Michael Lind has an absolutely fascinating analysis of U.S. politics leading up to OWS, and while I’m not sure about some of his closing conclusions, his explanation of how we got to where we are is something OWSers would do well to read and understand. These are, as they say, “true facts”:
Today’s Right began as a backlash to the much-romanticized and emulated 1960s-era New Left and counterculture. As Lind says,
Will the worldwide “occupy†demonstrations make 2011 the new 1968?
The liberal left must hope not. The global wave of left-wing radicalism that peaked in 1968 was followed by a generation of right-wing reaction in the United States and Europe. The rise of counterculture frightened the “silent majority†in the U.S. and Europe into supporting politicians like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, who, running campaigns based largely on patriotism and traditional values and “law and order,†used their power to undermine the labor market regulations and social insurance programs that had protected the socially conservative working classes who voted for them.
In the U.S., I would say it was a combination of white racist reaction to the civil rights movement and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, combined with revulsion of the counterculture and the Vietnam era antiwar movement, that made Reaganism possible. Those movements, in some cases unintentionally, destroyed what was left of the New Deal coalition — including undermining the labor unions, which to New Lefties were just another part of the oppressive establishment — and the extremist Right was able to move back into positions of power.
The mighty right-wing media-think tank infrastructure that dominates and manipulates public opinion in the U.S. today also began as a backlash to the counterculture. Joseph Coors and Richard Mellon Scaife began the Heritage Foundation in 1973 largely to undermine liberalism, for example.
And by 1980, all working-class white Americans wanted to know about was how fast Reagan was going to kick all the bums off welfare.
On top of this, after Vietnam and Watergate, and after the activist Left had largely kicked all the props out from under the Democratic party, the Left failed to build another base to take the place of the New Deal coalition. Instead, they largely abandoned party politics and splintered into single-issue, identity politics. This caused the Dems to turn to corporations and other moneyed interests for funds; as someone once said, they’d line up for the second-biggest checks. And as the World Communist Threat receded and finally collapsed, the established single-issue cause groups were co-opted by the establishment. Lind writes,
What remained on the radical left, after the collapse of Marxism and other, more utopian versions of socialism, were identity politics and Malthusian gloom-and-doom environmentalism. Both of these were easily co-opted by the economically conservative neoliberals who took over former progressive parties in the Atlantic world like America’s Democrats and Britain’s Labour Party. It costs corporations and governments nothing to “celebrate diversity.†And financiers in Wall Street and the City of London figured out ways they could reap windfall profits from Green measures like cap-and-trade on greenhouse gas emissions, renewable energy mandates imposed on utility companies, and government subsidies to renewable energy start-ups.
Because there was no longer any significant economic radicalism after the Cold War, old-fashioned economic progressivism — the living wage, universal social insurance, equality of educational opportunity — became defined as “the radical left†in the 1990s and 2000s. Meanwhile, Reagan-Thatcher conservatism, which had been the right-most right during the 1970s and 1980s, was out-flanked by an even more extreme free market fundamentalism, symbolized by the Tea Party — a further right.
The appearance of the further right, and the disappearance of the far left, shifted the entire spectrum to the right for the last two decades. New Deal-style progressivism, once the center between Marxism and conservatism, became the left. Reagan-Thatcher conservatism, having been the right, became the new center; and a new, radical economic libertarian right, far more extreme than Reaganism and Thatcherism, became the new right.
Lyndon Johnson was the last genuinely progressive Democrat to sit in White House, and the left turned on him — understandably — because of Vietnam. Neither Carter nor Clinton pushed the nation’s politics leftward while they were in office; rather, they functioned, more or less, by accommodating the Right. Clinton did manage to get tax increases — which is not necessarily “liberal” — but for the most part Clinton’s policies were way to the Right of FDR and LBJ.
And now President Obama is trying to function in the same niche occupied by Carter and Clinton, and the Left is skewering him for it, for betraying Democratic principles, somehow overlooking the records of Carter and Clinton. This tells me there’s a very different Left today than there was 20 years ago. That’s a good thing, but not if the Left is unwilling to own up to the mistakes of the past.
