I am puzzled why the administration is getting grief on the economy. They have performed a @##$% MIRACLE in preventing a complete meltdown after 8 YEARS of completely irresponsible economic policy. The idea that Geithner is gettign raked over the coals for being "ineffective" and indecisive is absurd. He and the other economic team basically dug the whole GLOBAL economy out of a deep trench. Even at 2.8% the fact that the US GDP is positive is amazing news, and definitive proof, by the way, of the practical truth of Keynsian theory.
The Stimulus Act has been a huge help. It could have been even more effective, had there been more support in the Senate for the policy (from Republicans), but they have been to a man (with a couple of women, and one who has subsequently become a Democrat) against it. It is pitiful for them to now claim that the stimulus is not working ENOUGH to prevent unemployment going up, when THEY were the ones who ensured it was not larger than it is.
But, despite GOP pernicious opposition economic policy has been remarkably effective, so effective that we are now, as an economy, growing again. But now the fear among the economists is that consumers are not spending enough money. But isn't the whole point about the balance of payments deficit and the credit crunch that consumers were spending too much in the first place? Don't we need a period in this country when there are not outlays aimed at consumption but rather at production? For exports, or for energy-saving? We need to get capital aimed at straightening out the US economy and its position in the global economy. The best way to do this is to invest in export industries and in infrastructure. So we should be happy that the consumer is not maxing out on credit cards again. The problem now is how to get the finace sector to pony up the capital to get the economy producing again--rather than paying itself huge bonuses. But isn't the fact that Wall Street is not doing its side of the bargain yet more evidence that the "free market" is not working, and is that not an indictment of right-wing anti-government theory, rather than something to blame the Obama admin. for, or Geithner?
So, spread the word that our guys have saved capitralism from itself--if they don't fulfil their side of the bargain by investing in their ownh system--then that is their fault (and that of their republican cronies)--not of the Obama administration.
The "boy (not) in the balloon" story reveals one thing and one thing only: the American mass media, especially the cable channels, including CNN and MSNBC, have forgotten what their purpose in life is: present the news. Not stupid, sensationalist nonsense out of TV land (the family in the Colorado balloon story starred in "Wifeswap") but significant events that might actually affect people's lives. How many 6-year-old boys died today because of violence or malnutrition or disease, around the world? Why did none of the news channels mention them? They weren't from a zany middle class family in a plush suburb of Colorado, perchance? Their father had not invented a flashy, shiny helium balloon that looked like a UFO? CNN are still plugging the story, except it is NOT a story--NOTHING happened! No child died, no one was even in danger. Yet the network, and to their shame MSNBC, cut away from Barack Obama's "town hall meeting in New Orleans in order to show sensational, but as it turns out completely empty and meaningless film of the shiny balloon. This, by the way, after the cable news channels had been incessantly plugging the line that Obama had not shown enough respect to NOLA because he was only spending 4 hours there. But as soon as a shiny object diverts them, the magpies at the cable news channels cut to the shiny UFO and away from Obama answering thoughtful questions about New Orleans' crisis and recovery. Who is showing disrespect for New Orleans, might I ask? A president who fulfills a promise to go to NOLA, even though, God only knows, he has enough things to occupy him, or the news channels, who can't be bothered to stick with the meeting when a balloon (which turns out to be empty) flashes through the Colorado sky? What is it about shiny vehicles (OJ’s SUV for instance) that acts like catnip for TV producers? CNN and MSNBC should be absolutely ashamed of themselves for being suckered into devoting their precious TV time to a non-event. If anyone thought that there was any integrity or intelligence left in the mass media in the USA, then today should have set them right. American news channels have become another form of infotainment, and have nothing to do with keeping the public informed about what they really need to know. Where, might I ask, were the stories about the six-year olds in New Orleans today suffering from poor education, lack of food, or simply lack of safety and prospects? But to report on THAT would have required some intelligence and effort, not the sort of thing, apparently, that CNN or MSNBC (let alone Fox) are interested in. A sad day for the fourth estate, and for democracy.
The New York Times has gone gaga. There is a terrible, ignorant editorial in there today about Obama's speech to school children:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/05/opinion/05sat2.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
The editorial defends Obama, and rightly points out that this is not socialism, but then goes on an insane tear against socialism and its evil history. For someone educated in Britain, and a historian knowledgeable about the history of socialism, this is an incredibly ignorant mistake for the NYT. They meant, I assume, communism or Stalinism, not socialism--unless they are now the Washington Times. I wrote a letter which was a shortened version of the following:
To the Editor,
In your editorial today “Respect Your Children” you state, correctly, that there is “nothing socialist in any of Mr. Obama’s policies”, but then add “as anyone with a passing knowledge of socialism and its evil history knows”. You continue: “But in this country, unlike actual socialist countries, nobody can be compelled to listen to the president.” To quote Repesentative Barney Frank, what planet are you on? Socialism as a philosophy and political movement, represented by parties such as the Labour Party in Britain, has been responsible for most of the progressive changes in Western political systems in the twentieth century, including universal suffrage. Liberals and conservatives might challenge the effectiveness of socialism to “deliver the goods” when it comes to wealth creation, but “evil history”? Was Léon Blum “evil”? Was Clement Atlee “evil”? Olaf Palme? Willy Brandt, Helmut Schmidt? Yet they were all socialists. Is universal health care, an achievement mainly of socialist parties in Europe “evil”? No, they were the leaders of peaceful social change through the ballot box towards a fairer, more just society, which they thought best achieved by increased state intervention in the economy (nationalization) and civil society, because the state was, after all, run by the people in a democracy. Current socialist parties in Europe have backed away from this and adopted a “social market” approach, but the socialist heritage is anything but “evil”.
