of reforms and the creators of the mass political offensives which actually made refonn legislation possible. They characteristically, and disas-

36

trously, neglect the tumultuous mass movements which trans­formed, willy-nilly, what hitherto had been do-nothing reformist poIiticans into agents of social and political change.

II The Paradox of Social Democracy

The point is that most of the U.S. left, like most of the left throughout the world, still remains transfixed by social demo­cracy's passive mass base, its left paper programs, and its historic association with reform. They refuse, therefore, to take social democracy seriously as a distinct social and historical phenomenon - one which represents distinctive social forces and, as a result, advances specific political theories and strate­gies, and, i'1 tum, manifests a recognizable political dynamic within capitalism. Since the end of the nineteenth century, the evolution of social democracy has been marked by a character­istic paradox. On the one hand, its rise has depended J,lpon tumultuous mass working-class struggles, the same struggles which have provided the muscle to win major refonns and also the basis for the emergence of far left political organizations and ideology. The expansion of working-class self-organization, power, and political consciousness, dependent in tum upon' working-class mass action, has provided the critical condition for the success of refonnism as well as of the far left. On the other hand, to the extent that social democracy has been able to con­solidate itself organizationally, its core representatives -drawn, from the ranks of the trade union officials, the parliamentary' politicians, and the petty bourgeois leaderships of the mass organizations of the oppressed - have invariably sought to implement policies reflecting their own distinctive social posi-' tions and interest - positions which are separate from and interests which are, in fundamental ways, opposed to those of the. working class. Specifically, they have sought to establish and maintain a secure place for themselves and their organizations within capitalist society. To achieve this security, the official representatives of social democratic and refonnist organizations have found themselves obliged to seek, at a minimum, the im­plicit toleration, and, ideally, the explicit recognition of capital. • As a result, they have been driven, systematically and univer­sally, not only to relinquish socialism as a goal and revolution as· : a means, but, beyond that, to contain, and at times, actually to .

The Paradox of Social Democracy: The AmeriCfll1 Cnse 37

,~h ~ose ups~rges of mass working-class action whose vel)' ,"yn~ics.lead, In te~de~cy, to broader forms of working-class :~h~n and sohdanty, to deepening attacks on capital and '!_iL caPlta!lSt state, to the constitution of working people as a lJICll-consclOus class, ~nd, in some instances, to the adoption of JOr"'Ua.J=. and revolutionary perspectives on a mass scale Th

done. this, desp!te the fact that it is precisely these ~ove: whIch h.ave gIven them their birth and sustained their

IftL."",""V .. T and w~Ich ha~e been th~ only possible guarantee of their e~lstence In class-dIvided, crisis-prone capitalism.

co~sequence has been that, to the extent that the rep.res~ntatIv~s of reformism in general and social demo-

; pa~~s In partI~ular have been freed to implement their charactet;tsttc worldviews, strategies, and tactics, they have .systematIcally. undermined the basis for their own continuin -existence, paving the way for their own dissolution, g i" For these reason~, even those most intent on calling into exist­Wnce a new refo~msm have before them an ironic prospect. To haw extent t~ey ~lsh t.o create C\ viable social democracy, they will ,~ to m~mtaIn then political and organizational independence """" and md.eed sy~tematically to oppose, those who represent l-.ctwtllv sting SOCIal democracy. To the extent, on the other

e~d up, as they have until now, merging themselves offIcal for~es of reformism, they will be disabled for out w~at IS clearly the cardinal (if enormously im-

task faCl~g thos~ w~o wish t~ implement any left per­to re~uIld the fIghting capaCIty, organization, and left conscIOusness of the working class and oppressed

Inde~d, to the degree that the proponents of a new social IdtI1mnrr:oll"V bmd t~e~selves to already-existing reformism - its

. org~mzahons, leaderships, strategies, and ideas _ ~ contnbute, if unwittingly, to the further erosion of

ve and class-based forms for pursuing workers' interests' encou~age the adoption of those individualistic and

~SS-olD.llJal~allJl forms of achieving workers' interests Iter y ~ave the way for the right.

None of thIS ~s mere logic, nor is it ancient history. Remark­the Ame~can I~f~ ha.s crystallized its own trend toward dem?O'ahc polItics Immediately in the wake of an ex­

senes of experiments in social democracy in Europe '-V<;''''~dJ'''''J that have proven catastrophic for the entire left. B;

ml -70s, through most of Europe, the social democratic and

38 Communist parties had succeeded in channelling the energies of the mass worker and student movements of the previous decade into the parliamentary/electoral arena and, on this ba~~s, had achieved for themselves practically unprecedented posItIons of political authority. At the same time, the near totality of those leftists who had, during the late 60s and early 70s, constructed a small but significant extra-parliament,ary left out of ,those s~me mass movements also moved en masse mto the ostensibly re'?t~­ized and reconstructed Eurocommunist and EUroSOClallSt parties, Their justification for this tum? Precisely ,the ,same one invoked by America's new social democrats: entenng mt~ these organizations appeared to them the best way to hook,up with the workers, to fight effectively for reforms, and to rebUild the mass movements. ,

The results are now plain f()r all to see, The Co~munis~ Parties outside Italy have suffered massive, probably lITeverslble de­cline, as the European working classes have seen no need for,n;ro mass reformist parties and have preferred to ~a~k the o,fhcI,al ones, Much more importantly, labor and SOCialIst p~rtles 10

Portugal, Spain, and above all France have won smas~mg elec­toral/parliamentary victories and ascended to :po~er. In every case, these electoral campaigns and electoral vlctones ~oo~ place in the wake of alarming declines in working-class orgamzahon -indeed as more or less exrlicit subtitutes for working-cl,ass action nevertheless, most 0 the left insisted on interpreting them as in themselves mass movements and, therefore, as working-class triumphs. What has been the outco~e? In every case, with no independent mass movements to keep the~ honest' the labor and socialist governments have used then newly-~on authority to '~estructure' t~~ir national capitalisms in the interests of internatIonal competItIveness. In the process, they have imposed upon the workir:'g class policies of au.sterity even more vicious and thoroughgomg than those of their con­servative predecessors, and h~ve, undermine.d further the workers' main defensive orgamzatIons, espeCially the trade unions, The consequence of social democratic ~egemony has been neither a new period of reform~ nor an opent.ng to the left. On the contrary, capitalist restructunng ~r:'der SOCial d~m~racy has brought about the most massive pohhcal demoralizatIon of the working class and the most devastating disc~e~iting of socialist and Marxist ideas within memory. Not surpnsmgly, the medium term consequence has been to breathe vibrant new life

The Paradox of Social Democracy: The AmeriCll1l Case 39

into long-discredited right wing political perspectives, to pre­, pare not only the revival of the most virulent forms of free

p1terprise ideology, but also the emergence of a dynamic crypto­fascism - above all, and not accidentally, in Socialist France. 5<), once again, the paradoxical but predictable dynamic: in the ibsence of mass movements to supply their own, independent material force for reform and for the rise of left ideas, the most decisive victories of social democracy have issued, in the end, in

, the most decisive undermining of social democratic perspec­tives, organizations, and movements in Europe since the 195Os. This despite a deepening long term capitalist economic crisis which has brought the highest levels of unemployment and the most severe suffering for the working class since the 1930s.

m The Dynamics of Reformism

Activity, Power, Consciousness

It should be a commo~place within the left that the indispens­able condition for beginning to reconstruct working-class organ­ization, power, and political consciousness is the rise of mass direct action by working people against the employers and the government, in the factories and the offices, as well as in the streets, This is because, as a rule, it is only where working people have in fact broken through their own passivity, created new fonns of solidarity, and, on that basis, amassed the power needed to confront capital, that the goals of reform and revo­lution premissed upon collective, class-based action can appear at all relevant and practical. In the absence of class solidarity and collective power, working people are reduced to the 'other side' of 'what they really are' under capitalism, viz. sellers of com­modities, notably their own labor power. If people cannot, in fact, struggle for their interests by means of class-based organi­zations and class-based strategies, they will find that it only makes sense to treat the social world, its institutions and balances of power, as given, and to pursue their interests by devising the individualist and class collaborationist strategies which will allow them best to pursue the competitive struggle among commodity sellers.

Because of the profound interdependence of collective action, social power, political effectiveness, and political consciousness,

40

abrupt, large scale changes in the level of working-class struggle have tended to be the condition for significant political trans­formations - the onset of broad waves of reform, the transition from craft to industrial unionism, the rise of mass social demo­cratic parties and the like. At the same time, because class-based strategies tend to depend on collective mobilization of social . power, working people and oppressed groups normally confront a classic double-bind: without a significant level of organization and power, it seems suicidal to initiate collective action; yet, without a significant level of collective action, it is impossible to amass organization and power, and to develop consciousness .. Understandably, even the ideological and organizational inter-: vention of socialists is often useless for actually breaking this: bind. Historically, then, as Rosa Luxemburg clearly saw, 'the' unconscious movement tends to precede the conscious move-. ment.' Her classic account of the mass strike phenomenon captures the psychological dynamics of mass working-class movements in general: 'The first direct action reacted inward ... as it for the first time awakened class feeling and class

consciousness ... This awakening of class feeling expressed itself forthwith in the circumstances that the proletarian mass ... quite suddenly and sharply came to realize how in­tolerable was the social and economic existence which they had endured for decades.' Thus, 'the moment that the real, earnest periods of mass strike begin, all those calculations of "cost"· [which previously had discouraged working class initiatives) become merely projects for exhausting the ocean with a tum-. bIer. '3 The result, in potential, as Luxemburg goes on to explain,. is not only the emergence of unprecedented forms of organiz­ation, involving previously disorganized layers, around novel demands, but the politically self-conscious confrontations of workers with capital and the state, and the placing of socialism itself once more on the agenda.

Once in struggle, people can find meaning in hitherto irrele­vant strategies requiring working-class collective action and hitherto utopian goals requiring working-class power. As winning becomes conceivable, it is reasonable to try to do what is required to win: to break the law and confront the state, as well as to develop new fonns of social connections with 'outside' social forces - between organized and unorganized, between employed and unemployed, between Black and white. Correlat­ively, as collective action leads to collective power, it makes

rile Paradox of Social Oemocracl/: Till' AI1lC'I'icllll Cose .J 7

sense to consider broad programs of reform which hitherto were ; incapable of inspiring action. In other words, it is in the process of actually constituting themselves as a class in order to struggle that workers come to conceive the interconnected notions of a

.dass-divided society, of a strategy of class struggle, and of social­;Ism as a goal as constituting a reasonable perspective.

. Reformism as an Ideology of Ihe Working Class

: Naturally, periods of mass activity are temporally limited. Alt~ough trade unions, social democratic parties, and revo-

Ilutionary groups, as well as mass organizations of oppressed people, tend to establish themselves at high points of struggle, they must operate for significant periods in an environment ~haped by relatively low levels of working-class activity. Indeed, ;in 'nonnal' times, working-class activity takes on a character the ftVerse of that in periods of mass upsurge. By its very nature, it is

limited in scope: mass political parties tone down their '11Ii:tn,ptn,nr of. class; trade .unions organize workers from only a

'1I11:IU\.Uldr fIrm, craft, or Industry; shopfloor militants can attract a small proportion of their fellow workers. Attempts to

struggles beyond a narrow sphere do not as a rule meet success.

;" In such periods of downturn, the minoritarian and restricted . of working-class activity appears to be its natural and 'pennanent character. It therefore tends to form the material ibas~, the star:ting point, for the formation of working-class :poIitIcal consc~ou~ness. Class-wide attacks upon the preroga-1ivesof the capitalists, let alone the transition to socialism, are off 'the agenda. A majority of working people conclude, therefore, .that they must accept as given the basic ground rules of the :tapi~alis! . system - e~pecially the requirement for capitalist profitability as the baSIS for the operation of the system. It is the

:apparent unc~aJlengeability of capitalist proper:r an~ t.he capit­·alist state which forms the necessary, although IIls/lff/e/enl, con­:dition ~or the w~despread acceftance within the working class of refonnlsm -' VIZ., the worldvlew and strategy for action which take~ th,e capitalist property system as given, but asserts the special Interest of the working class within it, above all, the working class's 'right' to appropriate a 'fair share' of the total product, In tum, because it tends to be consolidated in periods

42

when warking-c1ass organizatian is relatively weak, the refarm­ist perspective is almost invariably associated with strategies for refarm requiring minimal warking-c1ass mabilizatian­routinized (often symbalic) strike action, institutionalized collective bargaining, and abave all the electaral raad. Unable to carry aut the class struggle in an all-out way, the warkers seek alternative methads to. defend their interests.

Nevertheless, refarmism, like any ather warldview, can cam­mand widespread acceptance anly an the conditian that it provide the basis far successful actian, Thus, given even a mini­mum af warking-c1ass arganizatian, refarmism tends to. be widely attractive in periads of prosperity precisely because in such periads the threat af even limited working-class resist­ance - symbalized by the resalutian to strike or a victary at the palls - actually can yield cancessians fram capital. Since filling arders and expanding productian are their tap priarities in the baam, capitalists will tend to. find it in their interests to. maintain and increase productian, even when this means concessions to warkers, if the alternative is to endure ~ strike or other farms of social dislacatian. In fact, as the ecanbmy expands, capitalist campetition almost always drives up th~ price of labor, whatever labor does, and this gives an appearance of effectiveness to workers' organizations, and of the refarlnist perspective, even if these are actually quite weak. On the other hand, in periods of econamic contractian and falling profits, the capitalists' first priority is to increase competitiveness in stagnant markets, Since increasing competitiveness depends on cost-cutting, em­ployers will aften choose to. weather a long strike or social unrest if they can thereby achieve significant reductions in labar casts. Mareaver, the very fact that capitalist profits are shrinking gives capital a tremendous weapon in periads of econamic downturn. Since profits are the anly categary of incame which can be assumed regularly to. go. back into. expanding productian and increasing emplayment, even warkers find it hard to. deny that the capitalists' share, abave all athers, must be protected as the pie shrinks, and tkat (by the iranclad lagic of aritkmetic), the warking class must be prepared to. make sacrifices. All else being equal, declines in profitability and the general outloak for business actually tend, in themselves, to increase the power of capital vis a vis labor. Under canditians af economic crisis, then, unless an explasion af warking-c1ass struggle can radically trans­farm their level of organization, power, and consciousness,

The Paradox of Social Del/locracy: The Americall Case 43

warkers will find reformist id d . attractive With strate ies .. eas ecreasmgly relevant or apparently impassibl! to ;;~~Inng tclass ac.tion against capital cTeasingly find it reasanabl t

emen, workmg people will in-

d e a resort to. i d"d I' . ass-collaboratianist strateg' d' n IVI ua IstlC and alist, right wing thearies whi~~' a~ will adopt the pro-capit­

rna e sense of these strategies.

