Trump and the Hell's Angels

 This Political Theorist Predicted the Rise of Trumpism. His Name Was Hunter S. Thompson:  In Hell’s Angels, the gonzo journalist wrote about left-behind people motivated only by “an ethic of total retaliation.” Sound familiar?
By Susan McWilliams

What’s truly shocking about reading [Hell's Angels] today is how well Thompson foresaw the retaliatory, right-wing politics that now goes by the name of Trumpism. After following the motorcycle guys around for months, Thompson concluded that the most striking thing about them was not their hedonism but their “ethic of total retaliation” against a technologically advanced and economically changing America in which they felt they’d been counted out and left behind.

Eleven theses on Trump

I
As much as my friends are horrified at a Trump presidency with a Republican congress, that's exactly how horrified Trump voters considered a possible Clinton presidency and Obama's actual presidency. Elections are about values, not about policies.

II
Trump and the Republicans are not just about racism and sexism, but racism and sexism are real factors. We don't seem to understand racism and sexism; I myself don't claim to understand them. I definitely strongly dislike racism and sexism, but dislike is not understanding. If we're going to get the white proletariat and white petty-bourgeois/petty-professional class to turn away from racism and sexism, we have to understand them, so we can propagandize and negotiate effectively. Screeching at racists and sexists, dehumanizing them, placing them in the "basket of deplorables," may be emotionally satisfying, but it doesn't seem to be moving racism and sexism back.

III
Clinton and the Democrats, as well as the "traditional" Republicans, are not just about classism, but classism is a real factor. Upper-middle class people do not want to lose their class privilege, which they justify in exactly the same way that white people justify white privilege and men justify male privilege. (I don't mean to say that classism is exactly the same as racism; only the justifications are identical.)

IV
Too many Democrats, especially Clinton Democrats, have nothing but contempt for the working class and the poor; unlike Trump, they do not hide their contempt. Republicans are only a little better, at least at hiding their contempt. I think I understand classism. I don't understand racism and sexism, but I do see racism and sexism as emerging from classism. I don't think we're going to make progress so long as we try to address racism and sexism as divorced from class.

V
Liberalism, i.e. technocratic professional/managerial class rule, is decisively over. Technocrats do not understand values, which are not "rational" but emotional. They do not understand politics. More importantly, it is precisely the technocratic core of the Democratic party that has destroyed the American working class, and who cares if a bunch of ignorant racist hillbillies are suffering. The Republican party too, of course, but the technocratic Democrats supported them, demanded the credit, and are taking the blame. We still need highly educated people, but they (well, we) are unfit to rule.

VI
The Republican party has been running a long affinity con on the white working class, petty-bourgeois, and petty-professional class. These classes have at least begun to wake up, so they nominated Trump. I remains to be seen if Trump actually delivers anything to the white working class or doubles down on the long con. The Democratic party has been running a long affinity con on black people. I don't know when black people will wake up to the con. Some have, but not many.

VII
The Democrats are not as bad as the Republicans, who are not as bad as Trump, but that's the best I can say about them. The Democratic party has not fought against the police killings of black people, they have not fought against assassination and torture, they have not fought against imperialism, they have not fought against the financial, medical, and industrial monopolists, and, most importantly, they have not fought for the working class, white or black. We can condone losing; we shouldn't condone not fighting.

VIII
Only the working class can bring in authoritarianism and fascism, and only the working class can avoid it. The bourgeoisie has shown itself incapable of resisting authoritarianism, and the professional/managerial class is too weak and too stupid to even see it, much less prevent it.

IX
Either the working class has to take over the Democratic party, or they must form a new political party; I don't know which would be easier. The strategy should be first to go after working class Democrats: "Clinton and the party (or party establishment) betrayed you." In a couple of years, when Trump betrays them himself, go after working class Republicans.

X
However one defines "democracy", choosing between fascism and fascism-lite ain't it. We have a republic, so we have to use it, but we must transcend the republic.

XI
We cannot have political democracy without economic democracy. Indeed, economic democracy must precede political democracy.

[Edited 31 July 2017 for grammar.]

Smashing the bourgeois state

Smashing the bourgeois state is always a priority of any good communist revolutionary. Fortunately for my tired old ass, The Republicans are doing it for me, and the Democrats seem unable to resist. Oh, Clinton will win, of course, but she won't be able to govern.

This development is doubleplusgood. No Democratic government will ever be legitimate to the Republicans. No Republican government will ever be legitimate to the Democrats. The bourgeoisie is tearing itself apart. And I don't have to lift a finger. Yay!

If any socialists can pull their head out of their ass long enough to pick up the pieces, we might have a chance at progress. However, socialists' heads are pretty firmly wedged (I'm just observing: it took me 40 years to pull my head out of my petty-bourgeois ass, so I'm in no position to criticize), so it'll probably be the fascists who gain.

Advice for Clinton supporters

Corey Robin has some advice for Clinton supporters: if he were truly worried that she might lose, they should actively court leftist voters. They definitely should not attack them.

If . . . I were a big booster of Clinton and if I were at all worried that she wasn’t going to win in November . . . I’d spend every waking or at least spare minute of my life between now and November making sure that every potential Clinton voter that I or my committees could reach was converted into an absolutely solid and reliable vote for Clinton come November. . . .

And here’s what I’d not do: spend my time on social media or in person castigating every member of the left who is a potential Clinton voter but is skeptical or leaning toward Jill Stein or thinking about sitting this one out, castigating them as reckless, irresponsible, childish, purist, fanatical, immature, incompetent, cultish, blinkered fantasists of the revolution, and so on, and then deliver long, sonorous monologues—where I demonstrate zero desire to listen or understand, much less engage, with what the people I’m trying to persuade are thinking—about the need for a popular front that includes the very people I’ve just dismissed as childish and irresponsible.

I get this. Nobody likes being bullied, and those of us sincere commitment to actual progressivism and not just slower regressivism have been being bullied for more than a generation. When does the story stop being give in to keep things from getting worse and start being about making things actually better?

Robin speculates on possible reasons why Clinton and her supporters are not adopting a primarily positive approach to the left, and he nails it with his final possibility: "they don’t think they share any values with the Clinton skeptics on the left; they think those leftists actually believe in very different things."