And what “actual socialist countries” do you mean? There are none. Sweden comes close, but even that country never gave up the basic profit incentive of capitalism (and did very well despite its near-socialism). The socialist parties never really attempted a complete socialization of any country. If you mean North Korea, or the Soviet Union and its satellites, or perhaps Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela, then I would put it to you that you are making an elementary mistake, confusing socialism with either communism or totalitarian personality cults, and have been reading far too much Hayek for your own intellectual good. Unless, of course, you are no longer the New York Times, but have morphed overnight into the northern edition of the Washington Times?
Next time, do not let someone with a “passing knowledge” of anything write editorials, if you want to preserve your newspaper’s estimable reputation as publishing all that is fit to print. This editorial was not.
Steven Beller, Washington DC
Here are three thoughts that came up in a debate over healthcare on Facebook. My interlocutor was concerned about the fact that European countries might have more universal healthcare systems, but they also had much higher rates of income tax, and so introducing a similar health care system here would result in similarly high income tax rates, seemd to be the argument. Partly because of this he wanted to go slow in implementing change. There is only an indirect link betwen high income tax rates and universal health care in many of the countries cited, because many of those countries have systems based on PRIVATE insurance and PRIVATE medical systems, but, regardless, here are my three cobbled-together thoughts:
First, forget about the income tax rate, concentrate instead on how much the health care sector costs us, the American people as a society. The cost is roughly TWICE that of what Europeans have to pay, as a proportion of their GDP, yet Europeans have the same or a better standard of health care than what Americans receive. Talk about inefficient! It is not so much what happens to our tax dollars, as what happens to our health care dollars, public--and even more to the point--private. it is like having an 18% tax on everything we do, when the Europeans get away with less than 10% for the same service.
Second, if you look at the proposed legislation there are ALREADY long delays and a lengthy time frame for the implementation of the changes, which are, compared to single-payer or the like, actually quite conservative. This "we need more time" is just a way to delay and frustrate those who want to bring some real, positive change to US health care.
Third thought: guaranteeing universal health care provision should not be seen as a way of limiting individual freedom, as is implied by those stressing the impact on income taxes. Instead, in a country such as Britain or Canada, with "socialized medicine", individuals are free to move from job to job without constantly having to worry about whether their health insurance will end with their leaving one employer, or whether it will be adversely affected due to their new employer's policy. There is none of this neo-feudal relationship, with individual dependency on the boss, because health care is guaranteed regardless of your employer. Isn't that sort of freedom and labor mobility what a freedom loving country such as the USA should want?
Have you seen the latest inanity of the GOP rightists and their pet mainstream media puppets? here is the link:
http://news.aol.com/article/the-point-obama-school-speech/654754?icid=main|htmlws-main|dl1|link5|http%3A%2F%2Fnews.aol.com%2Farticle%2Fthe-point-obama-school-speech%2F654754
According to this it is a "socialist agenda" to tell school kids that they should exercise responsibility and work hard for the good of themselves and of the country. Apparently, GOPers are incensed about the idea of kids being asked to help President Obama, sensing some fascist/authoritarian dictatorship no doubt on the lines of Hitler's Fuehrerprinzip. How come they never felt the same when they were demanding total loyalty to our heroic Commander-in-Chief, George W. Bush, after 9/11, and attacking any criticism of the regime as treason? Hypocrisy is too good a word for what Republicans are perpetrating at the moment. Let us hope the American people sees through this cynicism.
Several of my friends on Facebook have posted this slogan as their status. I think it should be spread around as far as possible, because it encapsulates in a sentence or two the pressing, moral reasons why we need healthcare reform in this country. So please act accordingly:
No one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick. If you agree, please post this as your status for the rest of the day. Thanks for all the others who have posted before and after me...
By the way, in no other developed country in the world, that I know of, is there such a thing anymore as "medical bankruptcy" or people dying because they cannot afford health care. These are simply beyond the Pale of civilized societies. It is a MORAL DISGRACE that both of these things are still possible in this country, which we pride ourselves as being the best country on Earth.
There is a brilliant article by T R Reid in the Washington Post today pointing out myths about foreign health care. It also makes the point that universal health care is possible (in Germany, Switzerland and other good systems) without a public option, but with VERY strong regulation and an opening up of competition, to a national level.
Here is the linkhttp:
//www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/21/AR2009082101778.html
The dangers of preventative care
You do get some fascinating arguments from the opponents of health care reform. There is, if you have not already seen it, Betsey McCaughey’s priceless discussion with Jon Stewart about the Democratic plot to pull the plug on grandma:
Am I being cynical, or is Ms. Pipes? Or, as I suspect, a bit like Ms. McCaughey, is she just too ideologically driven and short-sighted to see what she is actually saying? She might be aghast at this conclusion—but then she should not be quoting CBO figures whose (inhuman) objectivity, as with so many statistics, completely ignore the human, the moral, dimension, and the higher purpose of health care in the first place.
The recent kerfuffle on the health care reform debate and the public option reminds me of an episode from the Clinton debate. This is not a déjà vu all over again memory (yet), but it does I think illustrate how completely remote from reality many of those on the Right in this debate are, and how completely beyond the parameters of sensible policy making compared to the rest of the world.