Reformism as the Ideology of aD' . . Layer lstmct, Non-Working Class Social

. U~der co.nditions of low or diminishin st . ntanan warking-class activity a . g ruggle and. mma­and leadership _ trade unio' n~ .",:,orrIng-class arganIzation will be abliged to make rt' n, po ItIca party, or whatever-

. ce am comprom . . th . rehnquish for the tim b' . Ises WI capital and to.

. ' e emg, certain pro . strategIC options. To. do. atherwise w gr~matIc ends and balance of forces and invite su' . d la~l~ be to Ignore the actual this reality _ which in cert ' ICI ~ e .eat. The recognition of constitutes the critical poi t a~~penods IS the daminant ane -bUilding a new social d~~cr:pa~ure for t~ose.who argue for organizations and by mer in cy h Y ente~mg Into. reformist social democrats view the g g WIt. reformIst forces. The new the official refarmist a c0z:'sez:atIve outlaok and strategies of

I rgamzatlOns and th' I d . mere y reflecting the tern b J eIr ea ershlps as momentarily reignin Pf.~~ryl a ance of class forces and the conclude, therefore, t~aFt~~;~~ C~~sciou~ness. They logically these organizatians, since t~u. enter Int~ and seek to. build class activity once again in~r~:ses elr ~ssumptlOns,. as wor~ing­become more a ro ' ,an new strategIes and Ideas ships '11 pp pnate, these arganizations and th . I d

WI ,more or less na turalJ d' . el r ea er-radical directian. y, a Just theIr perspectives in a

Nevertheless the view that th I' . " reformist organizations and th .e fa ItJcaJ !Imlt~tians of today's poli!ical limitations of the ranke~~de~i~erstIPs Simply ~i~or the partIal and profoundl misleadin e.o t~ese organIZatIOns is IOta account thase Cri~cal d g. For It faIls to. take sufficiently the permanent social basis~~ e~ soc!al ~arces which constitute give to refarmism its consiste~,;~;rmlst Institution~ an? ideas, Sources of creativity _ i th t ~racte~, and proVIde ItS chief mentary paliticians and'~h e /a e unIOn. officials, the parlia­organizatians af th: op e ~eAty baur?~OIs leaderships of the

presse. ny polItical strategy that seeks

·H

to revitalize social democracy from within must look to the.se elements. Now, the official represent~ti.ves of t~e reformIst org;mizations obviously do depend for t~elr very eXIstence upon the establishment of these organizations, and these are almost always initially created out of militant mas~ struggles. ~oreover, as the class struggle dies down, the ref?rrnlst le~dershlps tend.to adopt political and strategic alternatives whIch appear qUl~e similar to those adopted by the majority of t~e worklng.c1ass In

such circumstances. Nevertheless, the reformIst standpOint does not have the same causes or the same significance for the re­formist officialdom as it does for rank and file workers. !he majority of workers adhere temporari.ly to reformist persp~ctl~es because, under conditions of waning s~ruggle and mlnorrty organization, they believe these perspectives are th~ ?est ones they can realistically act upon. In contrast, the ofhClal repre­sentatives of the reformist organizations tend to adh~re. to a reformist political worldview on a pemtallellf ba~s. C?nstltutln,g a distillct social layer with distinctive interests qUIte dIfferent from those of the mass of the working class, these elements adhere to reformism as an expression of their drive precisely to free them­selves from dependence upon their working-class base and to secure their long term acceptance by capital. This fun~amental difference becomes crystal clear when the level of workIng-class activity and organization begins to gro;, , As th,e ,class struggle heats up, the transformation of workers self-adlvl.ty creates, the potential for the transformation of workers' consclOusnes: In a radical direction, But for the reformist officials, the same IS not true, As the class struggle intensifies, these elements do not dissolve or change their political approach, On the contrary, they seek to contain the struggle and channel it into the classic forms of reformist activity - forms which they hope will be acceptable to capital.

The Labor Officialdom, Parliamelltary Politicilll1s, and the Petty Bourgeois Black Leadership

Simply put, the labor officialdom, the parliamenta~ p,oliticos, and the petty bourgeois leaders of the BIa~k orgamzatJ,ons ad­here permanently to a reformist perspectIve because It offers them the theory, strategy, and tactics through which they can best pursue their own reproduction as they are, Labor bureau-

, I

i

I Tile Partldox of Socitll Oel11ocraCl/: The AII/cnroll Case 45

crat~, parliamentary politicos, and Black officials no longer work beSIde, or share the conditions of, those they represent. This is fundamental, as the requirements for their survival cease to be the same as those of the rank and file workers or the people in the community, They are not directly affected by the pressure from employers upon wages and working conditions or from the government upon social expenditures for the community, Nor is their ability to defend their own conditions of life, as it is for the rank ~nd file th~y represent, immediately dependent upon their capaCIty to budd a counterforce by organizing their fellow workers for struggle, Instead, the material base of the trade union bureaucrats, the party politicos, and the Black officials becomes the organizations for which they work, and, in tum, the inc,reasingly self-conscious groups of officials who operate the UnIon, the party, or the Black organization. The organization _ and the bureaucratic group which founds itself upon it - not only provides the officials with their means of support, therebv freeing them ,from the drudgery of manual labor and the shop floor. It cO,nstltutes for them a whole way of life - their day to day functIOn, formative social relationships with peers and superiors on the organizational ladder, a potential career, and, on maryy occasions, a social meaning, a raison d'etre. To maintain themselves as they are, the whole layer of officials must, first and above all, maintain their organizations, It is thus easy to under­stand how an irresistible tendency emerges on the part of the trade union officials, the party politicos, and the Black leader­ships to treat their organizations as ends in themselves, rather than as the means to defend their memberships - to come to conflate the interests of the organizations upon which they depend with the interests of those they ostensibly represent. -

As representatives of the organized sectors of the working­class, the trade union officials have historicallv constituted the critical - and archetypical - social layer att~ched to reform­ism, The trade union officials naturally understand that the fundamental threat not only to the workers whom they repre-, sent, b~t a!so to the organizations upon which they depend, is . the capItalIst class - a class 'permanently' self-organized and 'permanently' dominant. The indispensable condition for the su:vival of the ~~ion~ and thus of the officials' own continuing eXistence as offICIals IS acceptance by capital -specifically, the capitalists' recognition of the unions and the capitalists' accept­ance of the rules of parliamentary democracy. Ultimately, the

46 capitalists' acceptance of the.unions and of parliamentary demo­cracy can only be assured by the organized power of the workers. Nevertheless, the trade union leaders are excruciatingly sensi­tive to the fluctuating strength and the potential weakness of the organized workers: they understand that even at the height of the class struggle, indeed especially at that point, there is an enonnous risk of defeat, and thus of the destruction of their organizations. To the extent that they are able to do so, they increasingly seek to protect their organizations - and, in their minds, their memberships - by renouncing all those broader fonns of struggle which provide the ground for broadly ranging attacks on capital and, in tum, the basis for socialist ideology -not only militant direct action, but organization which goes beyond the immediate workplace or industry to link organized with unorganized, employed with unemployed, workplace with community, etc. But even while undennining workers' mili­tancy and self-organization, the officials must still appear to defend their constituencies, within the limits imposed by the requirements of defending capitalist profitability. This, in the end, is a difficult trick to pull off. But historically, the official labor movement has relied on two basic strategies as con­sciously-conceived substitutes for direct action: (1) constituting, with the help of the state, pennanent institutions to regulate worker-employer conflict; (2) the electoral/parliamentary road.

Collective Bargaining

Establishing regular institutions for the (temporary) coexi­stence between capital and the labor officaldom - the tradi­tional fonns of collective bargaining - has, classically, depended on striking a 'deal' between labor officials and capital. The officials must be prepared to pledge to reduce labor dis­turbances and enforce labor discipline. In tum, the capitalists must be prepared to make regular concessions to the workers for which the officials can take credit, since this is the requirement for their being able to maintain the allegiance of the majority of workers and to isolate militants. This deal is not without cost to the capitalists and benefit to the workers, and the capitalists will therefore accept it only to the extent they are forced to do so, and to the degree it is worth their while to pay extra for labor peace in exchange for smooth production. Capitalist expansion and high

The Paradox of Social Democracy: The American Case 47

dProfijtability are, almost always, the necessary conditions for the ea. In the co~text of t~is bargain, the union officials are free to

develop t.heu 'organization within the organization' and their . own spec.lal role. They ne.gotiate a contract; there is an agreement n?t to strIke throughout Its duration; instead, the officials settle dIsputes th~oug~ the griev~n.ce procedure and ultimately com­pul~ory arbItratIOn. The offICIals 'service' the rank and file -forcmg the contract in grievance procedure. But as the other's~~e o~ the deal, they must also compel the membership to adhere to t e contract and limit any sort of shopfloor resistance. To this end, they must ~ove to undercut all independent organization of t.he r.ank and fIle and to curb rank and file control over the trad uru~n Itself, curtailing union democracy. e

LIke refonnist practices generally, collective bargaining in the context of the deal has a dual significance. On the one hand, it doe~ reflect th~ ';l0mentary interests of the working class in a p.enod of declInIng and minoritarian organization: under the CIrcumstances, most workers see no choice but to accept it as the best they c.an ~et. ~n·.the other hand, the labor officials find in the r~lfyu~g Inst}.tuhons of collective bargaining, not only an essen~lal ra~soll d etre, but also an important basis for their ~aten~l ~xlstence and a critical foundation for their modus VIVend, With capital. In the hands of the officials the funct' . of II t' b .. ,lOnIng co ec lve argammg ceases merely to reflect the momenta (unfavorable~ balance of class forces between capital and labor/it serves to d~ssoh:e workers self-organization and workers' h:'her, .and 10 .thIS. way has the effect of tipping that balance

er l~ the duechon of capital. Thus is produced once again the cla,sslc paradox of refonnism: although the unio~ officialdo~ m~;: nse to great heights during the boom on the basis of its abtlIty to ~ecure labor peace and the apparent well-being of work~rs, . It does so at the expense of the workers' self­rrgamzatIOn and thus of its own power and position over the OI~g. tenn. As the expansion gives way to contraction the ~fIcIal~ are les.s and less able to make collective bargaining ~ork d r lheu constituencies or themselves: the employers break the

ea and unl~ash their of~e.nsive; the workers see fewer reasons t~/~pr0rt either th~ offiCIals or their reformist strategies' the o lCIa ~ watch. their organizations erode and their w'hol worldvlew lose Its credibility. e

I

48

Elec 10 ra !ism/ Pa rliamen larism

, road constitutes the definitive The electoraIlparlI~m,ent~ry ial elements characteristically

strategy of all those dIstInctIve soc t provide the means to tied to refonnism, be~ause it :t:ef:~e: ~ow to retain their ma,ss overcome the central dIlemma h ~ t organize their constIt-

' I b es without aVIng 0 , workIng-c ass as, 't ital In election campaIgns, uencies for direct action agaInS cbaP

l, d' to cast their ballots,

d ' d' 'd als can be mo IIze isolate In IV~ U, , in favor of pro-working class can-privately and IndIvIdually, I this way, it appears didates around a refonn Pdrog~am, fonnns without the risk of

'bl t s power an WIn re POSSI e 0 am~s, reet confrontations, mass struggles lIke stnkes or st , arily parliamentary strategy

Nevertheless, to adhere ~o a pn~1 democratic illusion: that a is to fall victim to the claSSIcal ~~Clt the working class can be balance of c!as~ forces favor~ :le~toral/parliamentary means, constructed InSIde the state h' f the workers against the apart from the massive stre~gt em;g ~s The electoral approach capitalists in the shops and In the s ree ~ces ower in capitalist is illusory because, contrary !o adPtPher~~gh c~~trol over the state

' ty' t nonnally exerCIse , h ld SOCle IS no I as ca italist property relatIons 0 , and through force, So ong , p t lover the means of pro-

' I' t I through Its con TO d the capIta IS c ass, h ' stme'nt function, an duction, retains control hov~r :l~p~;~t of the productivity of thereby holds th~ key to t ean~\o economic ~rosperity _ and, labor, to economIC growth, , I stability ~nd state revenue,

h t b ' to employment, SOCIa , I , b'j'ty t on t a aSlS, d d on the capitalists a I 1 0 Since capitalist invest;nent I ?Jen :11 elements of society find it make a profit, ~ho:? r~v;i~t~~~~t to ensure dapitalist profitab­sooner or later In t elr 0, d f the coJntry' captures an Tt 'What's good for GM IS goo ~r, I I y, f J'ty under capItalIsm, important aspect ~ ~ea t h those who hold positions in the

In this context, It IS C ear w y presenting the interests state, even those elected on progra~:s~ere to 'be responsible,' to of workers, are under en?nnous pr d rofits To do otherwise support policies that wII! sa,fegua: n~ eco~omy and all that would risk the, ~~lfunctIom~~e ~hat short of challenging cap­entails, The pol~tIClans a:~~w control of production away from italist property lt~el~ -:- a In\l to carry out over an extended the capitalists - It IS Impossl e 'thout I:nviting the with-