Clinton is on the right; she's been on the right her whole career. The only reason the left is even considering her is that the Republicans are not only farther to the right, they have moved off the scale and have become officially (instead of informally) batshit crazy. Clinton wants to move to the right, because she sincerely believes that would be best for the country (and her career, but she is at least not a pure opportunist). She can move to the right; there are any number of neoliberal Republicans who see Trump as if not actually fascist then deeply damaging to capitalist class interests and will vote for Clinton.

Why shouldn't she move to the right? Why should she court leftist voters? Even if she had to move left to win, she has her career to worry about: the capitalist class doesn't give six figure speaking fees to socialists.

The only worry she really has on the left is that either a left faction of the Democrats will take the nomination in 2024, or the left will split off from the Democratic party and challenge her in 2020 or 2024. Neither of those outcomes are likely. Enough Sanders leaders will be co-opted and stay within a more explicitly neoliberal Democratic party, the institutional power of the Democratic party is sufficiently large that a third party (or a second party, if the Republicans completely fall apart) on the left will always be marginal.

More importantly, the left can't fight, and they don't have a good story. Today's capitalist left is the residue of professional-managerial class (PMC) rule that was defeated in 1980. Today's left is driven by nostalgia; it is regressive in the literal sense of a return to the past. Moreover, the PMC is fundamentally hostile to the working class (although less so than the bourgeoisie), they demonstrated both their impotence and their loyalty to the bourgeoisie, and the workers don't trust them. "Back to the 1960s!" is not a good rallying cry.

Clinton will move to the right, and the left will let her; what choice do they have? Absent an actual revolution (probably fascist), we'll have eight more years of neoliberalism, eight more years of Middle Eastern wars, eight more years of substandard medical care, eight more years of worker income stagnation, eight more years of global warming, eight more years of mass incarceration and police murders, eight more years of financial parasitism, eight more years of filthy water, filthy air, filthy slums, shitty McJobs.

Clinton and the turn to the right

Beverly Mann is concerned about pundits' (a term which must be used very loosely when referring to Friedman) exhortations that Hillary Clinton move to the right to capture Republicans disaffected by Trump. Paul Krugman is equally concerned.

They are missing the point. Clinton wants to move to the right; Friedman is trying (probably by accident) to provide intellectual and ideological cover.

Krugman spent the entire primary season trying to undermine Sanders' reforms, and now he exhorts Clinton to support them. Wait, what? If Clinton does support Sanders' reforms, it won't be because of Krugman. It will be because the Sanders wing of the party, voters and elected officials, uses its power to push for them.

Clinton is a 1960s Republican. She's pro-business, pro-"free" trade, pro-war, anti-labor, anti-union, anti-poor. She will protect the capitalists and the upper levels of the professional-managerial class, including women and people of color, but without concerted pressure from progressives, she will do nothing but the most egregious tokenism for anyone outside that group.

She will will not end the mass incarceration and police murder of black people; instead, she will give good jobs to a few BlackLivesMatter leaders and neutralize the organization. She will make sure that rich and middle-class women can get safe and legal abortions, but if a poor woman in Mississippi has to travel for 8 hours — twice — to find a clinic, well, that's just too bad. She might eliminate public college tuition — that's a giveaway to the tenured academic class — but she will do nothing to make sure those students have good jobs when they graduate. (And the real expense of college is not tuition, it's trying to eat and pay rent while studying.) She might raise the minimum wage, but only by a little and do nothing to prevent the raise from being expropriated by landlords and businesses. She will do nothing to interfere with health insurance profits from the PPACA, and do nothing to improve access to actual medical care currently unaffordable to the working poor. And, of course, she will continue to murder brown people in the Middle East, torture suspected "terrorists", and strengthen the surveillance state.

On the one hand, the collapse of the Republican party is an opportunity for Clinton. She can run on the scary Trump! platform, and say nothing substantive about her actual administration, and make no important commitments. If she's smart, and she is, and she has the stomach for it, which she might, she will do everything to make sure the progressive Sanders wing of the party is marginalized or outright purged.

But scary Trump! is also an opportunity for progressives. (Chaos is a ladder, right?) Progressives can hold their noses, vote for Clinton, but work like crazy to strengthen the progressive wing. Win congressional and senatorial races. Take control of state legislatures. Win governorships. The collapse of the Republican party makes these efforts much easier. Don't give in to the Republican-lite wing of the party, especially in local races. It is doable.

Sanders' strategic blunder

I'm not sure if it was a mistake or just a failure of will, but Sanders started off with a strategic blunder.

I suspect Sanders thought, "I'll run for the nomination as a Democrat. I know I won't win, but I can get enough votes to make the Democratic party progressive. Therefore, I have to promise to support Clinton when I lose."

If Sanders had won 20% or 30% of the popular vote, his strategy would not have been a blunder, but sill would have been a mistake.

This strategy could not work. The Democrats cannot be "moved" away from neoliberalism, not from the inside. If Sanders had won 20-30% of the vote, he might have had a seat at the table, but he would have had very little actual influence. He might have bumped a token minimum wage increase up by $0.25, or shaved a half-point off of student loan interest, or provided a small increase in PPACA subsidies, but he would not have made the Democratic party progressive, just a little less neoliberal. Maybe that's all Sanders wanted, in which case I would fault him for a lack of vision and will. But I don't think so: Sanders has been outside the Democratic party too long for him to just want to be a mid-level Democratic operative.

If Sanders had really wanted to actually implement a progressive agenda, he would have had to take a risk. The only way to enact a progressive agenda would be to run as a Democrat, but at the same time build a third party to nominate him when Clinton wins the Democratic nomination. Then, during the general election, Sanders pushes hard for a progressive agenda; either Clinton moves hard to the left, or Sanders splits the Democratic vote and Trump wins.

There are four possible scenarios.

First, Sanders gets 5% of the vote in the Democratic party. He drops the third party and goes home. Progressivism is just too weak. Maybe next election, with someone younger.

Second, Sanders gets 20-30% of the Democratic vote. I suspect he thought that if he ran as a "good" Democrat, he might get 30%, but if he ran as a "spoiler", he would get only 5%. The problem is that, as noted above, getting 30% as a "good" Democrat is not much better than 5% as a spoiler. But if he gets 20-30% of the vote as a spoiler, he's in a position to mount a serious third-party bid and could actually force Clinton to the left. However, he could also pull a Nader and split the liberal vote and scary Trump! wins.