It must have been in the summer of 1993. Mrs Thatcher (not always my political role model) was on “This Week with David Brinkley” to encourage intervention in Bosnia (rightly in my view). George Will was one of the journalists on the panel to interview her, and he could not resist asking his political heroine to comment on the “healthcare debate we are having in our country” (over Hillary Clinton’s plans). Maggie replied by saying that it was not her place, as the former head of another country’s government, to comment on a purely domestic issue such as health care. What she could do, however, was simply state what her country’s health care system was. She then described how in Britain there was a state-run system of universal health care (the NHS), funded by taxpayers, in which everyone received health care according to need. The standard of health care provided by this system was, she said, very high and efficiently delivered. She then said that those who desired a higher level of care could also take out private health insurance on top of the taxes they paid to the government to fund the NHS. Maggie then proclaimed that this system worked very well and that she was proud of its success in providing quality health care to the British people.
George Will’s face was a picture. He was, as they say in Britain, gob-smacked. His heroine, his idol, Mrs Freemarket herself, had revealed herself to be – a supporter of, of, socialized medicine, a proud supporter, and hence a---socialist! Or at least that was what the stunned expression on his face seemed to suggest.
Now, Mrs Thatcher was no fool. No politician with any ambition to remain in office in Britain can claim that the NHS is NOT a good idea. There was, apparently, a Tory MEP (Member of the European Parliament) who derided the NHS recently, but the Tory (Conservative) leader, David Cameron, was quick to reiterate the 100% support of his party (the nearest Britain comes to a Republican Party) for the NHS (i.e. what is here called socialized medicine, or “single-payer”). British politics, and European politics generally, are that far to the Left of American politics that much of the Republican agenda just baffles even Conservatives. Nevertheless, I do not think that Mrs Thatcher was being merely political in proclaiming her support for the British system.
Instead I am prepared to believe that she actually supported what she, after all, had helped to shape for over ten years, which was a dual-public/private health care system. The British system in that sense is more of a compromise than the Canadian system, because it does allow for private health insurance alongside the NHS.
This has not been uncontroversial—there are many accusations that the private health system in Britain piggybacks on the public system, and there are always questions about how resources should be distributed, and what right doctors acting privately should have to used public facilities etc. There is always talk and grumbling about the NHS not providing enough health care fast enough or efficiently enough. Nevertheless, the British system, overall, is remarkably efficient. It provides, as a right, universal health care to all British citizens, and it provides it at a level (according to health care indexes) at or above the American level, at about half the price--as a percentage of GDP. Given that British GDP is lower per capita than American GDP, this means that the British get the same level of health care at less than half the cost per person.
The British system also offers some pointers to another question roiling the American debate at the moment: whether private insurance would survive in the face of a “public option”. This has all been hyped beyond any reasonable level, of course, by health insurance companies afraid of losing their obscene profits and having to make do with just reasonable ones. The extent to which a public option could or would undercut private insurance would be limited by the amount of capital the government would be prepared to sink in to the government entity that would do the negotiating and managing for the public option, and that is all open to negotiation. Any public option would be puny relative to a system like in Britain where the government system is the dominant payer(/player). But the lesson from Britain should be heartening for private insurance companies and their free-market supporters, because, despite the fact that the British government has invested billions of pounds in the NHS over the decades, there is still a healthy demand for private health insurance. Why? Because people who have the money do not fancy sharing a room with other patients, or they do not want to wait for their procedure, or they have an aversion to public institutions, or they simply want to pay for the added convenience and comfort that private medicine offers in Britain. It might also be the case that the for-profit health insurance industry in Britain is less ossified in its structures and has more incentive to be efficient, and can therefore provide a better product than the NHS. Whatever the reason, private insurance prospers despite the apparent dominance of the NHS. So it is a myth to think that a public option will wipe out the competition—is not the private sector supposed to deliver the goods more efficiently than government in any case?
The health insurance industry should have the courage of its convictions and see what happens with a public option. If private insurance really is more efficient in delivery and cost terms then it will be able to keep the public option as a small provider of health care of last resort. Only if the claim to the superiority of the private sector turns out to be a myth, and the industry’s huge profits turn out to have been a result of monopolistic or oligopolistic practices (sweet deals and exclusion of competition) will thre be any threat to the survival of the health insurance industry. And surely we don’t believe either of those things, do we?
The Guardian has an interesting article that tells readers the truth about certain claims about healthcare in the British NHS. Some of the claims (about breast cancer) are based on facts (which are open to interpretation), but most are outright lies. See this link:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/aug/11/nhs-sick-healthcare-reform
My experience of the British NHS has been that it is a miraculous institution that delivers a better level of care than the US system at a fraction of the cost (much like the Canadian system). In any case, whether it is single-payer, public option, co-operatives, or much tighter regulation of the insurance industry, we need to get the facts about the healthcare disaster in this country straight, and make it clear to people that other countries have much better returns on their money for the same standard of health care.
So, let me get this straight--after all this talk of needing to let the markets decide on how to distribute capital as efficiently as possible, getting government out of the way so that the effects of "trickle downn economics" can work their magic, we are now confronted with a situation where the people with all the money (the rich) are not prepared to risk any of it actually to invest in the economy, because of the awful choices that were made by their investment advisors and financiers, and the chronic lack of demand of a populace who can no longer make up for their declining incomes by taking out more loans (denied by the investment strike of the rich--see above). And we are told that the answer is for the state (the society at large as represented in its government) to step in and bail out everyone and invest huge sums in infrastructure and the like to stimulate and create demand in the economy.