' 't l'st program WI period, a~ antI-capl af I d d ultimately economic chaos, drawal of Investment un san

The Paradox of Social Democracy: The American elise 49

Even so, it needs to be emphasized that, like collective bargaining, the electoral/parliamentary road has a dual signifi­cance, On the one hand, under conditions of limited working­class mobilization, the majority of workers are likely to favor the electoral road: electoraIism appears to constitute a substitute for direct action, a way for workers to fight for their interests without having to face the enonnous dangers of confronting the capitalists, Moreover, like colJective bargaining, the electoral road can, under certain conditions, appear to function very well for the working class, In periods of prosperity, especially in the wake of fairly substantial working-class mobilizations, it is often in the interests of capital to accept refonns, rather than risk social disruption,

On the other hand, because the gulf which separates the social democratic parties' bureaucracies from the working class as a whole is even greater than that which separates labor officialdom from its membership, the social democratic party politicos are positioned to respond to the needs of capital even more sen­sitively and immediately than are labor bureaucrats, Union leaders must, in many cases, respond to the organized interests of (usually localized) groups of rank and filers who have been brought together in production and who have had the exper­ience of collective struggle and collective self-organization in their union and on the shopfloor. In contrast, the party osten­Sibly represents the 'class as a whole: but since workers are, in practice, able actuaIIy to organize themselves as a class only rarely, the official party and its machine are generally under little pressure from, or control by, their atomized electoral base, Nor (in the absence of mass working class direct action) can the periodically radicalized and aroused party rank and file gene­rally exert more than the most partial and temporary pressure on the parliamentary delegation and apparatchiks who rule the party, This is, in part, because the professional politicos gene­rally command an . institutionalized apparatus explicitly designed to ensure their control over the organization and in­sulate them from the pressure of the party membership, But it is also because the politicos can, in most situations, claim with some justice to represent the party's real base _ viz" the broader electorate, which is generally far more conservative than the rank and file party members and which will decide the one question of moment to the Whole party: whether or not it will win the election, Free to accept the rules of the game, the

50

refonnist professional politicians may demand the workers' rightful piece of the growing pie in periods of prosperity, but as prosperity gives way to crisis, they will have little choice other than to translate 'fair share' into 'austerity: for their worker constituents, However, as the refonnist politicians increasingly assume the role of restorers of capitalist: profitability, the working class finds fewer reasons to prefer them to the outright representatives of capital, or even to distinguish between the reformists' perspectives and those of capital itself. Consistent refonnism leads once again, to its own dissolution.

Rationalizing Capitalism Througl, Corporatism

Unable to confront capitalism, and acutely aware of their con­sequent dependence upon the health of the system, the official forces of refonnism have been among those most concerned to understand the operation of capitalism and to devise plans to make it function better. Perhaps more than any other groups, the labor bureaucracy, refonnist politicians, and the official repre­sentatives of the established organizations of the oppressed have been the leading proponents of conscious, society-wide attempts to regulate those economic dislocations which they see as caused by capitalism's anarchy and its unequal distribution of income. One need attribute no special cynicism to refonnist officials in pursuing the policies they do, On the contrary, they view their interests as coinciding with those of (capitalist) society as a whole, and their ideology as expressing the general interest. Indeed, given the particularist interests of the indivi­dual capitalists and their necessary competition with one another, the capitalist class as a whole may actually be les, capable than the refonnist leaders of devising and promoting policies in the interests of overall capital accumulation. As is well known, the trade union officials, reformist politicians, and official Black leaderships have been the most consistent pro­ponents of government intervention to regulate the economy, They were the prime apostles of Keynesian efforts to smooth out the cycle by means of regulating demand. They are today the leading exponents of industrial policy to make their own national capitalisms more competitive in the international economy, Through these approaches, the refonnist leaderships strive to ensure and restore capitalist profitability and economic

The Paradox of Social Ocmocrncif' Thc All . C . • . lCnCtlll nse 51

growth, for that, In their view is the' d' the improvement of the co d't'· fin Ispensableconditionfor f h

. n 1 IOn 0 the wo k' I o t elfownsurvival Give th' " r Ingc ass, as well as capitalist property s~stem ~h el~ belief 10 the pennanence of the

Neverthless, in order a~tu:fi ave no othe: choice. practice, the official refonnist I~ ~ h~~e t~elr policies put into secure the cooperation of th a ~rs IpS now that they must tention whatsoever of ' e. emp ayers, for they have no in-require working-class ::~i~:~!/p)n them ~since this would economy enters into crisis th IO~". For thIS :eason, as the seek, with increaSing single~' ~ ad lClal refonnlst leaderships resistance and to force co ~~ e ness, to eschew all forms of with the employers at the ~~;~ I;::r ~olJaborative arrangements economy as a whole throu h °h' e s lOp £Ioor, the finn, and the their rationalizing plans gB ~ Ich ~hey can have implemented more inexorable and as th ~ as t e ec~nomic crisis appears their weakness, their plans ~~r ~;:nr:~~Isanna,ment increases more quixotic and their ability t '£I of capital appear ever dines, As they forward 0 10 uence the employers de­collaboration, they encou eV

t er m?re des,rerately their plans for

{{ , n er an IncreaSingly fe' . o enSlve, Unless a revitalized work roCIOUS capItalist the economy's miraculo ers movement deters them or f ' us recovery re' h onnlst leadership will t' pneves t em, the re-like drive to self-destru!ti~~~e 0 ItS conclusion their lemming-

IV Two Cycles of Reform and Decline

The whole history of th I' . leaderships of reformist e r: at~onshlp among the official a~d the movements for re~rganIZatIOns, the Democratic Party, United States illustrates the°;" ove,r the ~ast half century in the late 1920s we have w'tn ydnamlc outlined thus far. Since the d 1,' 1 esse two great cy Iff ec me, the first runnin f c es 0 re orm and second running from the ~at:O~~het 19~Os to the early 1950s, the these cycles workers and sot e present. During each of by means of explosive mas~P£ressed people ~on major reforms the state _ in the workpl re<;t achon agamst employers and Th aces 10 commun'r . h

rough these struggles the' w' lies, 10 t e street. groups imposed reforms 'on hith o~km~ class .and oppressed Party administrations from the outs~d 0 I o-nothIng Democratic cratic Party profited from the refo e, n each cycle, the Demo-

nns, the mass movements, and

52 the liberalization and radicalization of consciousness which" went with them, significantly expanding its electoral base.", Nevertheless, the movements were obliged to develop almost" i

entirely outside and largely against the Democratic Party and the'! , established reformist organizations on the basis of new leader- I

ship~, because the established, official leaderships opposed \ , them. As the movements developed, small sections of the ' itionalleaderships did 'go over.' But as they did, they functioned generally to domesticate these movements, specifically bY' turning them away from mass direct action and to d ' upon electoral ism and the Democratic Party. In each cycle, as the! movements declined - partly as a result of the officials' actions,' partly for independent reasons - the leaderships succeeded in' recuperating their bases for the Democratic Party, and working people and oppressed groups were left to depend upon it. But ' popular militancy died down, the Democratic Party, despite , electoral majorities, was less and less successful in winning reforms. In the end, the Democratic Party's abject failure to' deliver the goods opened the way to a new period of revival the Republican Party.

The Movements of tile 30s

Franklin Roosevelt acceded to the Presidency in 1933 as a pragmatist and moderate, with no clearrefonn program. Shortly after his inauguration, a wave of increasingly powerful u,r,rl.-",..,''1II

struggles shook the country, beginning in the auto industry in I

Detroit, spreading to the southern textile mills, the eastern coal mines, and the midwestern steel mills. But Roosevelt stood and did nothing, as the companies and the local repressive crushed one strike after another. Meanwhile, the media boards set up under Roosevelt's National Recovery Act att"".,""'_.:J' ed, in almost every case, simply to get the workers back on job for the employers without dealing with the issues at But the strike wave continued to grow, and in 1934 workers astounding victories in three great general strikes in To Minneapolis, and San Francisco - all of which were marked the most massive and violent confrontations between ""n,r".'I't~; and authorities. During 1935-1936, a mass rank and file ment of auto workers created the United Auto Workers and out to defeat General Motors in the historic sit-down strikes

Tile Paradox of Soc;al Democrllcy: Tile AmeriCll1l CIlSr.' 53

December-January 1936-1937. 4

. I The Democratic Par:r benefited from this broad labor upsurge ; ~d the transf~rmatlOn of political consciousness which it 19nde~rote. Thl~ ~as e:idenced in the party's unexpectedly ,~assiVe and ~eClslve mld~erm electoral victory in November ,,~9~. Meanwhtle, ~ore radical forces were also gaining ground, ~th the Commum~t P~rty experiencing a massive period of sn>wth and expandmg mfluence, and the Socialists asserting fhemselves successfully in certain local electoral arenas. As a ~uIt of the s~a~ in.crease in the level of struggle and the 4lOnsequent radicalIzatIOn of the political mood, Roosevelt sud­~~n1y changed political course. In 1935, he pushed through the hItherto neglected Wagner Act and Social Security Act the two

, ,"ain reform achievements of the New Deal. 5 '

/! ~e great .mass work.ers' movements of the 30s developed , entirely outSide and agal~s.t the old AFL officaldom. Throughout the later 1920s, these offiCials watched passively as employers wa~ed an ~ll-out a~sault on the unions, exemplified in the

\ 111l1on-bustmg Amencan Plan. Even as their dues base declined }hen shrank to insi.gnificance after 1929, the bureaucrats wer~ .,incapable of launchmg even a token counteroffensive. When the ,new ~orkers' movement exploded onto the scene in 1933, the ; AFt: tned to capture and domesticate it by seeking, in strike after , s~~, to get the workers to go back to work and to rely on the deCISIOns of the courts and the federal mediation boards. With the ~elp of AFL of.ficials, the employers crushed the United ,Textile Work~rs stnke of 1934. 6 Meanwhile, in the fall of 1933, lohn L. LeWIS played a powerful role in limiting the militant !Struggles of coal miners which had spread to the captive mines lo~ed by the stee~ companies); shortly thereafter in early 1934, oLewlS helped derail a nascent triple alliance of the miners the

,,steel workers, and the railroad workers, The auto wo;kers ,lsu~ed in creating the UAW only by breaking from the AFL and ,b~dmg a p?~erful and independent rank and file movement, !JVlth an exphclt program of refusing to depend on the officials :~ .courts~ and the mediation boards, and of relying instead o~ 'lnilllant duect action. 7

p Ultimat~ly, as the movement threatened to get out of hand, a ilSmall section of the old AFL leadership, led by John L. Lewis, did t.5ee the handwriting on the wall and made a break from the AFL to :h~p f?und the C.IO. At the same time, however, they strove Imlghtily to contam the movement's burgeoning militancy and

54

tum its energies toward the Democratic Party. Lewis made hi~­self a hero by standing firmly beside the GM sit-downers In

January 1937. But immediately thereafter, he cut short the Chrysler sit-down which was threatening to win even greater gains than had the GM strike. During the spring and summer of 1937, Lewis and his cohorts bent all their energies to break the wave of sit-downs and wildcats that continued to shake the auto industry. Meanwhile, Lewis ensured that the critical campaign to organize the steel industry would end in disastrous defeat when he turned explicitly to top down, conservative methods of organizing and carried out the strike under the banner 'Trust in Roosevelt.' The defeat of the Little Steel strike in the summer of 1937, following the infamous Memorial Day Massacre and the betrayal of the workers by one after another Democratic Party mayor and governor, coupled with the officials' successful re­pression of the struggle in auto, marked .a turni~g poi~t. Especially with the onset of the new depreSSIOn, begl~nIng.m mid-1937, the dynamism of the labor upsurge was rapidly diS­sipated and a long process of erosion initiated.·

As Lewis and Co. were stifling the movements of direct action, they were, simultaneously, attempting to reroute the ClO into electoral dependence on the Democratic Party. When the UAW voted not to endorse Roosevelt at its first convention in April 1936, Lewis personally intervened to get the decision reversed. Henceforward, the CIO leaders stuck ever more closely to a strategy of electoral intervention aimed at increasing their leverage on the Democratic Party. To this end, the unions established in 1943 the so-called Political Action Committees (PACs) as part of their general tactic of building local level machines to tum out the vote for 'pro-labo( candidates in order ultimately to strengthen their position insige the Party. But if the labor movement could not win a place as coequals with the Dixiecrats and big city bosses inside the Pafty during the period of mass labor upsurge and of the reforms wrich accompanied it, it was unrealistic to expect that they could do better as the movement waned and labo(s real strength correspondingly declined. During the 1940s, despite the Democrats' overwhelm­ing electoral/parliamentary hegemony for most of the period, the forces of reform became progressively weaker. As early as 1943, Congress passed the Smith-Connally Act, which curtailed some of labor's chief weapons of struggle (providing for 'cooling off' periods before strikes, injunctions 'in the public interest,' etc.)'

The Paradox of Social O(,lIlocrac.l/: Till' AlIlcrical1 Cno(' J.}

By th.e ~nd of the. war, labor was unable to preven t the passage of th.e VICIOusly anti-labor Taft-Hartley Act, which in a single stroke WIped out m~c~ of what had been won in the 305. By the early 1950s, the offICIal forces of reform had presided over the total d~cay o~ the workers' movement of the 1930s, the consequent dISSolutIOn of the main forces for both reform and Democratic Party hegemony, the resulting dissipation of liberal and radical sentIment, and the inevitable return to power of the Republican Party.