Here’s where Lind and I differ: Lind is arguing that the emergence of a genuinely radical Left makes it possible for genuine liberalism to re-emerge as well.
The Occupy Wall Street movement has the potential to help the center-left, even if some of its activists despise the center-left the way that the New Left in the 1960s and 1970s dismissed progressive-liberals like the Kennedys and Johnson as sinister “corporate liberals†promoting the “warfare-welfare state.†The reemergence of a radical economic left can create a fourth point on the political spectrum, changing the relative position of all other points. The Tea Party right, now the mainstream right, would become the far right. Today’s center, shared by Clinton and Obama with Reagan and the Bushes, would become the new center-right. And the new center-left would be something like New Deal liberalism — to the left of Clinton and Obama, but to the right of an anti-capitalist left.
I’m not so sure that’s what would actually happen. I’d rather see OWS turn into the spearhead of a broad progressive populist movement, although it’s a long way from being that now. Lind says,
It is all too easy to write a script for a post-Reaganite, neo-Nixonian conservatism that emphasizes law and order. If protesters in Wall Street and other downtowns go from waving placards to smashing windows, it would be easy for the right to win over the suburban majority by accusing the center-left of coddling law-breaking downtown protesters as well as law-breaking illegal immigrants. At the moment much of the public is favorably disposed toward the occupation protests, but attitudes may change if countercultural shantytowns grow up in urban parks and confrontations with police and local governments become common.
That could happen. But it’s also the case that the late 1960s would prove to be the time of peak affluence of working people, who were making good wages and believed the economic good times would roll on forever. Now it’s different. It should be a lot easier now for a smart economic populist movement to gain the sympathy of the working class than it was 45 years ago. If OWS doesn’t screw it up by being too unfocused and undisciplined….
BTW, Nate Silver estimates that last weekend’s “occupy” protests probably drew about 70,000 participants in the U.S., more than half in Pacific coastal states. Frankly, this is not an impressive number. These are not numbers that will make the powers that be quake in their boots. OWS needs to understand it’s got to get a lot bigger, and a lot broader, before it has any genuine influence on anything. I’m not sure a lot of the people who are all in for OWS understand that.
maha,
Bingo!
I agree with what you wrote, and I agree with what Lind wrote. Thom Hartman has also written about this, and I’ve provided those links before, but it won’t hurt to provide them again:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thom-hartmann/theres-nothing-normal-abo_b_32532.html
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_thom_har_060905_thom_hartmann_3b_democ.htm
One other thing about the backlash back then. And it was about women. Men saw not only their children (male and female) turning against them because of Vietnam (and sometimes their mothers, too), but now, to add insult to injury, their wives and daughters were looking at other women on TV burning their bra’s and asking where THEIR equality was, and wondered, ‘Et, tu, ‘Bitches? Are they next?’
If the powers-that-be have any brains, they’ll let Winter’s cold weather dampen enthusiasm. And if that happens, we can only hope that things will return to where they were, and gain some more steam in the Spring.
But, so far, they’re playing into the protesters hands. Here’s the latest example, which I just provided on a previous post – Mayor Bloomberg says OWS’s tent city is not covered by the 1st Amendment:
http://www.businessinsider.com/bloomberg-says-occupy-wall-street-tent-city-is-not-covered-by-freedom-of-speech-2011-10
Move over Hoovervilles.
Make room for Bloom Burg’s.
I can see people trying to create ‘Bloom Burg’s’ at OWS locations around the country/world. I hope it works.
In the 1960s, we still had the American Dream. Unions still protected a good number of working/middle class families, not all of which were union members, but because non-union shops could not undercut the union shop by too much.
And the anti-war protests fizzled once Nixon got rid of the draft lottery.
Today, families that we would have expected to be in the “1960s middle class” are struggling to keep their head above water working 3 part-time/temp jobs.
The 60s radicals lost the union homeowner. OWS will have to really screw this up royally to lose public support. If the authorities do not beat and arrest peaceful demonstrators, OWS will run out of steam when we get zero degree weather in Freedom Square.