"Free market" capitalism only seems to work until it does not, and then the state has to step in big-time to put right capitalism's obvious flaws (if it has been unwise enough to forget that capitalism always needs to be kept under control to avoid this dysfunction).
Now, whose theory was it that capitalism was fatally flawed because it expoited the workers (read: middle class) by not giving them a fair share of income compared to the owners of the means of production (read: the rich), thus immiserating them (relatively) and leaving them with too small a share of the pie to buy the goods that they produced? I believe it was a certain Karl Marx.
And whose answer to this conundrum was to get the state to make up the shortfall in demand by instituting large deficit-speanding and investment in public works? I believe it was John Maynard Keynes.
So when will the Harvard Business School be putting Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes back to the top of the syllabus of their Economics 101 and Government 101--and deleting the "trickle-down" lot?
Joe Biden has been roundly condemned for his “gaffe” about Obama, as a new president, being tested within the first six months of his presidency by a crisis intentionally started by a hostile power or group. The McCain campaign have jumped at this opportunity to say that Obama is too risky, because he will invite such a crisis, whereas if McCain is elected there will be no such temptation, and no such crisis. But all the McCain camp have done is jump into a trap. Their response is unrealistic, foolish and indeed foolhardy—because it should open them up to the accusation, by Democrats, that McCain just does not get it. The fact is EVERY new president is fated to be tested by America’s enemies in the first months of office, and there is nothing at all about McCain that makes him immune to this international trial by ordeal. His rather blustering approach to all policy decisions, and his erratic behavior probably opens him up to a HIGHER likelihood that America’s enemies will see profit in goading McCain, to make him commit a major strategic blunder, such as Bush did with invading Iraq.
So if Obama is president-elect (as I fervently hope he will be), he will, as Biden truthfully stated, be challenged at some point by America’s enemies, to try him out; but the same goes equally if not more so for McCain. The important thing to consider is whether the two candidates have the necessary “steel in the spine” and the necessary thoughtfulness and poise to respond to such a challenge well. (Biden’s whole point was that he thought Obama did indeed have these qualities.) But a very large part of being able to respond well to such testing is BEING PREPARED, and a very large part of being prepared is RECOGNITION that such a test will indeed come along. Obama and Biden have, ti their initial cost, shown that they realize this, but what of John McCain? He has actually responded by saying “I’ve been tested”, implying that such a test by an enemy of America will simply not happen on his watch. But this is rhetorical sleight of hand, indeed rhetorical nonsense, because McCain has NEVER been tested as president, because he has never been president! So what is McCain saying? Is he saying that because he once was a Naval Airman many years ago, and heroically survived the ordeal of being a POW in Vietnam, that this makes him tested and a sure thing for the completely different role of President of the United States? It is like saying that because I have passed a driving test, that makes me qualified to fly a 747 Jumbojet. In other words, McCain is deluding himself in thinking that he has passed the test already and will never be tested by America’s enemies as president, because he has totally mistaken one form of testing for another. And in making this mistake he has shown that he misunderstands entirely the realities that will confront the next president, and in denying that there will be a test he has failed at the vital first step any president must make, of RECOGNITION that he has to be PREPARED for this inevitable test. We cannot afford McCain’s HUBRIS.
What McCain’s reaction to Biden’s “gaffe” has shown is that McCain is unfit to be president.
We need to nail the McCain campaign on the out-and-out lies they are telling about Obama’s economic and tax proposals. McCain keeps claiming that Obama will “raise your taxes” even though he full well knows that Obama’s proposed tax reform would lessen the tax burden on 95% of taxpayers, i.e. us, and only raise taxes on the very rich (which is some of us but mostly them). What Obama needs to do, perhaps in a debate setting, is present to the public a clear choice—how much an average American family, let us say total income of $70,000 (the median is I believe roughly that for married couple families), would get back in tax relief according to a) Obama’s proposals (answer: substantial) and b) McPalin’s proposals (not much if anything). I think that would be a vital weapon in making the American public see reason again.
I am fed up with people, especially Republicans, and especially John and Cindy McCain, calling Barack and Michelle "elitists" when it is as clear as DAY that the real power elites, corporate and money elites in this country are on the Republican side. The idea that somehow or other getting an education and speaking well makes you "elitist" strikes at the fundamental idea of this country that you should work and learn hard in order to get on, which is exactly what Barack and Michelle did. John McCain on the other hand did it the traditional Republican way and married into money (the second time around) and what a lot of money Cindy McCain can get her hands on, and spend! How about $300,000 on her Convention getup? Don't believe me? Go to:
http://www.vanityfair.com/online/politics/2008/09/cindy-mccains-300000-outfit.html
After that, any time a Republican comes at you with the elitist nonsense, just ask them for the $300,000 back.
It took a while, but here is the talk I gave in NYC recently. It takes a while to get to the Obama reference, but I think (hope) it is worth it!
Beyond prejudice: Antisemitism’s lessons for today’s world.
À propos the presentation of Antisemitism. A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2008) at the Leo Baeck Institute, New York, June 17, 2008
Antisemitism is often seen as an endemic prejudice, a mental disease almost, that has infected European societies for centuries past—and persists as such even today, under the surface. The study of antisemitism often appears to discount the historical reality in which antisemitism existed, treating it as a prejudice—how it developed, and how it affected people’s attitudes and actions, without looking at the historical contexts in which antisemitism actually functioned. It often appears enough simply to prove that this or that famous figure, this or that politician or writer, this or that religion, culture or society had antisemitic prejudices, and leave it at that, as one more proof of the irredeemable Jew-hatred of Western or (post-) Christian society.