Third, Sanders actually wins the Democratic nomination. It almost happened. Then he runs as a progressive Democrat and wins, because scary Trump!

Fourth, Sanders gets what he actually got: more than 43% of the vote; he probably lost only because the fix was in. As a "good" Democrat, Sanders represents an existential threat to the party. Not only does he not get a seat at the Democratic table, after the election the party will quietly purge Sanders and his supporters, either literally or by forcing his supporters to pay obeisance to neoliberalism and abandon all that progressive nonsense. So I call his decision a blunder: not only will he not force the Democratic party to the left, he has actually given them the incentive to move to the right: force the progressive out of the party; they'll be too disorganized and weak to mount any kind of a challenge.

As a spoiler, however, he's really got a shot at not only forcing Clinton to the left, but actually winning the general election, because scary Trump! and nobody actually likes Clinton.

I suspect (again, I can't read his mind) Sanders thought he could get at most 20% of the vote, win a few delegates, and have real power inside the Democratic party; furthermore, he thought that if he got 30% of the vote and ran a third-party campaign, he would have thrown the election to Bush or Cruz or Rubio. (I'm sure he was as surprised as anyone else that Trump actually won the nomination.)

Progressives do not, I think, realize that politics is always and everywhere a chicken game. To win a chicken game, you must convince your opponent that you'll crash before you swerve. Sanders was not willing to risk a crash (Republican victory), so he literally promised on day one to swerve. Thus, his only chance at a progressive victory was to actually win the nomination, which would have been nearly impossible even if he had run a perfect campaign and progressive voters were a majority of Democrats.

By promising to be a good Democrat and not leading a third-party challenge to split the vote, he gave away progressivism on the first day of his campaign.

Negotiating with Clinton

Hillary Clinton is a neoliberal, and the neoliberals are the enemy of both socialists and progressive capitalists. Unfortunately, her chief opponent is Donald Trump, who is — in addition to personally being a dangerous buffoon — is not only a neoliberal but is at least leaning towards fascism, and fascists are the enemy of everyone but themselves.

I'm sure that Clinton and her campaign staff threw the most glorious party when Trump was nominated. She can do anything she wants because, well, what's the alternative? Trump? Please. And Clinton wants neoliberalism. She's built her career around delivering neoliberalism to the capitalist class. And why shouldn't she? Shilling for the capitalists pays well, and with a little artful misdirection, gets votes. Clinton is a politician, and that's the job: get elected and get paid. (Sanders, who nearly won the nomination, is definitely not going to get paid, and wouldn't have even if he had won the nomination and subsequent election.)

But Clinton is not herself a capitalist. She doesn't have a personal, direct interest in neoliberalism. She has money, but not money. She is, fundamentally, an employee. We'll never move the Koch brothers away from neoliberalism, but we can move Clinton. We just have to give her a good story to tell.

Clinton would like to go to Wall Street and say, "I delivered. You're getting pretty much everything you want: neoliberalism, globalization, trade deals, global intellectual property monopolies, a fragmented and powerless working class, and all the money. All I had to give up was some stupid shit that didn't pay anyway. Pay me. Boards of directors. Speaking fees. Book deals. You know the drill. I want to wipe my ass with $100 bills."

Ideally, we'd like Clinton to go to Wall Street and say, "Fuck you. You and all your money can't win an election, so you and your money are useless to me. I'm not one of you, but I am President of the United States, and none of you will ever be President. I had to throw you under the bus to get elected, and it was totally worth it. My advice is to get to Lichtenstein right now; the people are assembling torches and pitchforks even as we speak."

Ah... a lovely fantasy, but it's not gonna happen.

We could, however, if we worked hard, force Clinton to go to Wall Street and say, "Let me be blunt: you guys are seriously fucking your own shit up, and I cleaned up your mess. I had to give up a lot of what you want, but you want too much. You still have power, you're still the ruling class, but seriously: if I had tried to give you everything you want, you'd've ended up with Trump, and you're just as scared of him as I am. So you owe, and you're going to pay me — boards of directors, etc. — not because I gave you everything you wanted, but because I gave you everything you needed, your lives, and perhaps more importantly, your power. You need me, I need you, and if you don't pay me, you're going to end up with another Sanders or Trump, or worse."

Even with the current material and political situation, we can do better than simply passively accepting neoliberalism because scary Trump! The capitalist ruling class is worried, and the political class is worried.

Trump and Sanders did much better than expected. Trump broke the Republican party, and at best the Republicans will form the core of a fascist party that could get enough support to stage a coup, perhaps even a successful coup. The Democratic party only just barely staved off the Sanders threat, and they shouldn't be confident they can easily defeat the progressives in 2020 or 2024. To survive, the Democratic party absolutely must purge the Sanders progressives, and keep them from forming a viable second party.

If we simply say, "Clinton, because scary Trump!" Clinton will know she can get away with purging the progressives. She knows she can get away with the TPP, only a token increase in the minimum wage, abandoning free college tuition (maybe lower the interest rate on student loans a point), busting unions, promoting monopolies, because hey! neoliberalism is better than fascism, right?

Politics is generally, and very obviously in this election, a chicken game. The only way to win a chicken game is to throw the wheel out of the car and say, "Either you swerve, or we both crash." If Clinton believes that progressives will swerve, if they'll vote for her in 2016 and 2020, and vote for another neoliberal Democrat in 2024 because scary Hitler! and scary Stalin!, she won't budge. But she is a politician, and she won't lose on principle.* If she believes she has to deliver a progressive agenda or lose to Donald Fucking Trump (how humiliating would that be?), then she'll deliver.

*Trump will lose on principle, because then he or his more strong-willed successor gets to use the classic fascist "stabbed in the back" narrative. Trump and his supporters don't want to win an election, they want a real no-bullshit dictator. Actually winning the election would be a disaster.

I don't have much hope, though. There will always be a scary Trump! and progressives fall for that con every time. The one thing that progressives seem completely unable to do is fight for what they want when the going gets tough. Y'all will yak yak yak and vote for Sanders when it's easy, but he loses one little nomination, and y'all just give up and go home.