The Movements of tire 60s

The rise of a tn~ss militant Black movement, originating in the buses and cafetenas of the Deep South, ushered in a new period of refonn. The Black movement, which rose and fell in the period fro!" the later 1950s to the early 70s, followed very closely the traJectory tr~ced by the mass labor movement of the 30s and 40s. Thus, the historic civil rights movement, ignited by the Mont­gomery Bus boycott of 1955-1956, and, even more, the explosive movement of Blpck Power, which arose in the urban ghettos of northern cities in the summer of 1964, based themselves from the start on a powerful commitment to direct action and confront­ation with the white power structure. In the civil rights stnlggles of the I~~e 5~s ~nd 60s, .tens of thousands directly stood up to the authontIes In illegal Sit-downs, provocative freedom marches and .u.nauthorized fights for the right to vote. Whole com~ mU.OltIes, especially in the South, organized themselves to reSISt. In the urban risings of the North between 1964 and 1967, hun?~eds of ~housands of working-class and poor Blacks actively participated In the struggle. By the time of Martin Luther King's ass~ssinat.ion in early 1968, the Black movement had shaken white s?~lety t~ i~s foundations, had inspired militant student ~nd. antJ-Imp~nahst movements in its wake, and had begun to Ig.mte dynamiC organizing drives in the labor movement itself. King. was .assassina~ed in the middle of an organizing campaign ~f pnmanly Black CIty workers in Memphis, Tennessee. A short time late.r, the. League of Revolutionary Black Workers was founded In the Inner-city auto factories of Detroit.

!ohn F. Kennedy came to office, as had Franklin Roosevelt, as a nllddle-of-the-roa? and pragmatic Democrat. Interestingly, his narrow electoral VICtOry over Richard Nixon was assured by the

S6 massive vote of newly-aroused Blacks which allowed him to cany certain key states. Nevertheless, during his three years in the Presidency Kennedy failed to achieve any significant social legislation, and his tenure in office was overshadowed by America's growing, if largely unheralded, involvement in Vietnam. It was clearly the deepening radicalization of the Black struggle, marked by the civil rights movement's growing oppo­sition to the Vietnam War, and above all the urban rebellions in Detroit, Watts, Harlem, Newark and elsewhere which concen­trated Lyndon johnson's mind on his 'Great Society' and enabled him to inaugurate a new era of reform. In 1964, Johnson won a landslide electoral victory on a rising tide of liberal and radical sentiment rooted in the Black and newly emergent anti­Vietnam movements. Shortly thereafter, a suddenly reform­minded Congress passed the Civil Rights Acts, the Poverty Programs, and other important pieces of reform legislation. Once again, an independent mass movement had forced the Democrats to become reformers.

Like the workers' movement of the 30s, the Black movement grew up almost entirely on the basis of new leadership and new organizations. SNCC and CORE, not the NAACP or the Urban League, provided most of the dynamism that built the freedom struggles. The new Black militants had to create their movement largely over the resistance of the old, official leaderships. The NAACP refused to participate in the 1963 March on Washington unless it would be entirely legal and peaceful; it insisted that the Black movement support Johnson and his war in Vietnam; and it vehemently attacked Black Power. In the process, it precipitated a profound split between the new movement and the old guard .. The chasm became unbreachable when the urban rebellions ignited the mass struggle for Black Power which ultimately; issued in the formation of the Black Panther Party and the League: of Revolutionary Black Workers. 10

Treading the well worn path followed by trade union official­dom in the 30s, official Black leaders did what they could to steer the explosive Black movement toward the Democratic Party. In 1964, for the first time ever, the NAACP officially endorsed the Democratic candidate and organized a voter registration drive designed to channel the newly-unleashed energies of the Black struggle toward the campaign of Lyndon Johnson for President. Nevertheless, the new civil rights organizations continued to reject electoralism and remained almost obsessively devoted to

The Paradox of Social Democracy: Thc Amcrican Case 57

militant direct action. When the civil rights movement sought t use t.he ballot ~ox, it ,,:a~, as a rule, to assert the right to vote, no~ t? Win an electIOn., ThiS IS best seer: in what was perhaps the civil nghts movement s most dramatiC electoral intervention: the struggle of t~e Freedo~ Democratic Party in Mississippi in 1964. There, agaInst the VIOlent resistance of the white power st~cture, organizers from :~Cc. CORE. and other groups initially !tied to compel the authontIes to allow Blacks to register to vote

, In.the Democratic Party . .when they were prevented from doing thIS by a wave of repreSSIOn, they turned to organizing an auto­nomo.u? ca~p~i~n ~o sign up Black voters for their own, unoffiCial MISSISSI~PI Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) in order to challenge t~e official Democratic Party delegation which was of course, firmly segregationist and reactionary. Lyndo~ Joh~son and the £?emocratic Party refused to seat the MFDP at the ~ah?nal. co~ventIOn, despite the official Mississippi delega­tion ~ reJectIOn. of most of Johnson's program and their generally f~vonng the nght wing Republican Barry Goldwater for Pre­sld.e~t. Nevertheless, at the time of the convention and after, the offICial Black leadership called upon the MFDP to compromise. More generally, they demanded that the Black movement tum 'from protes~ ~o politics,' in Bayard Rustin's eloquent phrase, from the polItIcs of the street to the politics of the ballot b Nev~rtheless, th.e civil rights movement continued to reject el~~~ torahsm. As Meier and Rudwick, the historians of CORE su ~he pOSition of both CORE and SNCC at this critical j~nc~~: Social change could come only through an independent move­ment that would "remain a threat to the power structure" 'II

As it had from the labor struggles of the 30s the Oem' 0 t' I P rty b f d ,cra IC . a ene Ite greatly from the Black movement, as well as from

the s~d~~t movement, the anti-war movement, and the small ~ut slgn~flcant rank and file movement - all of which emerged In the mld?le 60s on the rising tide of Black militancy. The Party ~so. benefited fr?m. the. general trend toward political liberal­IzatIon and radicalIzatIOn which accompanied these mo -!l'ents. Indeed, despite Richard Nixon's victory over Humph~:y In 1968, the Democratic Party appeared to some at this f the ver f h' . Ime on ge 0 ac levIng a permanent electoral majority. This was large~y because demographic developments were drasticall sappmg t~e Republicans' rural strongholds and feeding th~ Democrats apparently permanently reformist working-class and Black electoral base. Cushioned from capital by the unpre-

58

cedented prosperity and pressed for reform by the rising mass movements, the Democrats appeared capable of delivering the goods more or less indefinitely.

By the middle 19705, the mass movements of the 60s had experienced precipitous decline and, with them, the impetus for reform. Significantly for the argument of this essay, the con­tinuing strength of the movements and of the liberal and radical ideologies to which they gave rise propelled a dramatic con­tinuation of the general wave of reform even through the first Nixon administration. The years between 1968 and 1972 wit­nessed the establishment of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the creation of the Environmental Pro­tection Agency (EPA), and dramatic increases in funding for Social Security and food stamps. But during the late 60s, the Black movement reached its zenith, and, unable to find powerful allies in a still largely dormant working class movement, found itself isolated, politically without perspective, and brutally repressed by local and national police. When Nixon began to withdraw the troops from Vietnam, the once powerful peace movement declined rapidly. For a brief period, militant rank and file movements exploded across industry and precipitated bitter struggles with employers; but they were unable in the end to produce a lasting impact on the political landscape.

Thus, by the mid-70s, the Democrats got the chance to prove once again that, in the absence of mass struggles, reformist electoral majorities bring little power to the forces of reform. As recently as 1976, the Democratic Party controlled both the White House and powerful legislative majorities. Many of its officials were committed on paper to widely ranging programs of social reform. Nevertheless, during the later 19705, the Democrnts were unable to pass a single significant piece of social legislation: Congress first gutted then passed the Humphrey-Hawkins biD for 'full employment: as if to rub the noses of its sponsors in the dirt. The bill for common situs picketing was soundly defeated! National health insurance, the rallying cry of the Democratic left; never got a hearing. Perhaps most humilitating, the Labor Law Reform bill, shorn of all serious anti passages, was soundly defeated. Meanwhile, President Carter put an end to the long period of rising expenditu urban poor, and was, after one term, succeeded by Reagan. Once again, the Democratic Party and the establis reformist leaderships had succeeded in riding out the wave

The Paradox of Social Dell/ocrac,lf: Tile ;\1I1('I[CI111 (175(, S'i

mass. struggle, depriving themselves of their own base and openmg the way to the Republicans and the right.

'v Left Reformists in the Economic Crisis

The conserv~tive tendencies of the trade union officials, the pet~ bourgeoIs Black leadership, and the Democratic Party politIcos are ~ften recognized. It is, nevertheless, widely assumed, espeCially by the ~ew social democrats, that, given the bper backm~ from an aclIve and politicized rank and file, at

ast the left ,:"m.g amo~g the reformist officials, under pressure · &om the caplt~lIsts, wIll take the lead in reviving mass move­; ments, A~c?rdmg to the widely accepted view, the trade union, .: Black polItico, and. D:mo~ratic P~rty 'lefts' cannot help but .' u~~erstand that capI,talism IS experIencing a long term economic .: cnSIS and that there IS a wide-ranging employer offensive under ! way to restore profits, These leaders are acutely aware, more­· ove~, ~hat, th~ employer offensive poses a mortal threat to the i baSIC mStI~utIOns from which they themselves draw their life­, ""~ - VIZ" th~ trade u~ions, the established Black organiz­~tions, and the lIberal WIng of the Democratic Party, On the rampage, emp~oye.rs have been discrediting the leadership with the ran~ a~d file, If not smashing the unions outright, thereby ~ndermmmg the officials' cherished dues base. Meanwhile

, ~rough their PACs, the c,apitalists have been isolating the union~ : and the Blac~ leader~hq:,s even inside the Democratic Party, Thus, accordmg to thl~ line of thinking the trade union, Black

, and Dem?CrahC Party 'lefts' have 110 choice but to resist, out of self-Interest, to protect their own positions, They

sooner or later, have to initiate action, put masses into I.;·P'.VU'UI , or at least create the conditions which will bring this

, ,Th~s analysis is sadly mistaken conceptually, and has been ; 'p'!asslvely refut~d empiric~lly in the recent period, The fact is

Jhat the ,reformist leadershlps have a wide range of options in · g to the employer offensive. They can, in the first

of~en car:;' on quite prosperously for extended periods, whIle their memberships suffer heavy losses, Moreover, w~en the employe,rs attack them directly, the reformist rs~IPS a,r~ m,ost unlIkely to respond in kind, In periods of

DPlF'rn>ning CrISIS lIke the present, to fight back effectively against

I

60

the employers - requires organizmg the most ma~siv.e a~d militant mobilization of unions and other mass organizatlons.m order directly to confront the employers. But as ~~e r~formlst officials are aware, to carry through such a mobl!IzatlO~ and confrontation, they would have to risk ~~e total destruction of their organizations and their s~c.ure posItions. As.a rule, t~ere~ fore, the trade union, Black offlClal, and D~mocratlc Pa~ I~fts will choose to sustain even serious losses, If the alter:n~hv.e IS to stand up and confront employers and risk total annihIla~lOn. It seems to them the better part of valor to preserve theu own organizations and positions at least partially intact until ~ new period of economic expansion allows them to take .up theu old positions as brokers between capital and the workmg class. Of course, to the degree the crisi~ len9t~en,s and the employer offensive intensifies, the reformist ofhCla,ls strategy p~o.ves pro­gressively less effective; so, over the.long run, the offiCials tend to find the ground for their very eXlsteryce c~t out from under them. Nevertheless, at any given moment, It ap~ears to the officials too risky to make a stand, so they are unhkel~ ever to take the initiative to reverse the trend. Even as the entire la~r movement disintegrated under the ,;mp.loyers' attac~~ dunng the 1920s and with it their own organizations and pOSItIons, the old AFL ~fficials never offered any serious resistance. Nor are things markedly different with the offici~ls ~f the.current epoch, despite the distant origins of their organizatIons 10 t~e ClO ma~ upsurge. When UAW President Doug Fraser made hiS dramatic exit from the Labor Management Advisory Board to form the Progressive Alliance in 1978, he warned that th,; bosse~ ~ad broken their side of the deal and could expect SWift retaha~lO.n from at least the left wing of reformist officialdom. ~ut It IS doubtful if Fraser's defiant posture struck much fear mto the hearts of the employers. In fact, the 'one-sided class war' .of which Fraser spoke had been going on for at least a decade With hardly a murmur of protest from the ranks of labor's ~ffic~aldom, least of all from its ostensible 'left' or social democratIc wmg.

The Rank and File Revolt

The imposition of Nixon's 'New Economic Policy' in the wake of the recession of 1970-1971 was the definitive sign that the economy had entered a phase of protracted crisis and that the

Tile Paradox of Social Oemocracy: The AmeriCIl/l ((/s(, 61

employer offensive was well under way. The NEP could not have been more clearly designed to redistribute income away from the working class toward the capitalists. Wages were frozen under the control of the wage-price board (assisted by hundreds of thousands of capitalists). Prices were allowed to rise (as no effective mechanism was provided to enforce the mythical freeze on prices).

Meanwhile, employers stepped up their attack in almost every industry. The response was a significant wave of worker re­beIlion. Nevertheless, in almost every case in order to struggle against the employers, workers had to act in defiance of - and in direct opposition to - their own officials. In March 1970, over a quarter million Post Office employees defied the law and the National Guard - as well as their own leaders - to shut down the mails in over 200 cities and win big gains. Some two months later, tens of thousands of teamsters covered by the National Master Freight Agreement conducted the first (effectively) nationwide truckers strike in history. It was no accident that this unprecedented action was strictly unofficial - and directed not only at employers but also the Teamsters bureaucracy. Over the next two years, there were numerous battles of this sort - for example, the wildcat strike in telephone in New York in 1971. But by far the most spectacular and far-reaching of these rank andfile struggles was waged by the coal miners. Over more than a decade, between 1965 and 1978, the rank and file miners un­leashed one after another wave of unofficial mass strikes against the mine bosses on the one hand and against a succession of seU-out leaderships on the other. For the present context, what is most significant about the rank and file movements among miners is that, by the end of the period, the UMW rank and file was no longer training its weapons on the gangster-type regime of corrupt Tony Boyle, but was having to assault a newly-ascendant group of self-styled reform officials, led by Arnold

. i Miller, who had risen to power in large part on the basis of their close working relationship with key elements within the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, notably ADA lawyer Joseph Rauh. Entirely devoted, like the rest of reformist officialdom, to elec­toralist and legalistic methods, this new 'Miners for Democracy' leadership would prove no more willing than its predecessors to mobilize the ranks to stand up to the vicious assaults of the mining companies upon safety conditions in the mines. Like its predecessors, the Miller-MFD leadership had to be buried

!.