The problem with this fairly straightforward research program concerning antisemitism is that it does little to explain the actual historical record of Jewish-non-Jewish relations in European history, or indeed history generally. Considering that antisemitic prejudice is held to be ubiquitous, deeply ingrained into Christian and hence Western culture, it appears very odd that there have been many societies within Europe and the Americas, ranging over time and space, in which antisemitism or anti-Jewish animosity were not strong, and certainly not predominant attitudes politically or socially. England, for instance, had been one of the most fervently anti-Jewish societies in medieval Europe, originating the ritual murder libel, and then being the first Western country to expel the Jews in 1290. By the nineteenth century, however, anti-Jewish animosity had so diminished that, when Adolf Stoecker tried to spread his newfangled political movement of “antisemitism” (the term was only invented in the late 1870s to reflect the racial underpinnings of the supposed “Semitic” threat of the Jewish race) to England, English public opinion basically laughed him out of court. Despite some “genteel” anti-Jewish disdain in certain sectors of the upper classes (but not all) and some not so genteel anti-Jewish prejudice lower down the social scale, the fact was that creating a political movement to combat “Semitism” appeared ridiculous, and un-English, because general English public opinion held that discrimination against Jews, as against the members of any respectable religious group, was anathema.
Even if prejudices against Jews existed, and research has abundantly shown they did, especially based on Christian theology, the question that we should ask is how effective such prejudices were when it came to social or political action? The answer in many cases was very ineffective, sometimes so ineffective (as in nineteenth century Italy) as to be barely noticeable. Moreover anti-Jewish hatred, anti-Jewish discrimination, did not automatically translate into political success.
Even when prejudice against Jews did result in anti-Jewish persecution and discrimination, as it did, for instance, in the Russian Empire, it did not necessarily take the form of modern antisemitism. Actual antisemitism, the modern political and ideological movement that began in the 1870s, led to the Holocaust, and whose influence is still with us today, was not a ubiquitous phenomenon in nineteenth century Europe. In much of Western Europe and Southern Europe it was virtually non-existent. The key region where it originated and developed was Central and Eastern Europe, primarily the German Empire and the Habsburg Monarchy of Austria-Hungary. The movement started here and it was politically most successful here. It was here that modern antisemitism, as opposed to traditional anti-Jewish animosity, took shape as a reaction to the perceived threat resulting from the granting of legal equality to Jews and their integration into society as full members.
Tsarist Russia, in contrast, was notoriously hostile to Jews, but Russia’s Jewish Question and hence the basis of Russian anti-Jewish hostility was quite different than in Central Europe, because Jews never achieved full legal equality and emancipation there and were never as integrated as a group in Russian (or Polish or Ukrainian or Lithuanian or White Russian) society. Hence anti-Jewish hostility—which did come also, admittedly, to be called antisemitism—tended to be more backward-looking, more traditional, and did not produce the Holocaust. The key question in the historiography of antisemitism is how did modern Germany (and Austria-Hungary) go so wrong as to regress and produce the Holocaust? The fact is that despite all the evident government-backed hostility against Jews in Russia, the pogroms of the 1880s and later, the active government discrimination against Jews, tsarist Russia did not perpetrate genocide against Jews, but “civilized” Germany did. So Russia is not the main subject, nor is, despite the Dreyfus Affair, France. That affair was more about the character of France than about Jews, and in any case it was the republican, Dreyfusard side that won, reasserting France’s liberal and progressive values (and hence the equal rights of Jews)—until 1940. The main subject in a study of antisemitism’s career must be Central Europe.
Even in Central Europe antisemitism was far from being successful everywhere. There was some minor political success in parts of Germany, such as the more rural parts of Hesse; there was more success in the Habsburg Monarchy, with the spectacular victory of the antisemitic Christian Socials in Vienna from 1895, as well as success in other parts of Cisleithania (the Austrian half of the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy). Yet there were also many areas and communities in Central Europe which resisted or defused political antisemitism. Budapest—and Hungary generally—before 1918 saw the Hungarian political leadership stamping down hard on antisemitic agitation in the 1880s, so that Hungary was viewed before the First World War as a relative paradise for Jews. Similarly, the leadership of the German community in Prague, as Gary Cohen has shown, adopted a very pro-Jewish approach. Till van Rahden’s study of Breslau (Wroclaw) in Germany similarly shows a city in which Jews and other Germans coexisted with little friction before 1914. In Germany generally, indeed, political antisemitism as such was a bust before 1914, and even the German capital, Berlin, was far from being a center of antisemitic power, being instead run by a liberal “Progressive” administration.
There are rational explanations for these examples. In Budapest and Hungary the political leadership regarded Hungarian Jewry as allies in two key causes. First, many Hungarian Jews had voluntarily “Magyarized”, adopting the Hungarian national language of Magyar and a Magyar Hungarian national identity, and thus helping the Magyar effort to achieve a Magyar-speaking majority in the Hungarian Kingdom, where only a minority in the 1860s, lower than 40%, spoke the “national” language (as opposed to Romanian, Slovak, German and so forth). Second, the Magyar leadership viewed Jews as an entrepreneurial minority who were Hungary’s best hope for achieving the national goal of rapid commercial and industrial modernization. For these reasons, any attack on Jews such as political antisemitism was seen by them as also an attack on the Hungarian (Magyar) national cause, and should be suppressed—as it largely was.
In Prague, it was a question for the German leadership of “ethnic survival” in a city which was becoming increasingly Czech in population. Those Jews in the city who still were German-speakers constituted roughly half of the German-speaking population; therefore to preserve a German presence in the city it made sense not to alienate the Jewish community. Again, Jews were seen as allies, and not foes, depending on circumstances.