The electorate as negotiators

The invention of the democratic republic requires the development of the institution of the political party, which mediates between the ruling class and the voters. One way to mediate is by political philosophy or ideology, but that's not the only way; the point of political parties is to explore all the different ways of mediation, and find the ones that are successful. The process is complex: there are struggles within the ruling class (and sometimes struggles between classes for rule) and struggles within the electorate, and all the different forces are partially reconciled in the political parties.

The electorate can more-or-less "passively" accept its role: the political parties position themselves in relation to the ruling class and the electorate, and each person picks the option they like best or dislike the least. If we take this view of the role of the voters in a republic, then Hillary Clinton is the best choice for everyone who has not yet been completely screwed over by neoliberalism, and Donald Trump is the best choice for those who have been completely screwed over by neoliberalism: they're screwed anyway, and Trump might at least shake things up and create opportunities. (Trump is the best choice for racist assholes regardless of class, but that's a side issue.)

I don't like this view of the electorate, which shouldn't come as much of a shock. I have two alternative views. As a revolutionary communist, elections are just one of the many arenas of struggle to develop revolutionary momentum. Presently, revolutionary momentum is at best miniscule, and at worst backwards, so the upcoming election does not offer much to be gained or lost in this regard.

As a progressive reformer (and I can be both, why not?) I urge a somewhat more active role for the electorate. The voters are negotiating: they are actively trying to change the character and nature of the parties and the nominees. In order to negotiate, a participant absolutely must convince their opponent that they can walk away from the table. If the car salesman knows that I absolutely must have a car by the end of the day, I'm guaranteed to get screwed. She knows I can't walk away; she need only make sure it's not impossible for me to sign.

As negotiators, we absolutely cannot say that we must vote for Clinton because Trump. Instead, we must convince Clinton and the Democratic party that if we don't get enough of what we want, we will walk away from the table, Trump or no Trump. When we say Clinton because Trump, we are saying to the car salesman that we must have a car by the end of the day. We are begging Clinton to screw us over once she's president.

Of course, as negotiators, Clinton and the Democratic party, to serve their capitalist masters, must argue that we must vote for Clinton because Trump, to convince us that we must have a car by the end of the day, and thus concede as little as possible to the electorate. Hillary Clinton would love to go to Wall Street and say, "I delivered your agenda."

Scary, no? But that's how negotiation works. It's a pure strategy chicken game. And if you credibly promise to swerve, you will lose every time.

So I don't give a shit whether Jill Stein is or is not an anti-vaxxer. Jill Stein is not going to become president, and the Green party is not going to be a major player; if they were, I would actually participate in the party and remove the stupid from the platform.

The point is that I will vote (because not voting is dumb), but I'm going to credibly promise to not vote for Clinton if she doesn't promise to enact a progressive agenda, not just a less regressive agenda than Trump. And if Trump does become president because Clinton doesn't come through, well, presidents don't have absolute power, and there are ways to limit and resist Trump's power (cough Bill Clinton cough).

Progressives should want Wall Street to say support Clinton because Trump, that even though Clinton had to seriously compromise the neoliberal capitalist agenda, Trump would have been even worse.

So when you tell me to vote Clinton because Trump, or that I'm "wasting" my vote if I don't vote for either Clinton or Trump, you're telling me that you'll let Clinton promote whatever neoliberal horrors she chooses, because she knows your vote does not depend on her policies.

If we can't have a revolution, let's at least negotiate, not bend over.

A rant on Democrats and Republicans

The Democratic party has the power to utterly crush the Republicans. Not just win the presidency in a landslide, but to make the Republicans a fringe party of Klansmen, MRAs, and fundamentalist Christians, with no more hope of electoral success than the Libertarians or Greens.

The Democratic party could, if it chose, take no only the presidency, but also the congress, every governorship and state legislature, and even every mayor, city council, and dog catcher.

For twenty years, I've been hearing that the Democrats cannot enact a progressive agenda because of those darn Republicans. That was perhaps true in the past, but if the primary obstacle to a progressive agenda really were the Republicans, the Democrats have the opportunity to remove that obstacle for a generation.

With no effective opposition from the Republicans, the Democratic party could, if it chose, enact every progressive measure conceivable. Reform police departments, make abortion available to every woman, let everyone vote, enact universal health care, raise the minimum wage, provide a Universal Basic Income, maintain and even expand Social Security, rebuild our infrastructure, break the big banks, end the wars in the Middle East. I'm not even talking about a socialist revolution, just enact every measure that most working people think constitute basic decency.

The Democratic party will not crush the Republicans. The Democrats need the Republicans. The Democrats do not want to enact a progressive agenda; they have been using the Republican party as an excuse for their inaction.

More precisely, the capitalist class does not want to enact a progressive agenda, and the Democratic party no less than the Republican party does what the capitalist class wants.

No ruling class can rule by brute force, every good ruling class needs to con the population into legitimizing their rule. So the capitalists have been playing a good cop/bad cop scam on the United States for 35 years. Note that both roles are necessary: after Ronald Reagan's elections, the Republicans could have utterly crushed the Democrats, but did not do so, because that would not have served capitalist interests.

The capitalists are definitely worried by both Trump and Sanders. Both are populists, and the one thing that both the capitalist class and the professional-managerial class who serve the capitalists agree on is that the people should not have any actual power.

Ideally, the capitalist class would use Trump as an excuse to further limit popular power: "We can't have another Trump, right? So we have to more carefully manage who gets nominated, right? You just can't trust those people to have an effective political voice."

Clinton will win this election because, well, Trump is not just batshit crazy but also stupid, and stupid is bad for business. But this election is not the real issue. The real issue is 2020 or 2024.

Clinton will govern as a good neoliberal. She'll throw a few crumbs to the working class, but will not change anything of substance. We'll still have the police killing black people. We'll still have a minimum wage below any decent standard of living. We'll still have a lot of poor women (and especially poor black women) without access to contraception or abortion. We'll still have tens of millions of people going without needed health care because they can't afford it. We'll still have massive voter suppression. We'll still have globalization, depressed wages, underemployment. We'll still be murdering brown people overseas in industrial quantities.

The Republicans will retain enough power to ensure that the Democrats have some cover for not enacting much actual progressive policy. Both parties will change their nomination procedures to make sure that no one like Trump or Sanders can get as close as they did.