6:!

beneath a new wave of entirely rank and file-led resistance, which actually succeeded in holding back the corporations in the

- • 1

miners strike of 1977-1978. 12 The· question still remams, however: were things different in the real bastions of the labor 'left,' above all the UAW and public workers unions, long associated not only with militancy and social unionism, but with social democracy.

The UAW

During the early 70s, in close conjunction with Nixon's NEP, GM introduced its famous GMAD speed-up system into its auto assembly operations. This made headlines around the :,",orld a?d helped make the question of work the center of natIOnal diS­cussion. It also provoked a new wave of working-class revolt in auto. Most notable, perhaps, was the six month fight at Lordstown, Ohio, where GM tried out its 100 car per hour assembly line. But an equally long and bitter 26 week strike to?k place in Norwood, Ohio. Toward the end of 1972, rank and fI~e pressure succeeded in forcing representatives from 5t. LOUIS Local 25 to demand a national strike of all GMAD plants. At a meeting of the UAW's GMAD council in Detroit, local presidents went so far as to ratify this plan.

The response of UAW President Leonard Woodcock and of the UAW staff could not have been more destructive. Instead of organizing the national GMAD strikes demanded by the mem­bers, they insti tuted the so-called 'Apache strategy.' This called for local strikes, announced in advance, to run in successive weeks at different GMAD plants for two or three days at a time. Given the advance warning and the shortness of the strikes, GM was easily able to adjust its operations to make sure that these were not disrupted. On the other hand, it was hard to conceive of a tactic better designed to disorganize and demoralize worker militancy. It broke their embryonic drive for unity; forced them to face the employers one at a time; and was almost calculated to prevent victory. It showed the workers precisely wl1ere their ICilders stood, and succeeded in its purpose of breaking the movement.

If the auto workers hild somehow failed to get the messilge that their liberal/socialist leadership was sympathetic to the carpor-

The Paradox of Social Democracy: The Americall Case 63

ation's problems~ t~ings were made perfectly clear ave; the next few years, as SOCIalIst Doug Fraser himself took center stage. In the sum~er of 1973, Black workers dramatically seized control of a ~etr01t Chrysler plant to protest deteriorating conditions temble overheating, and racist foremen. To everyone's surprise' they won an initial. v~ctory .. But when they (ill-advisedly) attempted the same slt-m tactIc a second time, union officials were. ready. Fra~er led. more t~an 1000 UAW staff in smashing phy~lCally the picket hne outSIde the occupied plant and dis­persmg the movement.

.The pr~cess of social unionist sellout has, of course, reached its dIDlax .wlth the recent series of concessionary contracts. These bega~ In 1978-1979, with the famous contract to save Chrysler, negotiated by Doug Fraser as part of the bailout engineered by the Carter administration. That agreement was followed in GM an~ Ford by a seri~s of give-back deals, supposedly temporary, to.tIde the compames over the serious recession of 1979-1982. But wI!h. the return. to prosperity and record profits in auto, union offiCials have faIled to reverse ,their approach. On the contrary in the co~tract negotiate~ in September 1984, the UAW gave GM the _. ~en lIght .to pursue Its far-reaching plans both to shift much of ~ts prod~c~lOn to Japan and Korea and to modernize drastically It~ rema.mmg American operations, even though these policies Will deCImate the auto labor force. Once again, the utter depen­dence o.f t~e la ~or . ~fficialdom, left and right, on 'their' corporatIons profltabllIty could not have been more definitively expressed. I)

The Public Workers Unions

The pattern in the public sector unions has paralleled that in auto. There, an explicitly 'social democratic' leadership has assu~ed command to an extent probably unequalled anywhere el~e m the labor movement. Jerry Wurf, president of AFSCME, and Victor Gotbaum, leader of New York's giant District 37, were both membe~ of DSOC, and District 37 is loaded with DSAers at the l~cal preSident and staff level. Nonetheless, these leftists consh~ute the h.ard co~e of the conservative wing of public sector unlorus~. lrollically, It was the 'apolitical' locals that were most responSible for the pressure from the ranks within AFSCME

64 during the 70s. The militant strikes waged by publ~c employee locals in response to the city and state governments verslOns of the employer offensive during the middle and late 70s ha~ to ~ak~ place independently of the 'more advanced' and more radical

leadership. . d This has been particularly tme in Ne,;, York, which ~nt~re

the 70s as the nation's stronghold of publIc emplo~ee unlOntSm. When the crisis stmck in 1975, the rank and hie responded vigorously, only to be cmshed'by their 'left' leade~s. In tha~ year, sanitation workers walked out on a nearly unanimous wildcat. The leadership, however, refused to budge, and allowed t~e strike to be smashed. In the teachers union, the membership voted an official strike, but were forced back to work after ~ne week by their officials (this time headed by conservative 'socialist' Albert Shanker). . '

In the wake of these and other defe',lts, socI~1 d~mocratJc officials were free to help tum the city over to the dlrectlOn of the banks and corporations via the Municipal Assistance Co.~or­ation (MAC). They have cooperated in t~e gutting of mUnlCl'paI

services to the working-class poor with barely a rhetoncal whimper. Tens of thousands of jobs have been surre~dered, the remaining ones Taylorized. Class size of 40 or more m the New York City schools is common. Firehouses have ~een c1ose~, while the number of fires grows. A large pro~ortlOn of ~ubhc hospital beds has been eli.minated. ~ean:vhi1e: for t~elr. co­operation in saving the Clty from finanCial m~n, un.lOnIzed workers have been compelled to accept a s~ccesslO:' of I.ncreas­ingly concessionary contracts while watchmg their UnIons be

reduced to a shell.

Winpinsinger, PArCO, and Solidarity Day

Although the images of the miners, auto, and pu~lic service union leaderships have been tarnished. by thelT .co~duct throughout the employer offe~s!ve, In!e~a!lOnal ASS~C1atlOn of Machinists (lAM) president Wilham Wmplsmger rem~ms. a.hero of the new social democratic left. A member of DSA, Wmplsm~er will at a moment's notice, call for just about any progressive refo~ measure and (between elections) will even. demand t~at labor break from the Democratic Party. He remams a favonte

The Paradox of Social Democracy: The AmeriCll11 Case 65

speaker at DSA conferences, and at the roundtable discussions of the DSA intelligentsia.

But 'Wimpy' has never tried to conceal his contempt for rank and fil~ oq~anization, past, present, and future: 'The leadership of a unIOn IS almost always an accurate reflection of the view of the membership,' he said in an interview with The Guardian newspaper not long ago. What about the Teamsters, he was asked, surely a different case? 'Perhaps not,' he replied. 'It's up to the ~en:b.ership to change the situation.' Then, concretely, does Wmplsmger support the rank and file movement in that union? No, the Teamsters for a Democratic Union (rou) repre­sents, in his words, 'outside forces.' 'They asked me to back them,' he said. 'But I asked myself, hell, what's to stop a bunch like that from coming in here and doing the same thing?' In addition, Winpisinger denounced moderate steelworkers union reformer Ed Sadlowski, and said he supported that union's noto­riously reactionary leadership. He saw no merit, he said, in Sadlowski's charge that the usw staff had been undemocratically mobilized to stop Sadlowski,. asking 'What's wrong with that? Doesn't the staff have democratic rights too?' Winpisinger added that Sadlowski had 'burned his bridges' by running for usw president on a 'screw management platform.' 'I view that as a kind of irresponsible populism,' said Winpisinger. I'

Far more significant than his words, however, have been Winpisinger's deeds. Over the recent period, Winpisinger has shown that he and the rest of the labor officaldom, both right and left, are one when it comes to cutting short any movement toward a mass militant fightback against the corporations. In the summer of 1981, Reagan fired the opening shot in his newly stepped-up war against the labor movement when he simply abolished the Professional Air Controllers Organization (PATCO)

f?r daring to go out on strike. Coincidentally, at about the same time, the AFL-CIO was planning its so-called Solidarity Day demonstrations, aimed at kicking off the traditional electoral! legislative effort against Reagan. To everyone's surprise, some three qua;ters of a million workers showed their potential power by attendIng the March on Washington, while tens of thousands of others demonstrated at the largest local labor day demon­strations in decades. PATCO had large and militant contingents at all these demonstrations.

Here was a clear opportunity for the labor leadership to bring

66

the spontaneously aroused labor movement behind PATCO and to launch a counter-offensive against the employers <Ind Reagan. Not surprisingly, however, the AFL-CIO officials, <Icross the board, failed to do anything. In particul<lr, Winpisinger refused to call on his membership to honor PATCO's picket lines, The powerful lAM airline mechanics could certainly have shut down the airports and, had Winpisinger been willing to act, called upon the rest of the labor movement to rally behind them in support of PATCO and against Reagan, What was Winpisinger's excuse for scabbing on the pilots? Exhibiting the shopkeeper mentality for which the labor officialdom has become famous, Winpisinger explained that supporting PATCO would have been illegal and would have been risky for the union, threatening its apparatus, especially because the top AFL-CIO leadership had decided not to help (as if it ever had or ever would). In the upshot, the entire labor movement was, yet another time, shunted back onto the electoral road, initiating the ill-fated cam­paign which reached its predictable and disastrous dblOuemenf in the recent Mondale fiasco.

A Two Pronged Strategy?

To the extent that the advocates of a new social democracy base themselves, as they must, on already-existing social democratic and reformist forces, particularly any wing of the trade union officialdom, they pose for themselves a classic dilemma. Histor­ically, the trade union officialdom has furnished the 'political' proponents of a social democratic politics with a ready-made working-class base. But since the turn of the twentieth century, these same officials, in the U.S. and around the world, have asserted their sale right to speak for and to control this base within the party, while setting themselves systematically against those militant rank and file upsurges which have, periodically, offered social democracy in particular and the left in general its best opportunities for transfonning working-class conscious­ness in a radical direction.15 DSA leader Michael Harrington recognized the dilemma in an interview a number of years ago. 'If you say to me, is it possible that someone who is now a member of DSOC in the union movement will be so fixed and anchored in the bureaucracy that they will be appalled by that rank and file movement and try to put it down? r guess, sure, it's

The Paradox of Social Democracy: The American Case 67 happened before and I su '. What "ViII we do then? I t!ose It w~1l happ~n in the future, file .. , but I'm Sure tha' t pe w

f e wI~1 go with the rank and

some ° us might f 'I th no way you can anticipate,' al e test, TIlere's Less willing than Harrin ton t d

intentions _ and perhap g 0 epend solely upon good , s more concerned th h b

Union bureaucratic interest with' , I d an e ~ out a trade Some of the current advocates o/n SOCIa e.mocratIc parties -proposed a more nuanced tw a new social democracy have blem: ally with the 'progre~Siv~' p~~n?~d ,approach to the pro­suggest, but, at the sarne ' 0 ICIa 5 ~nslde the party, they pendently and from below . tIme, organIze the ranks, inde­context. This tactic mi ht b In the workplace ,and the industrial already existed a stron~ i de wO~hy of consideration, if there which was in a position ntoepetn en~ rank and file movement

I·, I ae on ItS Own a d t 'fl po Ihca organizations But t d h n 0 In uence question, therefore, is ~heth~r 'Z t~O suc movement exists, The key problem is precisel to b ' e present moment, when the existence, it will be oss~le ' nng such a movement into trade union 'lefts' inP buiJdin ~Hmu!taneously to work with the these same 'lefts' while b 'Ii soc~al democracy and to attack ~an anyone seriously cont~~dl~;a: t e rank and file movement. mgers and their ilk will at th" he Frasers, ~urfs, Winpis­political project When the ~s Jun~ure, ally wIth people on a simultaneously opposing ttern ,o~~ .at these ~ame people are question is to answer it This In I . eirown UnIons'? To ask this social democratic move~ent i:xP ams why e~en the embryonic the slightest way the h the U .. S. has failed to challenge in their OWn special sphe;:ge;on~ of ~ts trad~ ~nion officials in record of bureaucratic dis~ esplte t ese ,offICials' already long file initiative and militan oura~ment of In~ependent rank and already, in other words CYt' 'f' de nhew socIal democrats have

, ra 1 Ie t e 'two I' separated jurisdiction wh' h h po e structure of parties from the be' . IC as marked social democratic

. ginnIng and hel d 'h'l their self-destructive dyn " pe mIg tJ y to perpetuate arnlc.

VI The Electoral Struggl M Jackson Campaign e as ovement Building? The Jesse

In the wake of the pred it d' throughout the late 70s ana e~u~ 8

eOcJIneh of t~e. movements

r y 5, t e offlClal reformist

68

leaderships - the trade union bureaucracy, the established Black leadership, the liberal wing of the Democratic Party­have focused ever more narrowly on the electoral road. In this. situation, those who would revive social democracy have had little choice but to make a virtue of necessity. They have them­selves focused more and more on electoral campaigns and have justified this taCtic either by claiming to use these campaigns to organize mass struggles, or simply by construing the campaigns themselves as mass movements. In the absence of already ex­isting mass movements, such perspectives are delusionary. It is, of course, on occasion quite possible to translate the power accumulated through mass struggle into electoral victories and reform legislation; but the reverse is rarely if ever conceivable. Those who contemplate such a strategy can do so only because they mistake the meaning of the electoral struggle to both the Democratic Party leadership and its rank and file, and because they fail to take into account what is required to wage electoral cam paigns successfully.