What these two examples suggest is that even though there may well have been an underlying anti-Jewish prejudice based largely on Christian anti-Judaism, individuals and whole communities appear to have been amenable to rational considerations when deciding whether to let this prejudice decide their choices and actions. In other words, antisemitism in Central Europe was not always impervious to reason, and was indeed amenable to argument and experience, especially if circumstance suggested that one’s own interests would be better served by being positive with Jews rather than negative. The question then becomes why, nevertheless, did antisemitism in Central Europe become as prominent and potent as it did, and why did it remain so?
I suggest that there were three main factors which made Central Europe particularly fertile for antisemitism. The first concerned the Jews of Central Europe themselves. To be clear: Jews were not to blame for what happened to them, they were not to blame for antisemitism, let alone the Holocaust, nor were they even “responsible” in any meaningful, moral sense. However, the way in which Jews entered the modern world in Central Europe, the strategies they followed in integrating into German and Habsburg society and culture, the time it took, and the very framework in which their “emancipation” and “assimilation” (integration) took place, all were factors making for a persistence of the “Jewish Question”, and hence an opening for antisemitism, that were not present in other European states to the north, west and south.
The initial problem was that Jews in Central Europe did not, unlike their western counterparts, gain their civil equality on their right to this as citizens or subjects. Instead, in the German states and in Austria-Hungary the right to full civil equality came to be provisional on the achievement by Jews of a sufficient modernization and integration—assimilation—into German or Austrian society. This quid pro quo between Jews earning their right to equality through acculturation and assimilation, so that they would become just like all other Germans/Austrians, and their actually being granted that equality took roughly ninety years (1780 to 1871) to be fully realized. In the course of those decades a whole ideology of emancipation grew up, with various associations and support systems to enable Jews in Central Europe to become just like their fellow German and Austrian citizens. These were, of course, Jewish institutions, and it was a Jewish ideology, all aimed at achieving through Bildung (education, but also with the sense of self-realization and self-improvement, both morally and aesthetically) parity with their non-Jewish fellow citizens. The end result, as historians of Central European Jewry know only too well, was that Jewish identity in the region did profoundly change, in terms of occupations, and in the character and level of education, as well as in understanding of what the Jewish religion meant, but what this did not achieve was a “disappearance” of Jewish difference. The very effort over decades to achieve what the German and Austrian states wanted Jews to become, resulted only in a new social profile for the Jewish communities, and another, new Jewish identity.
Moreover the very energy that Jews in Central Europe put in to their transformation into well-educated citizens and prosperous agents in the new, modern economy (instead of itinerant beggars and peddlers, as many had been) meant that, as a group, they stood out for being much more bourgeois, and better educated, than the average Central European. By 1900 the very success of Jews in accepting the challenge set to them a century before had left them, despite their being a really tiny minority, with a very high profile in many fields of modern culture and the modern economy. In other words, from a certain point of view, Jews had not actually achieved the goal of being just like their fellow citizens. They were far too successful in the rational, modern world to be seen as the same, or as “German”.
That at least was the conclusion drawn by many in a very significant branch of Central European and German culture: irrationalism. The second factor encouraging a survival of animosity against Jews in Central Europe was the high cultural context in which Jewish integration was received, and the strength specifically of what has been termed irrationalism in key sectors of central European culture and society, especially among many cohorts of German and Austrian-German students, who went on to populate academia and the liberal professions, and become the backbone of the (non-Jewish part of the) Bildungsbürgertum of German-speaking Central Europe. Irrationalism was a form of German idealism, based on Romanticism. Its leading lights in the nineteenth century were Arthur Schopenhauer, Richard Wagner and Friedrich Nietzsche. It was not irrational per se, rather, much as the counter-culture of the Sixties, it asserted that rationalism, an absolute reliance on rationality, was too narrow a basis on which to conduct human affairs, manage human relations, or create culture and art. Instead, more emphasis needed to be put on the “irrational” side of human experience, on emotions, on creative imagination, and on the organic, living world, which in human terms was seen as heritage and descent, or “blood”. The problem for Jews presented by the adoption of this irrationalism by the world of Central European high culture was that, first: Jews had very much adopted the rationalist attitudes that had been behind the initial quid pro quo of emancipation; and second: irrationalism’s emphasis on the source of emotional authenticity and cultural creativity in the humus of the organic given meant that German (or Czech, or Polish, or whatever nationality’s) culture meant that Jews, not being descended of that organic whole, could never be authentic bearers of that culture. Therefore from this perspective Jews, contrary to the assumptions of the ideology of emancipation, could never become just like their fellow Germans or Central Europeans.
The third factor making Central Europe receptive to antisemitism was the form of Central European modernization. Namely, Germany and the other nascent polities within the Habsburg Monarchy entered the modern world through nationalism, and ultimately through integral ethnonationalism. Even though Central Europe had been once the site of the universalist and multi-layered polity of the Holy Roman Empire, whose multifaceted character the Habsburg Monarchy perpetuated, the dominant form of modernity that was seen as the way to the modern, rational future was the nation-state, and a nation-state based on the sort of organic community that Romantic thought had seen as “natural”, whether linguistic, or increasingly as the nineteenth century advanced, ethnic or racial. It was the old multi-national empires and polities that were seen as “unnatural” and hence irrational, whereas the integral ethnonational state, where everyone shared the bond of natural community through culture or “blood”, was seen as the best guarantee of national cohesion and hence national success.