However, because neoliberalism is itself cracking, the global economy is going to go tits up, likely in the next four years, and almost certainly in the next eight.

The capitalist class has for most of the last century crushed socialism, but only minimized fascism. Then they get to tell the story, "Yeah, capitalism and neoliberalism kinda sucks, but y'all need to suck it up and adjust. If you don't, you'll just end up with fascism." This is a good strategy. It's worked for almost a hundred years.

But when neoliberalism finally falls apart, people are going to say, "If the fascists are the only alternative, then better the fascists than the neoliberals."

There are two ways out of that depressing scenario, both of which could work separately or in tandem.

First, the Sanders wing of the Democratic party could make a concerted, dedicated effort to take over the Democratic party and destroy the Republican party. Sure, let Clinton be president, but make it absolutely clear she's a figurehead for a real progressive party. This means that Sanders' supporters focus their energy on congressional and state and local races. Let Clinton and her corporate money take the presidency, but make sure that the actual power of the party lies with the Sanders bloc. This effort will take serious, dedicated, and continuous effort, not just until November, but through at least to the midterm elections. Without the corporate bloc, the Sanders bloc cannot crush the Republicans in November, but they could, if they work hard, seriously weaken them before the economy crashes. If this happens, then when the economy does crash, there is an alternative to fascism.

Second, the "true" socialists can get together and make a serious effort to provide at least a coherent ideological alternative to both capitalism and fascism. Abandon the jargon, abandon the abstruse theory, abandon the petty century-long grudges, and start talking to, you know, the actual workers. Maybe, just maybe, when neoliberalism falls apart, there will be enough of a power base to resist and defeat the fascists.

I dunno. I don't hold much hope for either alternative. The corporate Democrats will crush Sanders; they want the Republicans to hold a lot of congressional and local power. The Sanders bloc would have to not only fight the Republicans, but fight their own party. Possible, but difficult.

And I have even less hope that socialists can get their shit together and actually appeal to the workers.

But who knows. Weirder shit has happened.

The Sanders revolution

Chaos is always risky. As Katalin Balog writes in An Inconsistent Triad, Sanders

construed his job [as Presidential candidate] to be the articulation of a vision of a just society, a kind of overarching social democratic Utopia, simple to explain, simple to understand. He didn't seem interested in exploring real world complexity, the delicate balance between competing values; he was not at all riveted by policy detail. He proposed to implement his program not via the nitty-gritty of democratic give-and-take and incrementalism, but via the "political revolution" whose nature has been left a little vague but which he saw himself as leading. The revolution was what was supposed to bridge the yawning gap between his proposals and what seems feasible in today's America. This view of politics and history implies a dismissal of "technocrats", meaning politicians who work in the system. Society needs to be bent to the Utopia, all at once, so to speak, not via the dithering process of machine politics. Though he never indicated that by revolution he meant anything like overthrowing the regime, he did at least flirt with the idea.

Such an attitude is fitting for youth steeped in age-appropriate contempt for the adult world, but bitter experience has shown revolution to be, almost always, a great evil, bringing forth blood, tears and terror in its wake. Sanders' candidacy evoked an earlier era of the socialist movement but that – as should be clear – is a painful dead end of history.

Balog makes some errors here. Notably, Sanders has been a sitting Senator for nearly a decade, a Congressman for 15 years before that, and was Mayor of Burlington, VT. Sanders is a career politician; I think he understands "the nitty-gritty of democratic give-and-take."

Also, I have a very different take than Balog about "technocrats": she labels them simply as "politicians who work in the system," which would seem to include Sanders, who has, after all, been working in the system at its highest levels for 25 years. In contrast, I see "technocrats" as Professional-Managerial Class academic meritocratic elitists, who haven't quite realized they lost power in 1980.

And at what point did Sanders even "flirt with the idea" of "overthrowing the regime"? The only "regime" Sanders was interested in overthrowing was the control of our government by Too Big To Fail banks, big Pharma, the Koch brothers, etc. ad nauseam. I've never seen Sanders once talk about overthrowing the republic or the Constitution. Sanders was interested only in trying to make the liberal capitalist system deliver on its own promises.

Balog could certainly paint me with that brush, but it does not apply to Sanders. Balog implies that demanding single-payer health care, free college tuition, more unions, and serious financial regulation is not only equal parts youthful naivete and cynicism but also "a great evil" and a "dead end of history." Balog avoids lying outright, but with a Ph.D. in philosophy, the connection between Sanders and revolution cannot be unintentional.

I think this point is what infuriates me most about this election: that any opposition to absolute rule of the bourgeoisie in this second Gilded Age is tantamount to Bolshevism.

But perhaps Balog is entirely correct, and we should take her at her word: Sanders is a revolutionary, a Bolshevik, someone who really does want to tear down the regime and start over.

The regime that matters is not the republic: elections, legislative deliberation, checks and balances, the rule of law.

The regime that matters really is the absolute unconditional power of the bourgeoisie, to whom the proletariat comes hat in hand for a few scraps. In the regime that matters, all the trappings of the republic are simply theatre, a cunning illusion; the decisions that matter are made in boardrooms and mansions.

Sanders' real problem, his supporters' real problem, is that they do not yet realize they are revolutionaries.

Progressivism and the fight against neoliberalism

I was born in the 1960s. I was an ordinary child and an ordinary adult: although in retrospect neoliberalism was already undermining international liberal capitalism, the rot and evils were safely out of view. Based on the information I had, it was more-or-less rational and sensible to look at the similarities between Republicans and Democrats as reflecting support for a system that appeared to work well enough, so their differences became momentous.

Today, of course, nine years into the Lesser Depression, god knows how many years into the ongoing catastrophe of Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, etc. ad nauseam, the annihilation of the Greek economy, the massive failure of neoliberalism to meet the needs of ordinary people is, if not blatantly obvious, a lot more apparent than it was twenty or thirty years ago.

It was amusing to watch Scott Lemieux completely miss the point in Rarely Has An Argument Refuted Itself So Comprehensively. Aside from being a smug, self-righteous asshole (like everyone else who writes there, which is why I stopped reading LGM years ago), Lemieux does not understand the Sanders-esque critique again Clinton.

Lemieux asserts, probably correctly, that Clinton will throw us a few more scraps than will the Republicans. And when we're starving, even scraps are important. But we will not have more than scraps until we're willing to sacrifice the scraps.