Hi, Maha. Did anyone happen to catch Barney Frank on Rachel Maddow last nite? She led off with a rather rhetorical isn’t-this-great-do-you-think-it’s-influencing-policy question, and he said no, and I’ll tell you why – these people don’t vote. He said he thought the comparisons between OWS and the teabaggers are bogus not because there aren’t plenty of points of convergence, but because the tea party was never primarily ideological, but pointedly political. Tea partiers have political influence not because they wear funny hats and bring guns to town halls, but because they reliably vote as a block. As Barney pointed out, most of the people at OWS probably sat on their hands last November, bringing us the Congress and state houses we have now.
Even more unfortunately, I suspect most of them have no clue why that’s a problem.
“Lind is arguing that the emergence of a genuinely radical Left makes it possible for genuine liberalism to re-emerge as well”
I disagree, all one has to do is look at the dimwitted-teabaggers (the emergence of a genuinely radical Right), while they may have moved the republican party to the right, their popularity among most Americans is low, they look like radicals outside the mainstream to most, and that was with the positive backing of our corporate media and a well funded astro-turf organization behind them. I’ll bet the OWS crowd is heading for the fringe as well, outside the mainstream, belittled by our corporate media, alienating most Americans. The politicians on the left would do well to keep a distance; much like Barney Frank did last night on Maddow. I find it slightly hypocritical for a liberal like myself who has trashed everything “tea-party†to embrace everything “OWSâ€, it is just two sides of the same coin. Everything is not the gubmints fault as the teabaggers suggest, just as everything is not wall streets fault as many in the OWS movement suggest. I’d prefer my side (liberals) stay a little closer to the middle than the teabaggers have.
twtfltrd — I probably didn’t explain Lind’s point very well. What he’s saying is that the emergence of a genuinely radical left (in the form of OWS) will make space on the political spectrum for a less-radical left. In other words, he’s not saying that OWS will lead is to a new age of FDR-style liberalism, but that by going way out to the left-wing political boonies it will make a space for FDR-style liberalism.
I’m saying that I wish OWS could be more genuinely populist and less radical. I think the nation is ready for a broadly populist economic justice movement, and OWS could be that if it doesn’t get stupid.
Fretting and hand-wringing — what liberals do best. It is both unfair and foolish to compare a movement which is one month old to the state of politics in 1968 or to evaluate Occupy Your Space Here in terms of raw numbers. I think it is a better comparison to see it as an equivalent to the early Vietnam teach-ins of 1965. Those too were quite small, but they served as a catalyst for further action and eventually public opinion.
I like your writing, but the attitude that “here’s a positive development for the left, so naturally everything will go wrong in the end, so just shut up and vote Democratic” is as self-defeating as violence would be.
My main disagreement is the contention that what came after the 60s (“Reaction”) was worse that what came before and would have happened before. I know of a lot of people who changed during and after the 60s to being far more progressive than they were, but I know of very few, if any, who went in the opposite direction.
Just an observation.
Dan —
Look at government. Progressivism was possible in the Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, and even Eisenhower administrations, but came to a screeching halt after Johnson. See also the chart in this Krugman blog post, showing income distribution and the Great Compression. Note the years.
Things are worse. Much, much worse.
Many good comments. especially Barney Franks’. But, one key difference is that TP was entirely astroturf– a FOX news creation. Many more people sympathize with OWS. The key will be getting it into their skulls that Obama is not Satan because he’s a pragmatist and if you “don’t choose (vote), you lose”.
Did it ever occur to anyone that crowds are not bigger because some of us are that broke that blowing a tank of gas to get to a protest is just a bridge too far these days? I suspect the one’s who are not out there protesting have no means of doing so and are probably sitting at home wondering how they will keep their homes warm for their families this winter….that is if they still have a place to call home.
I, for one, am grateful for every last Occupier out there. I know it’s no cakewalk and their visibility out there everyday gives me some glimmer of hope.
I agree that 70,000 nationwide is not that impressive — we had more than that in Madison on a cold and snowy Saturday in February.
co-optation is a form of negotiation. Appropriation, which is what you are talking about when you express fears of OWS being ‘co-opted’ is something entirely different, a power struggle.