Winning Elections and Organizing Mass Movements

In part, as I've emphasized already, using the electoral struggle for mass organizing is problematic because the official reformist forces who provide much of the impetus behind Democratic Party campaigns conceive the electoral road ex­plicitly as a substitute for mass organizing. To use Democratic Party electoral campaigns for movement building would have to be done, so to speak, over their dead bodies. Nor are the bureau­cratic leaderships the only force inside the Democratic Party that opposes the use of electoral struggle for mass organizing or left politicking. In the continuing absence of major mass struggles, the Democratic Party rank and file and prospective recruits are no more likely than is the leadership to support such efforts. The most obvious, yet most important, fact about the reform-minded people who choose to work inside the Democratic Party or who are attracted to the campaigns of 'progressive' Democratic Party candidates is that they believe the electoral process provides an effective vehicle for winning reforms. If they felt, as do a number of those leftists behind the new social democratic movement, that the electoral road, in itself, cannot generate the power required to win reforms, they would not expend the tremendous

Thc Pamdox of Social OClllocracy: The Americall Case 69

amount of energy required to do electoral work. On the other hand, bec?use they are serious about the electoral road, they want to .Wln, ar:d because they want to win, they will have no truck .",,":Ith leftIst plans to use electoral campaigns for mass org.amzlng c:r left propaganda. This is especially because they belIeve, qUIte correctly, that such plans would be counter­productive for their own aim of winning the election.

. There is a strict l~gic to, w!nning elections which is quite dIfferent fr~~ the log~c of wmnmg strikes or organizing success­ful mass mIlItant a~tlOns of any sort. In strikes and analogous forms of protest whIch have the object of winning concrete gains from th~ owners or the government, it is not only the numbers of people Invo~ved .~hich is critic?!, but what they do. Especially as the economIC cnsls deepens, 10 order to win, people have to con~truct a new ~nd enormous power, for they have to extract the deSIred conceSSIOns, since these will be granted by the em­ployers or the state only under great pressure. If they are to win, then, they ~ave to develop the most powerful solidarity; they must take nsks; .they hav~ to, make sacrifices; they must be prepared to take Illegal actIOns and use force; and, in the end, the? need to develop the ideas that explain and justify these actions to the~se!ves and others. All this is necessary to win, because what IS Involved is a direct test of power with the ~mployers and/or the st~te. vyitho~t such direct tests of strength I~ttle can be won, espeCIally In penods of economic contraction hk~ the present. For this reason, leftists have much to offer in strike~ and an~logous struggles - above all an understanding of wh.at IS reqUIred, both organizationally and theoretically, to buIld a successful mass movement, and a willingness to act upon this knowledge. ~inning an election is entirely different: it demands two basic

thm.gs: 1) app~aling somehow to 50% plus one of the voters; 2) gettIng potentI~1 suppor:ers to the polls. Nothing else matters. Money a~d ?odIes, and lIttle else, are required. It follows that the way to WIn IS to adapt one's program to the existing conscious­ness of. the electorate. The right has to move left; the left has to move nght. The battle is for the votes in the middle. 16 This is not to de~y that mas~ strug?les and the transformations of political conSCIOusness ~Ith WhICh they are associated would in theory be of ~elp to a IIberal.or left candidate. It is simply to point out that, In the short penod of an electoral campaign it is almost never in practice feasible even to try to call such a m~vement into

7U

existence. It can rarely be done, and it would be absu.rd to predicate a campaign on succeeding in ~oing it. To. '':In an election, one must essentially accept conSClOusness as It IS and try to adapt. ..

Naturally, there are limits beyond whIch candidates cannot go without turning off their core supporters; but these supporters are often quite flexible. In the first place, ~~ere else can. they go? They are not going to support the oppOSItIon .(to the nght), for this would be self-defeating. At the same tIme, and eq~ally important in this context, the support~rs of the refo~ candIdate almost always freely accept the necessIty of moderattng the ca~­didate's image and program, for they, t~o, unde~tand that thIS is required to win. Winning, moreover, IS ev~rythtng, for u:,less the candidate takes office, absolutely nothtng can be gatned. There is, for the overwhelming majority of leaders and followers in the campaign of progressive Demo~rats, no other p~yoff.

Because of this logic, the refonn-mtnde~ rank and fIle Demo­crats can have little or no sympathy for radIcals who want to use the campaign 'not only' to win, but to build organi~ation and change consciousness. First, they understand that If the ca~­didate were associated with radical ideas (as he/she wou~d be ~f his/her followers were spouting left ideas in the campaIgn), It would be much more difficult to get the moderate vote. They understand too, that the same is true, only more so, for any sort of mass org~nizing of militant direct action, for this is gua:an­teed to frighten moderate potential voters. It was ~n the baSIS ?f this sort of reasoning that some of the new SOCIal democratIc forces 'understood' Mondale's move to the right in the recent presidential campaign. Given the righward political shift within the electorate, they ask, what else could he have done? Of course, it is precisely because the electoralist perspective must accept the state of mass movements and mass politic~1 conscio,!sness .as given that it is, in the end, like other reformIst strategIes, futIle and self-defeating.

From Black Movement to Black Middle Class 17

The supporters of Jesse J?ckson'~ re~ent campaign for the Democratic Party's presidentIal nomtnatIon. conte.nded, not sur­prisingly, that his campaign was somethtng different: So~e argued that it was the defacto extension and logical culmtnatIon

The Pllradox of 50cilll Oemocracy: The Ameri(lIll Cilse 71

of the Black movement of the 60s. Others asserted that whatever !ac~son himself intended, his electoral campaign had the ob­JectIve effect of building a 'Rainbow Coalition,' which represented not merely the revival of the civil rights movement but the unification of the popular movements of the working class, women, gays, and Latinos, as well as Blacks. Still others, like Manning Marable, espoused both these positions and went on to assert that the Jackson movement actually represented an already crystallized 'Black social democracy' and the vanguard of the left.

Nevertheless on the eve of jackson's campaign and after it, the Black movement was and is at its lowest ebb by far in several decades, with very few struggles of any scope occurring in the ~Iack commu~ity - neither strikes, nor rent struggles, nor fIghts for servIces, nor other campaigns of that sort. It is the demise of the Black movement which, more than any other factor, has determined the character of Black politics in the recent period. During the 60s, the growing Black movement relied on ~i~itant mass direct action, ndt the ballot box, to extract sig­nIficant reforms 'from the outside.' In the process, radical Black organizatio.ns like ~NCC, CO.RE, and the Black Panther Party succeeded In loosenIng, partIally and temporarily, the political ~tra~glehold over the Black community long exercised byorgan­IZatIOns more or less explicitly representing the Black middle class - the NAACP, the Urban League, and the like. These trad­itional organizations argued, even in the 60s, for toning down direct action and putting primary emphasis on legislative/ electoral.and I~~byi~g tactics. But at least through the 60s, they saw theIr politIcal Influence waning within the Black com­munity.

However, with the political repression of the late 60s and the economic crisis which followed, militant Black organizations found their options radically reduced and entered into a period of profound decline. Even at its height, the Black movement had not, for obvious reasons, been able to amass a power or con­solidate a position at all comparable to that of the workers move­ment of the 30s; nor could it, correspondingly, maintain as much 0'£ its influence .as it began to run out of steam. This was espe­Clally the case, SInce the decay of the Black movement occurred at a time of deepening economic contraction and accelerating em­ployers offensive, while the decay of the labor movement took place during - and was obscured by - the spectacular postwar

, : ,

72

boom. The fact that economic crisis and decline affected dispro-, portionately precisely those heavy industries (~uto, st~el, etc.) where Black workers had made their greatest mroads mto the workforce - and where Blacks had played prominent roles the short-lived militancy of the early 70s - naturally m things even worse, increasing Black wo~ke~s' econom!c security and reducing the already rather hmlted po~entlal linking Black aspirations to the struggles of the orgamzed movement. As it was, the skyrocketing Black unemployment­running at rates double the nati?nal averag~ ~nd at 50% am~ng Black youth - was a furthercrihcal demorallzmg ~actor, makmg it that much more difficult for the Black communIty to launch a fight back: .

As the Black movement disintegrated, the Black middle class was able, bit by bit, to reconsolidate its domination over Black politics. Black professionals, small businessmen, govern servants, and politicos turned out to have bee~ the ~lack m.o~e­ment's main material beneficiaries, as well as Its major pohttcal inheritors - even though they had not been its primary instig­ators. They staffed the new poverty programs. They gained most from the expansion of supervisory positions in state and loe.a! government. They and their children assumed the lion's s~are Of the places opened up by affirmative action programs 10 the universities and the professions. They, too, were hurt by the diminished strength of the militant Black movement, as w~ll as by the deepening economic crisis of the 70s. But the Black middle class was also able to adjust and make .the most of the new situation, while the income gap between them and the Black working class and poor grew sharply thr~ughout .the 70s. A~ve all the Black middle class was able to reimpose Its old polItical , line.

The Black middle class's increasing domination of Black politics was manifested in the fact that, as the Black community turned away from militant mass action tactics, they adop!ed whole hog the Black middle class's pref~rred strategy:. gethng Black progressives elected to office. The t}1rn to electorahsm was dramatically symbolized by the retreat of the Black Panthe~, , riddled by police repression and politica,lIy isolated, fro.m their former militant tactics to a purely elector~1 focus. When 10 1972-1973, Bobby Seale and Elaine Brown, symbols of Black ~ower, ran for mayor and city council in Oakland, they were settmg the trend for what remained of the entire Bla~k movement. Nor was '

The Paradox of Social Democracy: The AmeriClIll elise 73

. , the political perspective of the Black middle class exhausted by I electoralism pure and simple; it also involved establishing ties , between the established Black organizations and large corpor-: ations in order to obtain corporate assistance for t!i.e economic : development of the Black community. It was expected that local ; Black businessmen and professionals could playa profitable, if : subordinate, role in this development. Black organizations sometimes took their own lead in establishing such alliances -

'las with the NAACP's agreement with Exxon or with the agree­, ments made by Jesse Jackson's PUSH with Coca-Cola and other companies. But naturally, these alliances could best be consoli­'dated when Blacks held leading urban offices; electoralism and the alliance with big capital generally went hand in hand.

The Black electoral effort has totally dominated Black politics in the 70s and early 80s. 18 Black mayors now govern four of the six lMgest cities in the nation - Chicago, Los Angeles, Phila­delphia, and Detroit - and a total of twenty cities with pop­iulations over 100,000. In 1973, there were only 48 Black mayors .aaoss the country; today there are 229. The new Black mayors have nearly universally pursued 'the same strategy: a growing alliance with the corporations. Black mayors see to it that the local governments grant tax cuts, raise (regressive) sales taxes, and grant subsidies to corporations (including tax breaks, cheap loans, etc.) in order to create the conditions for corporations to invest. Black mayors like Maynard Jackson, Coleman Young, and Kenneth Gibson have, for at least a decade, been making

i corporate investment the keystone of their urban ~evelopment . strategies. Recently-elected Andrew Young also dId not waste . much timein emphasizing the need to seek private capital for his 1 city's economy, and quickly pushed through a 1% sales tax . increase as a token of his intentions. More left-talking politicos,

like Richard Hatcher of Gary, have pursued essentially the same policies with a different rhetoric throughout the 70s. 1?~ hope, of course, is that if businesses are encouraged, they wdl mvest, and the benefits will 'trickle down' to the Black community.

, Unfortunately, there is no lack of statistical data demonstrating that no Black mayor has succeeded in slowing down even

; I slightly the downward curve of economic development for Black workers and the poor throughout the 70s and early 80s. Still, the

i Black middle class does benefit from this approach. The pro­: fessionals get supervisory and managerial jobs, and small

businessmen get subcontracts from the giant corporations.

74 The more candid and sober of the Black Democratic polit'

do not make great claims for their strategy. They poi~t out they are highly constrained in what they can accomplIsh by cutoff of federal funds and the erosion of the urban tax base to capital flight and the economic crisis. Sur~ly they have a For without the sort of mass struggles which can compel cessions from the government and corporations at both national and local levels, the cities will be hostage to the porations and their requirements for profits. Meanwhile, Black mayors can adopt the words, though not the actions, of 60s Black movements. Above all, they depict their legalist voter registration drives and ~he push to el.e~t Democrats like themselves as the extensIOn of the old CIvil movements - neglecting to mention the mass mobilizat illegality, and confrontational tactics which gave those ments their power (as well as the fact that those.were st.nlggles rights, not electoral contests). As Joseph Madls?n, dIrector voter registration for the NAACP put It at the time of the meeting of the 'Black Leadership Family,' attended by over professionals, politicians, and government officials: 'The tancy of the old days is passe. We've got to develop fa,..hni;~ militants out of those middle-class affluent Blacks who received training, acquired good education, worked them into the mainstream of economic life."9

Jesse Jackson's campaign for the Democratic presid nomination represented the culmination of the e strategy which the Black middle class has been implementing more than a decade. Many of Jackson's leading supporters advisors, such as Richard Hatcher of Gary and Washington of Chicago, are reform-minded, left-talking B mayors. Indeed, Washington's dramatic campaign for ~ayor Chicago in 1983 was the immediate predecessor, and In

ways the model, for Jackson's own effort.