Yes, the Democrats are not as bad, I suppose, as the Republicans. But Clinton will not make abortion available to all women; she will, at best, slow down the erosion of the effective right of rich white women to an abortion (and do nothing to slow down the erosion for poor women and especially poor women of color). Clinton will not make good health care available to all; she will, at best, prop up Obamacare, which just shifts the rent extracted by insurance companies from a lot collected from a few to a little less collected from a lot more (but not everyone). Clinton will not raise the top marginal federal tax rate to 95 percent or even Nixon's 70 - 77 percent; she will, at best, not cut it below its already absurdly low 35 percent.

Neither Clinton nor Trump will even ameliorate, much less reverse, the mass incarceration and mass murder of black people by the police, courts, and vigilantes. Neither Clinton nor Trump will stop the wars against brown people, the slaughter of men, women, and children, in the Middle East, North Africa, and South and Central Asia, nor stop the loss of American soldiers' lives and health to perpetuate these wars. Neither Clinton nor Trump will stop assassination and torture. Neither Clinton nor Trump will house the homeless nor feed the starving. Neither Clinton nor Trump will bring back AFDC. Neither Clinton nor Trump will make good jobs available to all or even most. Neither Clinton nor Trump will strengthen unions and the political power of the working class.

The critique against Clinton isn't (or shouldn't be) about Clinton herself. I'm entirely unimpressed by email servers, Benghazi, Vince Foster, Whitewater, Wall Street speeches, etc. (Similarly, I don't really care about Trump University, and whatever other stupid shit Trump has done). Twenty or thirty years ago, yeah, that might have been important: the system was (apparently) working; the voters just needed to do the ordinary job of vetting and legitimizing officials. But today, that's enough. There's no point in arguing over who is fit to be President when there's nothing good for anyone to be President of.

There are a lot of people, let me attach the arbitrary label "progressives", who think capitalism can be reformed. I don't agree with them, but we disagree mostly over means and not ends. We have the same conception of social justice; we just disagree as to how best to get there. To reform capitalism, we must dismantle neoliberalism.

To be "progressive" does not mean fighting for ever-diminishing scraps from the neoliberal ruling class. It means fighting neoliberalism, in favor at least of the Keynesian capitalism of the middle 20th century.

Sanders, I believe, wants to reform capitalism and fight neoliberalism. He would have lost, he might have lost badly, but he wanted to fight. Clinton does not want to fight neoliberalism. She is, after all, one of its primary architects.

There are good enough reasons to vote for Clinton. But I think if you vote for Clinton, you have no right to call yourself a progressive; at best you are less reactionary than Trump (which ain't chopped liver). That's not a disreputable position, but it's not progressivism.

Take my advice with a grain of salt, because I'm not a progressive. I do not think capitalism can be reformed. I do think that neoliberalism is the inevitable result of any capitalist system. I think that no matter what I do — and no matter who wins the next election — we are heading for a global economic, political, and ecological catastrophe, a catastrophe that could well end in the destruction of all life on Earth. I don't want such catastrophe, but what I want doesn't matter.

Vote against neoliberalism

Look, I get it. The Donald is a nasty piece of work; I can't really fault you if you vote for Clinton just to block Trump. And, frankly, Hillary is a pretty nasty piece of work; I can't fault you if you vote Trump just to block Clinton.

But...

Personally, I don't care that Clinton and Trump are corrupt, lying sacks of shit, and I don't care which is the more corrupt, the bigger liar, the more egregious asshole. They're politicians: corruption, lies, and assholery go with the job.

What I do care about is that they both are neoliberals: in their bones. (Trump likes to make mercantilist noises, but if he wins, and he may wall win, he will be a rock solid neoliberal.)

*Neoliberalism: markets in everything, disempowering labor, replacement of the nation-state with the multinational corporation as the locus of state power. There's plenty in neoliberalism to earn both progressive and conservative opposition.

If you're against neoliberalism, at the very least you have to stop voting for neoliberals.

The neoliberals have the number of both progressives and conservatives. They make sure you have a "realistic" choice only between two brands of neoliberalism. So when election day rolls around, you say to yourselves, "Well, better a left/right neoliberal than nothing." But what you get, every time, is a neoliberal.

We are not going to defeat neoliberalism by actually electing people who aren't neoliberals. The neoliberals have a lock on the political process. We can, however, undermine the legitimacy of elections themselves, elections that are rigged to elect a neoliberal every time.

We have to vote, and we have to vote against neoliberals, i.e. against Democrats and Republicans both. Conservatives should — if they wish to oppose neoliberalism — vote Libertarian or Constitution Party. Progressives should vote for Green or Peace and Freedom. A neoliberal Democrat or Republican will win, of course, but if we can push the plurality down to 20 to 30 percent, especially if we are also increasing overall participation, we will erode the legitimacy of elections. And it has to be across the board: not just President, but Congress, the Senate, governors, state legislatures, city councils, attorneys general, dog catchers.

We do have to be careful. If Libertarians or Greens start to actually start to win, that means they have been coopted by the neoliberals, and we have to vote against them too.

What this means is that about half the time, the "wrong" neoliberal, the neoliberal you like least, will win this or that election. This is the price for undermining the legitimacy of elections. Only when neoliberalism has been utterly defeated can we try to restore electoral legitimacy.

If you want to support neoliberalism only because you believe that order is better than chaos, if you believe the devil we know is better than the devil we don't know, so be it. Whatever the reason, you support neoliberalism.

Don't be a craven hypocrite, though. If you support neoliberalism, then vote for Trump or Clinton, whichever you think will be the better neoliberal. Don't whine and complain that you're "holding your nose." Be proud. If neoliberalism is what you want, for whatever reason, then say it! Support it! Praise its virtues from the rooftops!

If neoliberalism is not what you want, then condemn it! Damn its vices! And vote against it.

I don't think voting for a candidate who will surely lose is a waste of your vote.

I think that making a vote you cannot be unequivocally proud of is a waste, not just of your vote, but of your citizenship.

Yves Smith on Clinton

Why Some of the Smartest Progressives I Know Will Vote for Trump over Hillary: Even on Wall Street, a powerful Sanders contingent so hates what Clinton stands for—the status quo—they’ll pull the lever for almost anyone else.