In 1964 LBJ co-opted the civil rights protest in order to pass landmark civil rights legislation: in effect he ran with the message of the civil rights protestors to do what it was he (and they) wanted to do in the first place. In contrast, the Tea Party has been wholly appropriated by the media-corporatist right: the aims and goals of the original Tea Party (if it was anything more than inchoate rage) has been sintered into a pointy stick used to poke anybody not sufficiently orthodox and right-wing in their thinking.
Do not fear being ‘co-opted’… It is part of the process and the only way in which the OWS will be able to declare victory: Somebody will turn the protests into politics and then policy will be made. That’s the only victory here.
Fear, very much, appropriation: anybody who wants to use OWS for their own ends ought to be opposed strongly.
The nature of OWS (inclusive, wealth equality, anti-corporate, etc) argues against an easy appropriation: it will be fairly easy to see it coming. However, a too strident oppostion to appropriation will make co-optation that much more difficult.
grok — you need a dictionary.
The meanings of “co-opt” and “appropriate” are similar —
The only real difference is that “appropriate” is more blatant. “Co-opt” usually is more subtle. It tends to creep up on you.
No. There is a real difference between ‘co-optation’ and ‘appropriate’. Your dictionary is defective.
I posted this elsewhere
The dilemna is this: ‘co-opted’, or co-optation, is a form of negotiation and, as such, may be the only form of brokerage available between a heterogenous crowd of protestors and an entrenched (basically homogenous) establishment. That is to say, outright, that ‘being co-opted’ may, in fact, be the goal… Other forms of negotiation aren’t germane here because of the diffuse nature of the protests: conflict can only increase the distance between the actors and cooperation isn’t possible because the protestors have (necessarily) removed themselves from the sphere of the ‘legitimate’ in order to highlight the inadequacy and failings of that sphere. Unless they wish to stay outside the sphere of the legitimate indefinitely they must negotiate re-entry into the systems and ‘being co-opted’ is the way to do that. Co-optation means that the establishment has to find the common ground on those things which agreement is possible and to demonstrate real movement on the remaining disagreements. If this cannot be accomplished then them protests continue. Eventually the establishment position comes to resemble the protests position to the extent that the protests will to exist outside of the sphere of the legitimate is sensibly diminished. How else do you think it will end?
the shorthand of our imperfectly literate society ‘co-opted’ has come to mean ‘taken over’: that is to say, appropriation. There is little doubt that the Tea Party was wholly appropriated by media-corporatist right and has been sintered into a pointy stick used to poke anybody insufficiently orthodox. This is NOT co-optation because there was no negotiation. While appropriation is always a danger, I think the nature of OWS and its goals makes appropriation extraordinarily difficult. The newly kindled fear of ‘being co-opted’ however, makes the process somewhat more fraught than it already is…
(again) Consider the 1964 Civil Rights Act. LBJ ‘co-opted’ the language and the goals of the civil rights protestors to do what he (and they) wanted to do in the first place. There was an alignment and when the protestors no longer had legally sanctioned racism to protest they went back to their lives. The establishment had co-opted the protestors aims and ideals and acted accordingly and the world came to resemble more closely that which the protestors envisioned. So I say do not fear being co-opted. I think it’s the goal. I think it’s the only way to eventually declare victory. I think OWS should stay on top of it and manage it not run from or fear it…
grok — in other words, you made up your own definition and everyone else is wrong.
Go away.
Maha,
I do not think that ‘everyone else is wrong’ nor did I ‘make up my own definition’… There is a long history of sociology, management studies and mediation theory that will back up my definition of ‘co-optation’ and will underline all that I wrote.
I think others, including yourself, are not applying a demonstrably considerable intelligence and oft proved subtlety to the question at hand: you’re being lazy. If you don’t like being called on it, you shouldn’t be blogging.
I’m a writer. It’s what I do for a living. I use words to mean precisely what I intend them to mean. Many words have specific meanings within specialties that are different from how the words are understood in general usage. I’m going by general usage. When most people use the word “co-opt,” it means something closer to “appropriation” than “negotiation,” and if you are going to communicate with people effectively you need to respect that.