This modernization through integral ethnonationalism was seen at the time as “rational”, because based on the most advanced scientific theories available, especially those coming from biology and Darwinian evolutionism. Although antisemitism is seen today as a completely irrational ideology, based on illusory claims about Jewish difference, especially racial difference, we need to remember that at the time racialism was seen by many as on the cutting edge of scientific thought, especially in Central Europe. It fitted both the Romantic organicism behind nationalism, and the materialism implicit in nineteenth century scientific thought. What could be more “scientific” than a theory that traced everything important, including our values and our thought patterns, through materially inherited (racial) traits, as Darwinian evolutionary theory suggested with regard to species?
Central Europe, and especially Germany, was particularly fertile for this racial, organicist-based thinking, because its intellectual tradition had by 1900 become one in which holistic thought, with the whole greater than the individual, was seen to have priority over “Anglo-Saxon” and French traditions of empiricism and Comteian positivism in which individual facts (and individuals) were prior. Hence the good of greater whole of the nation, of the Volk, increasingly racially defined, was what counted, not the rights of individuals. This holistic nationalism (mirrored, ironically perhaps, in the nationalisms of the smaller Central European nationalities, such as Poles and Czechs) received a huge boost in prestige from the fact that Germany by 1900 appeared to be the most scientifically advanced, socially best organized, and industrially and economically most vital (on the way to surpassing Britain) nation in Europe. It was the German model of modernity that appeared to be the path to the future, not the empirical Western one. This perceived dichotomy was described in many ways at the time. One of the best known was Thomas Mann’s contrast between Western Zivilisation and German Kultur—the former superficial and atomistic, the latter profound, holistic and deeply spiritual. (The same sort of dichotomy can also be seen in the near contemporary novel by E.M.Forster, Howard’s End.) it does not take too much imagination to realize that Jews would, because of the very terms of the emancipation, their liberalism, their role in the modern capitalist economy, even reverence of many of them for English liberty, be identified by antisemites with this foreign, Western empirical, lower modernity, and hence be seen as unsuitable for the higher, German path to modernity.
Jews were, indeed, in a double or even triple bind: to begin with they had not been rational enough for Central European states’ liking; then they had become too rational for the irrationalists; and finally they had ended up being seen as having the wrong kind of rationality. Behind this constant moving of the goalposts was that while Jews were trying to be Germans, for instance, the Germans were still trying to define themselves, and one of the main ways of doing so was by defining themselves against others. This process of “negative integration” (I know I am German, because I am not an x) could employ external targets (such as the English) or it could employ internal ones, such as Catholics (as in the Kulturkampf), who owed allegiance to a foreign power (the Pope); or socialists, who threatened social order and believed in international brotherhood—or Jews. The place in Central Europe where this definition of self against the Other was most pronounced and most successful was Vienna, where Karl Lueger’s genius lay in his realization that the disparate groups opposed to liberalism in Vienna all could be unified by their opposition to Jewish influence. Hence his Christian Socials captured power in Vienna’s municipal government in 1895 on an explicitly antisemitic ticket, due to Lueger’s instrumental rationality in selecting Jews as his main Feindsbild (target). It is still not clear that Lueger really was all that convinced of his antisemitic rhetoric, but what it achieved was a uniting behind a Viennese and later Austrian identity that defined itself, ultimately by being “Christian”, i.e. not Jewish.
Closely linked to this danger of being the preferred target of “negative integration” in Central Europe, the very logic behind nationalism, which was in itself very modern and rational, also posed an immense problem for Jews. The law of the excluded middle seems on the face of it a truism: something either is or is not the case. It cannot be both a and not a, so in classical logic the middle ground (both/and) is excluded. This law of either/or makes sense in any number of settings, and its simple efficiency was behind much of the administrative and economic power of the emergent nation-state, comparing most favorably to the complexities and apparent self-contradictions of previous multi-national and international polities. Instead of the multiple loyalties of these premodern polities, only one loyalty, loyalty to the nation-state, was expected of the citizen/subject of such a state. This simplified things immensely, much to the benefit of logistical and bureaucratic efficiency. Yet it also did much damage to actual human relations, and actual human experience, for it forced decisions in many instances that were not really necessary. For instance, this logic imparted huge pressures in the nation-state system for citizens to have only one national identity/loyalty, and not be indulged in any dual or triple loyalty, regardless of one’s background and parentage. The monolithic nation-state demanded in principle total and absolute loyalty, and identity, and made any form of different identity, allegiance or loyalty, ultimately any difference at all, suspect. If you were of French and German background, for instance, there was huge pressure to choose sides—one could be either French, or German, one could not be both.
Although it was not immediately obvious, given the status of Jews in most of Europe as a religious minority, the residual identity of Jews as an ethnic group, and in any case as still recognizably different in social, cultural, political and economic terms, meant that Jews did not fit in to this model of the monolithic nation-state. Whether they wanted it or not, Jews had remained different as a group within Central European and German society. Subjectively they were different, because most still saw themselves as Jews, even many of those who had converted or were konfessionslos. Intersubjectively, Jews were also seen as different by most other non-Jewish Germans, as part of a special, other group; and objectively as well Jews remained as a group noticeably different by most measures, whether it was political allegiance, cultural preferences, level of education, or socio-economic stratification.