One of Smith's Naked Capitalism commenters says, "I have reached the point where I feel like voting for Trump against Clinton would be doing my patriotic duty. . . . If the only way to escape a trap is to gnaw off my leg, I’d like to think I’d have the guts to do it."

Smith says,

[T]he Democratic Party in the Clinton and Obama administrations has consistently embraced and implemented policies that strip workers of economic and legal rights to benefit investors and the elite professionals that serve them. Over time, the “neoliberal” economic order—which sees only good, never bad, in the relentless untrammeling of capital and the deregulation of markets—has created an unacceptable level of economic insecurity and distress for those outside the 1 percent and the elite professionals who serve them.

. . .

The Sanders voters in Naked Capitalism’s active commentariat also explicitly reject lesser-evilism, the cudgel that has previously kept true lefties somewhat in line. They are willing to gamble, given that outsider presidents like Jimmy Carter and celebrity governors like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura didn’t get much done, that a Trump presidency represents an acceptable cost of inflicting punishment on the Democratic Party for 20 years of selling out ordinary Americans.

Clinton vs. Trump

Looks like Clinton will be the Democratic Party nominee for President; we already know Trump is the Republican nominee.

I won't vote for Clinton in the general election.

• She voted for and supported the Iraq War
• She supported Bill Clinton's mass incarceration of poor and black people
• She supported Bill Clinton's destruction of welfare
• She's openly in the pocket of Wall Street and the parasitic banks

Maybe she will be less bad than Trump. Maybe Sanders will use his popularity to move the party platform to the "left". It doesn't matter. I will not and cannot vote for her. If enough people feel that way, Trump will win. So be it. I didn't offer a Devil's bargain to the voters.

The Democratic Party lost my support in 2007. They have done nothing to try to win it back. They won't do anything to win it back. Fair enough. I'm marginalized from the political process: the Democrats do not want my vote, so they won't have it. Their choice, not mine.

The Democratic party cannot be reformed

I see a lot of people looking at Bernie Sanders' campaign and thinking that his support shows the Democratic party might be reformed to become a true (or at least better) progressive, pro-worker party.

Ain't gonna happen.

Bernie Sanders won't win the nomination, If Sanders wins the nomination, he won't beat Trump: the neoliberal elite would rather have Trump than Sanders. And even if Sanders were somehow to become President, he wouldn't be able to actually do anything. (None of these arguments are reasons not to vote for Sanders.)

The retribution will be obviously facilitated if Clinton wins, and especially severe if Clinton loses to Trump: Sanders and his supporters will be blamed for the loss.

In 2019 and 2023, no one of Sanders' caliber will run against Trump or Clinton. The neoliberal wing of the Democratic party will get its shit together and make damn sure that no Sanders can even run, much less win. Anyone who supports Sanders now will be squeezed out of any meaningful role in the Democratic party. The neoliberal elite has too much power, and they're not going to give it up without a fight.

The only way to defeat neoliberalism is to defeat it all at once worldwide. It is certainly possible to defeat neoliberalism locally, but if a locality makes inroads against neoliberalism, it will be co-opted (Podemos) or brutally crushed (Syriza).

The neoliberal elite will retain its grip until the system fails catastrophically. The question is not how to defeat or even ameliorate neoliberalism politically: that train left the station in 1980. The question is: when neoliberalism fails catastrophically, who will pick up the pieces? The race is on between fascism and communism, and fascism is winning.

Happily, I don't expect to live until 2024.

A socialist analysis of the 2016 presidential election

According to Marx, only the proletariat is capable of a revolutionary transformation of society, not because people in the proletariat are somehow better, but because the contradictions of bourgeois society create the proletariat — and only the proletariat — in ways that will eventually make them capable of revolutionary transformation. Only when the proletariat has lost everything under capitalism will they find the will and the power to overthrow capitalism.

The bourgeoisie has been far more clever than Marx expected in clinging to power, but the contradictions remain, and for a variety of reasons, the bourgeoisie is running out of tricks.

The proletariat must, however, learn to seize power, and learn to exercise it. What makes them a revolutionary class does not make them a good ruling class: there is nothing about the proletariat that makes them especially wise, clever, or efficient. And thus with any ruling class: the landed aristocracy and the bourgeoisie had to learn to rule as well. There is no way to learn how to actually take power but by trying and failing to take it; there is no way to learn to actually rule without trying and failing to rule.

The 2016 Presidential election raises some interesting issues.

First, neoliberalism is facing real problems. Although he's a racist (or playing one on TV), his racism is not why Donald Trump is popular. He's popular because he's anti-neoliberalism. And if he does beat Clinton, Trump will beat her precisely because he's anti-neoliberalism, at least on paper. (Trump doesn't have the will to actually fight neoliberalism as President.)

Sanders should be beating Clinton like Trump is beating Cruz, right?. He should be beating her even more soundly: the bourgeois left is supposedly more against neoliberalism than the right, n'est ce pas? Hardly. Neoliberalism is a creature of the bourgeois left, not the right. The bourgeois right is much more mercantilist/realist than neoliberal. Socialists should never count the bourgeois left as allies; the bourgeois left would rather risk fascism than socialism.

There is nothing about the proletariat that automatically disposes them to socialism. When they are being oppressed, they will pick whoever offers them the best story about escaping their oppression. The bourgeois right and the fascists are telling a better story than the neoliberals and the socialists. What is encouraging about Trump's popularity is that the proletariat is starting to fight back, on its own terms and not on the terms dictated by the neoliberals. They are fighting back poorly, unwisely, ineffectively, but they are fighting.

It really doesn't matter whether Trump or Clinton wins the election. Both will kill a bunch of brown foreigners and black Americans. The economy will continue to stagnate and decline under both. Neither will do shit about global warming. People in Flint will still drink filthy water. We will continue to imprison people, especially black people, in numbers that would make Stalin blush. Middle class white women will probably do marginally better under Clinton; middle class white men will probably do marginally better under Trump, but everyone not in the top 0.1%, the actual ruling class, or the top 10%, their servants, will be worse off four years after the election.

Indeed, it is possibly better if Trump wins the election. First, Trump is a buffoon, without the will to actually be a real fascist. If he's elected, he will quickly expose the emptiness of the nationalist/realist agenda. If Clinton wins (or if Trump is denied the Republican nomination), then the forces of reaction will just get stronger, and whoever follows Trump could well have the will to real fascism.