Washington's Campaign

As they would with Jackson's effort, man~ leftists insisted calling Washington's campaign a mass SOCIal movement: rallies were huge, the enthusiasm boundless, the rhetonc spiring. But the fact remains that Washington's election paign was simply that. It did not come out of, nor was

The Pilradox of SOCW/ DeIl/OUIlC!I: TilL' Amcrlca/l Case 75

accompanied by, significant oppositional struggles of any sort in the Black community. There were no demonstrations (or de­lnands) by Chicago Housing Authority tenants for improvement • their conditions; there were no strikes by workers demanding

wages, better conditions or benefits, or that plants not be down. Material conditions in the Chicago Black community deteriorated rapidly in recent years, but the level of Black

taney and political organization has declined with equal . In no sense did Washington ride to power on the crest of

already existing movement of Blacks organizing themselves employers or the government. Nor did the Washington

.... rn~.,.;n·n - which, like other electoral campaigns, remained concerned with electing the candidate - seek to bring

$uch a movement into existence. On the contrary, as one ob­server put it: 'Everything stayed well within the bounds of

politics - though a remarkably boisterous and brand of traditional politics. Everyone's hopes were in Washington - no one had any hopes or expectations in ves. '20

What has happened since 'the election? Despite dealing a blow to the old machine and bringing many Blacks and

into important official positions, the Washington ad­...... n.cc>T~ on has functioned much like other liberal regimes in

crisis. Immediately upon assuming office, Washington ex­ty called for 'austerity' and pushed through a reduction in

city's. workforce. He did support a bill for collective bargain­for CIty workers, but only after seeking to pass legislation

would have taken away the unions' right to strike. Shortly ;!:tlI~ell'\?al ,Washington forced the Amalgamated Transit Union

accept a plan to defer the payment of 26 million dollars into fund, threatening that if they refused, 1500 layoffs

follow. Perhaps most important, Washington failed to any support to the majority-Black teachers union in its

".,· ..... n~ unsuccessful, three week strike in October 1984. In fact, 's labor attorney, Richard Laner, helped the school

engineer the final settlement and defeat the union. Wash­'i1IJln21ton failed even to protest when U.S. Steel closed its southside

plant (which only a few years ago employed some workers), despite massive concessions from the

ted Steel Workers Union. Meanwhile, like Black mayors all the country, Washington went about creating an economic

idevelopment task force whose membership reads like a who's

76

who of Chicago business - with top representatives. trom all the leading banks, manufacturing finns, and constructIOn com­panies. Washington has admittedly been badly. hurt by.the ob­structive tactics of what remains of the old whIte mach me. On the other hand, he has not lifted a finger to aid himself, the Black community, or working people in general by .helpin~ ~hem to organize themselves to fight to improve theIr condItions. ,A traditional liberal politician, Washington led no mass social movement in his campaign; has, in office, been bound by no social movement; and has done nothing to bring one into existence.

Jackson's Campaign

That Jesse Jackson was, intentionally and explicitly, carrying out the electoral strategy of the Black middle class and Black politicians to enhance their ~nfluenc: wi.thin the Democratic Party in particular and Amencan SOCIety 10 geoneral wa~ made clear again and again throughout the campaIgn by hIS sup­porters and opponents alike. Jacks?n's overriding goal was to g~ millions of unregistered Blacks SIgned up for the Democratic Party. With this newly-created electoral base, Jackson hoped ~ use the primaries to amass the power to leverage the Democratic, Party: Jackson and the Black politicians :-",ould deliver a mu?, increased Black vote to the Democrats, If the latter would, m return, grant the Black politicos a greater role w.ithin the ~arty and, more generally, make certain prog.rammatlc concessIOns., This is precisely the same strategy or~amze~ la.b?r ~as followed for the past forty years, with progreSSIvely dlmlmshmg returns.

As should have been obvious to those who hoped the Jackson campaign would constitute an ongoing ma~s mo~e~ent social reform, Jackson's strategy did not reqUIre bulldl~g ~ass, struggles or even constructing much of an electoral orgamzatIon. The be-all and end-all was to get Blacks registered and voting in the primaries for Jackson. No ~ne shou!d ~ave been surprise~" therefore, to find that Jackson s orgamzatlOn, to the extent It existed, was entirely top down. It was headed by elite figu~, long influential in business and Black politics, who saw thelt goal as accomplishing certain clear-cut electoral tasks. There was no need to get feedback and input, let along to encourage the mass self-activity required for actual social struggles. Jackson

The Paradox of Social Democracy: Tile Amerlcall Case 77

did, of course, hold massive demonstrations and marches, and . made hundreds of speeches in local community churches. He is a

magnetic personality, and generated an enonnous amount of .' enthusiasm. But despite the rhetorical verve, he did practically : nothing to strengthen the existing grassroots organizations in

the community, but, on the contrary, subordinated the already constituted organizations and their resources to the electoral effort.

Nor could those former leftists who flooded into the local Rainbow Coalitions, as they had into the Washington campaign, Significantly reverse the direction. It is doubtful, in most cases, that they even tried. It was not that the official politicos exerted a stranglehold on the campaign organization and tactics­although this was a problem in some places, like Los Angeles. 21 It was, rather, that most of those from the Black community who came to build the campaign naturally did so with a single purpose in mind - to get out the vote and win the primaries. It is hardly surprising that, only a few months following the elec­tions, most local Rainbow ,Coalitions have been reduced to hollow shells, manned by leftists and liberals. No more the launching boards for new social struggles than they were before the campaign, most are looking to survive by finding new elec­toral efforts in which to immerse themselves.

Jackson '5 Impact

Precisely because he did not build a movement with the capacity to exercise power outside the Democratic Party and outside the polling booth, Jackson failed badly even in his own terms. When the Democratic Party, in an arrogant display of racist realpolitik, refused to grant a single one of Jackson's key programmatic planks, he was nonetheless forced, ignomini­ously, to caB for unity at the national convention and to back Mondale. Some leftists saw this as a sellout, but Jackson had, in effect, no choice, since he had no basis for breaking from the Party and going off on his own. First of all, Jackson himself never had any intention of splitting and had not prepared his followers to do so. But, equally important, Jackson's campaign had emerged in the wake of the decline of mass struggles in the Black community and had itself done nothing to bring about the emer­.gence of a movement in any way independent of jackson's elec-

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78

toral effort, or indeed, of Jackson the personality. This was why Jackson's more radical and impatient supporters wer.e obliged to sit quietly by as Jackson capitulated at the conventIOn. In pos­session of no mass base themselves, they had no means to pressure the candidate. In the absence of already existing mass movements, a critical source of Jackson's attractiveness, not only to his backers among the politicians and the bourgeoisie, but to the Black community as whole, was his apparent ability to offer a i realistic strategy for refonn. Consciously or ~nconsciously, the, majority of jackson's supporters saw In hIS pl?n to use. the primaries to leverage the Democratic Party a credIble subsh for the self-organization which seemed, at that moment, off the'

agenda. Had Jackson sought at any point to build an electoral mov:-

ment which claimed independence from the DemocratIC' Party - and which had as its object a long tenn process of rebuilding the left - he would surely h,lVe lost the support of the Black middle class and, arguably, also the Black masses. As most Americans are aware, splinter parties have no hope of winning practical gains, given the winner-take-all electoral system, unless they are extremely l~r?e - la.rger, that is, than any which have appeared on the pohtI~al hO~lzon for more than half a century. The premise for a pracl1cal thIrd party ~am would have to be the radical and massive transfonnatlOn of national politic<ll consciousness. 111is would de~~end, in tum, enormOllS historical ch<lnges, not the least of whIch would be rise of mass struggles of a magnitude not seen since the I upsurge of the 30s. In the absenc~ of such a t.ransfonnation, third party efforts will, of necessl ty, be confined ~o pn)pilgam<L~!1 objectives - which is not to say they would be wlth~ut value. •

Because the whole premiss of the Jackson campaIgn was claim to being practical, Jackson and his allies could not refuse mobilize against Reagan after the convention,. despite the crats' continuing failure to grant them the shghtest conces For, as the Democratic Party regulars realized, the Black ship and the Black masses wanted to defeat Reagan ~ore did any other group in American society. To refuse thIS effort order to punish the Democratic Party would have been to cut their nose to spite their face. This, of course, h.as be~n characteristic quandary of the officiallab~r leadershIp ,:,hlch for decades supinely backed DemocratIc Party candIdates no

The Paradox of Social Democracy: Tile American Case 79

matter how anti-labor. It follows strictly from the logic of the electoralist strategy.

A Black Social Democracy within the Democratic Party?

Despite the long tenn decay of the Black movements, Manning Marable, a prominent writer and national officer of DSA, has, in several recent essays, argued that the Black officials and the thrust they represent actually constitute an 'American version of social democracy' within the Democratic Party and society at I~e. W~at Marable means by this assertion is that Black poli­ticans, VIrtually across the board, advocate social programs and give voice to ideas which are today far to the left of those in the white political mainstream. 22 This is undoubtedly true, as far as it goes. There is no question that the political sentiments of the Black community as a whole are far to the left of those common in the rest of American society. Indeed, one reason Jesse Jackson could adopt his radical-sounding program was that his electoral strategy required focusing, almost exclusively, on the Black com­munity and did not necessitate a broad appeal to the far more

1 conservative white electorate. But to imply, as Marable does, that the Black electoral move­

ment led by the Black middle class constitutes a powerful force for refonn. is ~i.ghly misl.eading. Even had the Democratic Party

1 adopted. slgn.Jflcant sectIons of jackson's radical program at the . conventIon, It would not have made a stitch of difference: the

party has adopted countless, quite radical, platfonns in the past, but unless mass movements acted effectively to 'keep the Party honest,' these platforms have remained only on paper. Indeed, throu~hout the 70s, Democratic Party majorities with on-paper comnutrnents to reform retained control of Congress to no des­cemable effect. To bring this point home, one has only to refer to

. the obvious fact that what Manning Marable sees as Black social I . democracy - the Black politicos with their left programs and I I mass electoral 'movements' - has been in power in numerous 1 places for at least a decade, but has done little either to challenge

the powers that be or help the Black masses. Witness all the cities with Black mayors, including left-talking ones like Richard Hatcher and Harold Washington. Of course, social democratic parties also have been in power in quite a few nations around the world during the late 70s and early 80s, but have delivered only

.1.

SO

cuts in services and rising unemployment to their working classes. By conflating electoral ism and program mongering with movement building, Marable perpetuates the myth that winning office is winning power, and that there is a shortcut to the long, hard, and daunting task of rebuilding the movements.

Tile Paradox of Social Democracy: Tire AII/crica/l Case 81

for finance over manufacturing. This trend has reached a climax over the past several years, with large sections of what was the industrial core of the U.S. economy entering into serious crisis - steel, auto, textiles, consumer electronics, machine tools, etc.

These trends, in the context of the international crisis, have forced the official reformist forces drastically to reappraise the

VIII From Fair Share to Austerity: The Failure of Corporatism Keynesian approach to political economy which was their re-and the Opening to the Right ceived religion throughout the postwar boom. By the end of the

Carter administration, deficit spending was perceived not only Throughout the 70s and early 80s, the official forces of as inflationary but as less capable of increasing employment.

reformism have become progressively more reluctant to combat ~qually salient, government programs which appeared to redis-capital. They are aware that the slowdown of the economy is, in 'I tribute income away from capital came to appear increasingly the last analysis, a crisis of profitability and that this has con- ' counter-productive. Even the 'left' leaderships of trade unions, sequences for their own strategic perspectives. Between 1965 Black organizations, and the liberal wing of the Democratic Party and 1973, the rate of return on inveshnent dropped from 16% to have come to believe that forcing capital to give higher wages, 9%, and it has declined even further since. l

) TIle crisis of pro- better conditions, or more government services is likely to make fitability is, in the first instance, an expression .o~ the 10.ng tenn things worse, harming competitiveness and generating reluc-crisis of the international economy - a cnSIS whIch has, tance to invest. Wedded to an. ideology of 'fair share' within engulfed all of the capitalist nations. But it is also the case that the capitalism, the forces or reformism, both right and left, have international crisis has been accompanied by a long term rela been accepting austerity as the economy declines, just as they decline in the growth of the productive forces and the demanded a bigger piece of the pie in the period of growth. lation of capital in the American sector, and this has had The long term political consequences of this change in per-implications for working-class politics. It is sufficient to spective are ominous. Unwilling to launch an attack on capital, that over the long period between 1950 and 1976, the rate the official forces of reform have moved rapidly toward devising growth in productivity in U.s. industry averaged 2.8% while strategies to help 'their own' capitalists protect their profits in comparative figures were 5.4% for Germany, 5.0% for , order to safeguard their own and their memberships' position. and 8.3% for Japan. Similarly, over this same period, the They have sought to enter into tripartite partnerships with devoted on average 17.8% of GDP to investment in new plant business and government to launch vast cooperative efforts to equipment, while the comparative figures were 24.3% protect and revamp the American economy from to top to Germany, 23.2% for France, and 33% for Japan. 24 Over the bottom. Pursuant to this strategy, the labor leadership has, with period, the numbers have, if anything, become even more un- . I mf' crea.singBunanidmity, embraced protectionism for U.S. manu-favorable for the U.S. actunng. eyon this, in tandem with certain minority repre-

As the official forces of reformism are aware, these sentatives of ,capital - notably the investment banker Felix represent a huge decline in the competitiveness of the U.s. , Rohatyn - they have been the arch-apostles of what has come and, specifically, its declining attractiveness as a place for to be known as 'industrial policy,' a hodgepodge of programs to investment. The declining relative efficiency of the U.S. p . i encourage planning of and investment in new industry. At the tive system has meant that relative costs of production, <>cr.....a,_' level of the corporation, they have placed top labor leaders on cially in manufacturing, have continued to increase. The boards of directors of corporations, while beginning more and as most are now aware, is accelerating disinvestment, a more to accept corporate proposals for profit sharing. Finally, on flight of capital especially in the fonn of loans, and a the shopfloor, they have become backers of so-called Quality of

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82

Worklife (QWL) programs, aimed at increasing worker partici-pation to improve productivity. . ...