Methinks “grok” doesn’t ‘grok’ what you’re trying to say.
@c u n d gulag says:
No, I get it. We’re in the familiar position of ‘violent agreement’: I agree that the fears Maha postulates are both real and justified… as ‘appropriation’. I think that many people (including the writers of the ‘freedictionary’ ) confuse ‘appropriation’ and ‘co-optation’. But there is a long history of sociology, management studies and mediation theory that will backup that which I put forward as a definition of ‘co-optation’ and underline everything I wrote: co-optation a form of negotiation where parties (co-) move forward together (-opt) on matters of great importance to all sides… What’s difficult about that?
My only fear is that in some understandable but overkill zeal to avoid appropriation OWS dismisses outright the valuable, and perhaps unique to this circumstance, co-optation: which co-optation, I’ve been at pains to point out, may be the clearest, best and, perhaps, only real form of negotiation available here. Splitting hairs? Perhaps… but that’s only because one hair kills and the other saves…
Somewhere in all the verbiage I think I understand what you are saying, and I possibly agree with you, but you need to find a different way to explain this.
grok,
Please don’t take this as an insult, because it isn’t meant to be, but maybe if you were a bit less pedantic?
Take that as a tip from me – probably the most pedantic commenter on this site.
And if not that, certainly the most long-winded one. 🙂
A fair point. So fair, in fact, that I’d be inclined not to quibble with it save for one thing: that which is elided in this meaning is that which is necessary in the communication. How else will it end? What analysis of the situation will you make in a year or two years or whenever, when the protestors in the legitimate fear of appropriation deny any and all efforts at co-optation. As I was at pains to point out with my example of LBJ and the Civil Rights Act, the protestors of the era were co-opted and the final result was a suite of laws that satisfied their protests. That ought to be the goal here. No, it won’t be easy and failure is a possibility.
If OWS wants to stay in protest in perpetuity or simply deny outright the forms of our present society, a form of negotiation called ‘competition’, then they can forgo any co-optation. But if they want to change the system then the system will have to adopt their goals and move towards them: this process is called co-optation. If OWS wants an end-game that’s their blueprint.
Grok, clue: Use different words.
What you appear to be talking about is coalition building. Coalition building is a good thing. It’s when groups who share a common interest agree to set aside differences and work together on that interest. Coalitions are egalitarian creations entered into by free will. I would be very happy if OWSers could form coalitions with other groups on the issue of economic injustice, even if those other groups are less progressive on other issues. I would also be very happy if OWS could build coalitions in support of specific legislation surrounding economic injustice issues.
Right now they are very skittish about being tied to the Democratic Party, and I don’t blame them for that. I see their current task as creating a constituency for economic justice issues; or, if you will, making the discontent of the people so visible that even David Brooks might see it. It might also change the nation’s political culture in a way that makes discussing and supporting progressive issues feel less risky for politicians, and that’s also a good thing. Eventually, if Democratic politicians move in their direction, then the relationship between OWS and those Democrats might change. I think this is what you are saying.
However, in common usage, co-option has a connotation of a weaker entity being absorbed into a stronger entity, and therefore neutralized, and that’s what the OWSers, understandably, want to avoid.
By insisting on using the word “co-option,” you are introducing an unacceptable level of what’s called “semantic noise” into your communication. In communication theory, communication also is a kind of negotiation, and sender and receiver have to agree on a vocabulary, or it’s not going to work. If you are going to be an effective communicator, you have to respect the vocabulary of the people with whom you are communicating. Otherwise you are just making noise.
No word or symbol has intrinsic meaning. Words or symbols have only the meaning people choose to give them.
No insult taken. Language is often slippery and I’ve come to grips with that. But in this instance a measure of pedantry is necessary to distinguish (I believe) between that which can hurt (appropriation) and that which can heal (co-optation). Nor do I think it is a co-incidence that the two are so often conflated: those who have an interest in hurting (or, at least, preventing healing) benefit most when co-optation is feared as appropriation…