Socialists have an historic opportunity, one not seen since the aftermath of the First Global Imperialist War (a.k.a. WW I). Neoliberalism is collapsing, and the forces of reaction have only (for now) a clown to represent them. We have the perfect opportunity to tell a better story (better in no small part because it's true). Neoliberalism is weak, and, losing hegemony, the American neoliberals can no longer buy off even the labor aristocracy, much less the proletariat as a class.

Trump's weak-tea fascism-lite, if quickly exposed, will not have the force to satisfy the proletariat. However, if current conditions are a great opportunity for socialism, they are a great opportunity for real fascism, which holds a lot of appeal for the still-maturing proletariat.

Trump and the authoritarians

Interesting article by Amanda Taub: The rise of American authoritarianism. However, it's stupid to talk about authoritarianism without mentioning Bob Altemeyer.

The Democrats: yet another party of neoliberal corporatist shills

Fredrik deBoer is not the Democratic party's biggest fan. He's spot on: the Democratic party is no friend of socialism.

Trump vs. Clinton

Nathan J. Robinson believes that Clinton can't beat Trup in the general election. I don't really follow electoral politics (shameful, I know), but he seems to have some good points. Clinton is a little sleazy, not well-liked, and a terrible campaigner. Robinson thinks Trump will eat her for breakfast.

I do know that if Clinton wins the nomination, I won't vote for her, even against Trump. I think Trump will be a better impetus for revolution than a Clinton or Sanders. I won't vote for Trump, but I'm not strongly motivated to work against him.

It should be an interesting few years.

On reparations

Coates writes Why Precisely Is Bernie Sanders Against Reparations?. C.K. MacLeod pushes back from the right with The Argument for Reparations, and the Question of Justice, and Cedric Johnson pushed back from the left with An Open Letter to Ta-Nehisi Coates and the Liberals Who Love Him. I don't really buy any of these positions.

First, MacLeod's position is fatally flawed. MacLeod argues that the Civil War is a credit to white people, that we spilled a lot of our own blood in an effort to eliminate the worst kind of racial injustice, literal chattel slavery. I agree with MacLeod, but only at the most superficial level. I don't think white people need to be ashamed of the Civil War, and I don't think Coates is correct to include it as a charge against white people. But Coates' case of the injustices perpetrated by white people against black people remains overwhelming, even with the war accruing to our credit: the "blood sacrifice" at the very best atones for chattel slavery, but the list of injustices runs far longer than just slavery itself.

MacLeod then descends into nonsense. He asks, "At what point in the process are alternative theories of justice to be considered?" Um... right in your column? This sort of meta shit (in the passive voice, no less) drives me crazy. By all means, propose an alternative theory of justice for us to consider. Indeed, MacLeod does so: he proposes for us to consider that the Civil War has wiped out all need to sacrifice to correct the oppression of black people in the United States; MacLeod believes we have sacrificed enough. I've considered it... and rejected it. But in general, right here, in the public debate, which includes Coates' essay, MacLeod's, and Johnson's is where we do in fact consider alternative theories of justice.

Johnson's essay addresses only an implication of Coates' essay, an implication I'm not sure is actually justified, although it might be. (I think that the author is this Cedric Johnson, and he's probably more hip than me to unspoken implications.) But the implication is really important, and deserves to be made explicit.

The implication is this: racial justice (and by extension other forms of status injustice, e.g. sexism, or homophobia) is in some sense in opposition to socialism. I don't think anyone, Coates included, believes that socialism requires racial injustice, but they are, to some extent, different things, and at least we must prioritize.

To a large extent, I disagree with Johnson, at least as a socialist. (I am white, so I entirely cede to black people the strategic and tactical decisions about how they fight for their own justice under present conditions.) As a socialist, I welcome Coates' efforts in general to hold our feet to the fire to actively work for not just socialism but also racial justice per se. And, similarly, I welcome women's efforts, and gay people's efforts. We cannot simply ignore these kinds of issues and focus exclusively on class issues.

I also don't think that we can ignore issues of class and general economic inequality.

First, I don't think it's possible to eradicate racism under the present capitalist system. If we prioritize the fight against racism without also fighting against capitalism, we will lose both fights. Theoretical considerations aside, 21st century capitalists have so deeply adopted racism and sexism that they will never abandon them. And without the fight against capitalism as capitalism, the present capitalist class will always have more power to perpetuate racism and sexism than people of color and women will have to eradicate them.

More importantly, it is theoretically possible to have capitalism without racism and sexism, but is that what we want? If we were to truly eradicate racism and sexism under capitalism, we would liberate only 0.1 percent — or at most 10 percent — of women and people of color. The 0.1 percent ruling, and the 10 percent serving with privilege — and the 90 percent exploited — would be racially and gender-neutral, but we would still be oppressing the 90 percent. If by "justice", you mean "justice for 10 percent", then I have to say our ideas of justice are entirely incompatible.

Which is why Coates' focus on reparations is, while not completely full of shit like MacLeod, at least problematic, because reparations rely on capitalism; reparations are incoherent under real socialism.

On the one hand, a pro-capitalist presidential candidate such as Sanders should support reparations (although Sanders probably sees tactical reasons not to). To the extent that reparations would be effective under capitalism, and capitalism is what we actually have right here right now, it makes perfect sense for Coates to advocate for it. Of course, reparations will never actually happen; as noted above, the capitalist class will never abandon racism as a tool to maintain social and political control, and anything more than token reparations would entail abandoning racism. But demanding reparations does make sense: you don't get half the pie by demanding only half the pie; you have to demand all of it.

However, socialism (real socialism, not Sanders' weak tea welfare capitalism, which was already decisively defeated in 1980) obviates the possibility of reparations because it already requires radical economic equality for everyone. Under socialism, there is no one to pay the reparations. If reparations are the sine qua non of racial justice, then racial justice is absolutely incompatible with socialism.

As a socialist, I have concerns about calls for "justice" of any kind that merely demands equal access for this or that group to enter the capitalist ruling class, and the privileged professional-managerial class that serves the ruling class. Yes, a racially and gender neutral capitalist ruling class is better than a racist and sexist ruling class, but not by that much. It sure is not justice.