Meanwhile, the decreasing numbers of lIberal polItI~lans who have continued, as the crisis deepens, to demand Improv~ social programs from the governmept have failed, systemat~­cally, to show how the capitalists c~n be made to bear theIr naturally high costs. In so doing, they ~ave opened the way to discrediting in advance any new offensIve for refo~s. Over the past twenty years, no section of the. reform estabhs~mer:'t has lifted a finger to oppose the dramatic long term ~echne In the level of corporate taxation. B On the other har:'d, sInc.e t~e early 70s, the working clasS'has had to accept a massI~e dechne 1~ therr disposable income: workers now g.et approxImately 20 Yo.le~s spending money per hour (wages minUS taxes) than they. dId ~ 1972-1973, and approximately the same amount they receIved In

1961. 26 The great majority of workers have c~me to ass';lme t~at they themselves will have to pay for any Increases In SO~Ial services won in Congress. As a consequence, many workmg people have given up attempting to defend themsel,:,es thr~~gh the struggle for reforms and sought to ameliorate. th~I~ condItion by trying to reduce taxes. ~ro~ositi.ons 13 in CalIfornIa and 2112 in Massachusetts were typIcal In thIS respect.

The reformist officials' increasingly desperate tum to cor­poratist solutions throughout the 70s and early 80s is. under­standable in view of their absolute refusal to confront capItal, but has nonetheless proven entirely self-destructi~e .. By emphasiz­ing both the impossibility of successfully re.slstIng. employers and the self-defeating character of any effective reSIstance, the official forces of reform have merely confirmed the workers' own conclusions, derived from a decade-long experien~e. of both defeat at the hands of the employers and of the declImng com­petitiveness of U.S. manufacturing. By .rec?mme.nding: on that basis, policies which bring wo~kers. objectIvely Into alIgnment with capital and in de facto conflIct WIth other groups of worke~, they have demonstrated the increasing irrelev.ance of strategl~ based on collective organization by the working class: an?, m tum the decreasing utility bf their own orgamzatIons. Ironically, to the extent that. th~ trade union officials have transfonned their own organIzatIons from weapons of class struggle into instruments of collaboration in production, .th:r have been to that degree less able to assert their own place wlthm those corporatist arrangements through which they had hoped,

The Paradox of Social OClllocracV: The Alllericall Case 83 . .

alongside the employers, to manage the crisis. Under no pressure to accept the trade unions as partners, the employers have seen no reason not to tum around and destroy them _ and that is what they have done, with growing success, since Reagan ascended to the Presidency.

Finally, as class-based strategies for self-defense have become less practicable and as class collaborationist alternatives have appeared more inevitable, workers naturally have embraced the ideological conceptions which can make some sense of what they're actually doing. 27 To the extent that workers have sup­ported protection, they have allied with their own capitalists against workers around the world. To the extent, moreover, that they have participated - at the level of the state, the corpor­ations, or the shopfloor - in cooperative arrangements to improve productivity, they are actually helping their own employers defeat workers in other places. To the extent that workers have turned to tax cuts, they are unavoidably joining the

I attack on the living standards of those who are dependent upon welfare and other social 'services, above all Blacks and women. To the extent that workers are defending their own positions _ in a 'colorblind' and 'sexblind' manner - through defending the seniOrity list against affirmative action, they are attacking Blacks and women in still another way. Many working people who attempt to defend their positions with these methods do not intend to profit their employers or to gain at the expense of other workers. But this is in fact what they are doing. Their actions are, in effect, chauvinist, racist, and sexist. Inevitably, therefore, they are opened up to the reactionary worldviews which will rationalize their conduct.

Ultimately, as workers cease to find any practical basis for the collective defense of their own lives, they cannot help but perceive the world as a dog-eat-dog competitive struggle, and, as a result, come to consider more attractive those pro-family and fundamentalist religious ideologies which make this perception their point of departure. Whatever oppression the patriarchal family brings, it can, with some conviction, still offer some of the only non-commodity, non-commercially competitive relation­ships which still remain intact - i.e., between husband and wife and between parents and children. It can, therefore, with some legitimacy, offer the reality of a (non-capitalist) 'haven in a heartless (competitive) world.' It need hardly be added that to the degree such a view of the world - as inevitably composed of

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84

families in cutthroat competion - carries conviction, that promise of community held out by the fundamentalist christian I

sects will prove ever more appealing.

Frolll Mitteralld to Le Pellto ...

The progression from reformism to corporate capitalist re­structuring to the rise of the right is, unfortunately, no mere prediction. Throughout the later 70s and early 80s, it has been, and is being, played out in a variety of forms in the capitalist west, above all in some of those regions which have experienced the most thoroughgoing social democracy during the first stage of the global economic crisis. In June 1981, the Socialist Party of Fran\,ois Mitterand came to power in France in a smashing elec­toral landslide that gave it a massive parliamentary majority and uncontested control of the executive for seven years. The Social­ists were committed at the start to a somewhat radical version of the traditional social democratic program: Keynesian reflation, mild increases for social welfare, and ambitious plans for economic modernization through state intervention and nationalization. Within months of their accession to power, the Socialists' attempt to implement their program had led to run­away inflation, massive capital flight, precipitously rising imports, the coIIapse of the balance of payments, and stagnating investment and growth. As a result, in less than a year, the Socialists had junked their reform program, devalued the franc twice, and embarked upon a vicious program of austerity, marked by severe fiscal restraint and huge cuts in government services. France's workers are today experiencing the highest levels of unemployment since the Great Depression, made worse by the decay of government welfare programs. Meanwhile, to counteract the disastrous effects of its own policies on its worker constituencies, the government has sought shamelessly to shift as much as possible of the burden of the crisis onto immigrant guest workers, while attempting to di~tract the population with Cold War polemics and imperialist adventures. .

With their own political parties and trade unions implicated in what has been, in effect, an allout experiment in capitalist modernization, French workers have been compeIIed, not sur­prisingly, to rethink their political perspectives. With their

1 fie Paradox of Social Democracy: '{he Amerlcall Case 85

traditional par.ties and trade unions making a mockery of class­based, collectIve strategies. of. se~f-defense, it is hardly un­exp.e~ted that they are ~um~ng 111 1I1creasing numbers to those ~litJcal forces who Will gl:,e ~oherent ideological rationaliz· ations for the class collabor~tlOmst and individualistic strategies they h~ve b~en forced to lIve by. Is it really surprising that Le Pen, With hl~ barely concealed fascism, has emerged from the rubble of. M.ltterand's experiment in capitalist transformation un~erSoClahsm? Do today's American exponents of a revitalized socl.al democracy from within social democracy believe they can achieve bette.r result~ than did the French Socialists through the agency of Mltteran? s feeble American counterparts and their even feebler refonmst perspectives?

Notes

-I want to tha~k the editorial board of Agnillst tile Current for h~lpful suggestIOns and cri ticisms of earlier drafts of this paper I 'WIsh to dedicate this essay 'to the memOlY of Steve Zeluck (1922 1985). -

U 1. Stan Weir, Doug Fraser's Middle Class Coalition' Radical America

anuary-February 1979) , 2. See 'The Paradox of Refonn: Black Politics and the Democratic Pa '

Southern Exposure, 12 (February 1984), pp. 23-24' 'The Left in the 80 . CI rty, (March-April 1984). ' s, ranges

3. The Mass Strike (1906). 4. On the mass strike upsurge of the 30s and the response of the ern 10 ers

and the government, see Art Preis, Labor's Giant Step (1972) and Irving B Pt· Tht Turbulent Years (1969). ems em,

5: <?n Roosevelt's new activism, in response to the mass movements and ~::lcN~~;~l.on of 1934, see W.E.Leuchtenberg, Fralrklin D. Roosevelt and the New

Ih 6.) On the trade union officials' passivity under the employers' offensive of

The raterb19/20s and beyond, see Irving Bernstein, Tlte Learr Yenrs (1961) as well as t IIr 11 elll Years. ' 7. , S. Lynd, "Ine Possibility of Radicalism in the Early 1930s: The Case of

Steel, Rad/cal Anrmen (November 1972); Roger Keeran, 'Communists and the APhutDo Wd.orkers .. The Struggle for a Union, 1919-1949' (University of Wisconsin

. . IssertatlOn, 1974), chapter IV.

C.S. SKeeran, 'Communists and the Auto Workers', pp. 292((.; Preis, Labor's ';"1 lep; R.R. Brooks, As Sleel Goes . .. (1940).

. Keeran, 'Communists and the Auto Workers', p. 215; Bert Cochr L b Qnd Commurrrslll (1977), p. 107f£.; Mike Davis, 'The Barren Marriage of ~e~c:~

I:

. R 124 (November-December Labor and the Democratic Party', Ncll' LC/l n'H'W, no.

1980). . R d 'k C rc A 5111d~ ill life Cil'll Righls Movemenl 10. A. MeIer Jnd E. u WIC, 0 . . I <;trll Ie SNCC al1d Ihe

1942- JQ68 (1975). parts [I and IV; ClJyborne .Carson, 11_ SS· - k . (1981) sp pp 83-95 and 218-220.

Rlack Au'a Clllllg ,e... _. 282 272-281' Carson, III Slrliggle, pp. 11. Meier and Rudwlck, Lore, pp., ,

111-129. ., les of the ('Os and 705, see Paul 12. For a superb account of thesmlne~s ~tn;~; Coal Field~' (Columbia Un i­

Nyden, 'Miners for Democracy: trugg e to . . d' t' 1974)

vl'rslty Ph.D. Issera ~on, . f tl I t st very important agreement in auto, 13. For an int~restlng acc

hour

R,t ~ t 1e ;I~W' UAW sold out its membership in

see Eric Mann, Send m teo 0 s.

1984 ... " L. A. WII

e,ewkl~ (4-10 Jan~a0i~p85y)socialism" Tife Gllardial1 (20 February 14. Ben Bede, toplsmger

1980). d . see Carl E Schorske, Ger, an 15. For a classic account of these YnamlCS, .

Social DClllOcrncy 1905-1917 (1955). II .. ' f )urse the greatest where there is a

\\'i~)~er~~~~::l~r:~;~t~~:II':y:lt:~~(:r:s ~;It~,~ ~n~~ed States (in contrast to propor·

tional representation). . the Jackson campaign, see especially 17. For this and subsequent sectlo~'~hon Bl k Movement' A~ail1sl tile Cllrrenl

Anthony Thigpenn, 'Jesse Jackson an e ac , ,

3, (Fall i?84) fl' f the recent practice of Black electorillism, which forms 18. I·or a lIle ana YSls 0 M t 1"1 ski 'The Limits of Power', SOli litem the basis for this paragraph, see on e I aw ,

ExpaslIrf, 12, (February 1984). ,

19. Quoted in Thigpenn, 'Jesse.1acksonTh' P·HI6 . d the Realities', Agoinst L b 'H Id WashIngton' e opes an

20. Dan a otz, aro disc~ssion of Washington's campaign and lite Clmelll, 3, (Fall 1984). p. 4.0. My L b t' cellent article, and I have appro-its upshot depends very heaytly on a 0 Z s ex priated a number ~f phrases fro,;, It.

21 Thigpenn jesse jackson, p. 16. . , f' 24 25

22. Marable, 'Paradox of Rei' orm lP: ~s Profitability' Federal Rescrl'c Bank 23. D.N. Allman, 'The Dec me III uSlne ,

of KllI/sas Cily Ecollol1lic Rel'iew (Ja/nuary/~8~). I (1981) p 91 Ira C. Magaziner 24. Riccardo Parboni, Tllc Dol ar 1I,'1t , S. 11'0 S " -,

and Robert B. Reich, Mil/dillS Ammcal S Bpl'S';I~:S (~8~~ Pi::6-1985? (1985). esp.

25. See joseph A. Pechman, W 10 all Ie ax.,

chap

ters5. I B les et al Bel/ond tilt' Was/dOl/ii (1983), p. 25. Wages per hour 26. i1mue ow '. h' 1972-3

are about 10% lower today (betore taxeS)/h:ann~aeYB;:~r~el; and R~bert Brenner,

, 27. For the fo~I~~~nt~ea;o~~:~'gS~fas~" Agaillslille Cllnt'lll, 1, (Winter 198]) Reagan, the Rlgwh d th Working Class' A«aillsllll!' C"rretll, L (Summer and 'The RIght IIlg an e , , 1981).

3. Stumbling in the Dark: American Labor's Failed Response

Kim Moody

The 1984 elections were a test for America's embattled labor movement. Many of the institutions upon which stable labor relations had rested in the U.s. lay in shambles. Union member­ship was shrinking in all but a few industries. The collective bargaining process was riddled with setbacks and organizing efforts were down for the count. Whether they believed it or not, the leadership of the AFL.CJO pinned all the blame on the Reagan administration and its policies. All hopes for a solution to labor's decline were pinned on the return of the Democrats to power in Washington, The road to that objective lay in choosing a main­stream, centrist liberal who could rally and reconstitute the de­composing base of the Democratic Party. That candidate was Walter Mondale - a proven economic liberal, political centrist, and Cold Warrior. Union leaders who might have backed a more liberal Democrat, perhaps even Jesse Jackson, fell into line in the hope that unity and a moderate candidate could defeat the right and restore the 'good old days' before Reagan. The maneuver failed. For the long-run, however, what may be more important is that the whole idea upon which this strategy rested _ that labor's problems lay simply in the White House - embodied a misunderstanding of the situation, including of why the right was so powerful an electoral force in the first place,

The foundations of American industrial unionism and its political practice were built on a compromise with the capitalist state in the midst of World War II, As a mechanism for enforcing the new labor laws passed during the New Deal years, the National Labor Relations Board was largely a failure in the late 1930s, Mass strikes, sit-ins, and later the irresistible draw of war orders were the forces that brought America's industrial giants to heal before the Cia upheavaL But the top leaders of the Cia,

87

Edited by:

Mike Davis, Fred Pfeil, and Michael Sprinker

Verso

THE YEAR LEFT An American Socialist Yearbook

1985

Verso is the imprint of New Left Books