There really should not, by our current standards, have been anything at all wrong with this continuance of difference. Indeed one major marker of difference was the relative, and very significant economic and intellectual success of Central European Jewry. Central European Jews, it can be claimed, were the most successful example of minority integration in modern times and were a huge cultural success (much as American Jewry has been). The Leo Baeck Institute is indeed an institutional testament to that immense achievement. Despite being a tiny portion of the populace, Jews came to occupy a vital place in German and Central European culture and society, acting as the pluralizing leaven of German and Central European modern culture.
Yet this very success was, in the terms of the exclusory logic of nationalism, and in terms of the original quid pro quo of the emancipation bargain, let alone in terms of antisemitism, a sign of failure, for it meant that Jews were still different, identifiably different. Given the exclusory either/or, “us v. them” logic of nationalism, one could either remain a Jew, or become a German, but, ultimately, one could not be both. And, if one were a devotee of racial thought, the question was in any case moot, for Jews could never become really, authentically German in any case. This explains the paradox that the place where Jewish integration had its greatest cultural and intellectual achievements was also the place where antisemitism flourished best.
By 1914, these three factors meant that the potential for disaster for Central European Jewry was already present, and some of the more perceptive and sensitive commentators of the times, such as Arthur Schnitzler in The Road to the Open, could see this and express it in writing. Nevertheless, and this needs stressing, the situation in Central Europe regarding Jews and antisemitism in the early years of the twentieth century did not have to result in the Holocaust. E.H.Carr once wrote that, in history, nothing is inevitable until it has happened, and the Holocaust is very much a case in point. The potential was there, but potentialities are not always realized; it was the self-induced collapse of European, of Western, civilization in the First World War, and the subsequent economic and political crisis of the Twenties and Thirties, which was never really resolved before the Second World War, that allowed those potentialities to be realized.
The resulting Third Reich was the hyperbolic realization of Central European nationalism’s logic, and the logic of Central Europe’s special form of holistic modernity, taken to absurd, ultimately insane, paranoid, lengths. Yet in those terms the consequence of the Holocaust was but a logical progression, of purification of the body politic and prevention (by extermination) of those “foreign” bodies, the equivalent of the “free radicals” of today’s medicine, that were perceived as threatening the political and economic health of that body politic. There was in this most cataclysmic of genocides a form of what Alexander Herzen had termed, a century before referring to the crushing of the 1848 revolutions, “rational evil”: the application of reason without the pathos of humanity, of logic without ethical restraint, as we understand it, and only “irrational” if we apply our moral and ethical values as the basis of reason. Beyond these questions of theodicy, there was another form of rational evil that enabled the horror of the Holocaust to occur, an instrumental rationality that encouraged individuals to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by the misfortunes of their fellow human beings (whether Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, communists, and other persecuted categories) to better their own prospects, whether through material gain or career promotion. The studies by, among others, Gerhard Botz for Vienna, and of Götz Aly for the occupied lands, of National Socialism’s really quite sophisticated, and in its own perverse way effective, race-based welfare policies only confirm this insight into the abysmal depths of human nature, cut loose from humanist and pluralist restraints.
Fortunately, that particular modernity, and that particular application of exclusory logic did not totally succeed. The Western Allies and the Soviet Union won out, and, by the end of the twentieth century, with the demise of the Soviet Union, the Western Allies and their version of the world (embodied, perhaps ironically, in the United Nations) had won out. This meant that it was their version of modernity, not that of Central European nationalism, that is today predominant in the world, to a greater or lesser extent, depending, and that modernity is based on the concept of liberal pluralism.
The success of liberal pluralism after 1945 has only been a gradual one, and, as Tony Judt has pointed out, was built in Europe on the ruins of the previous, much more diverse and plural societies “cleansed” as a result of the Second World War and its aftermath. Yet liberal pluralism has largely succeeded, and this is the most hopeful sign, for me, that the factors that enabled antisemitism are a shadow of what they once were. This took a while—it is a myth that Europe after 1945 suddenly shook off decades of monolithic, nationalistic and racist thinking and immediately adopted a liberal pluralist, multilateral approach. Instead racial thought and nationalism persisted for many years. Initially the European powers maintained their empires, and defended them on the basis of basically racist theories of white superiority over the yellow, brown and black peoples. The US Army was still segregated at the end of the Second World War. Nevertheless, over time attitudes did change, radically, so that today, in the United States and in the European Union, itself evidence of this remarkable change, as well as in most of the rest of the developed world, the predominant logic concerning human relations and human values, identities and loyalties is much more inclusive and open, as is fitting.
This inclusive, open logic is what liberal pluralism is about, because what liberal pluralism basically asserts is that in very many circumstances the classic, exclusory logic of “either/or” does not apply in human relations. There are just too many cases where there is more than one right answer to a question of values, or where the best thing to do is not to make a false choice but to attempt to encompass both interests, both priorities, both points of view. Liberal pluralism in other words is based on the inclusive logic of “both/and”, where the middle ground between stark choices is included and not ruled out. This is the logic of connections and of co-operation, of relations and not divisions, lateral thinking and not categorization, and it is the system that allows, indeed makes as its basis for functioning, the existence of multiple value systems, multiple loyalties, multiple cultures and multiple origins and heritages. The multiplicity of human experience and human achievement can, under the liberal pluralist umbrella, be encompassed, difference allowed and respected, treasured even, in ways that the monolithic logic of nationalism in the end never did. It is not the nationalistic “Each to his own” but rather “Chacun à son goût” that typifies liberal pluralism.
This makes liberal pluralism by far the best antidote to antisemitism that we are likely to find, for in a liberal pluralist polity or community Jews can be full members while retaining their difference. In such a system it is those that do not have a hyphenated identity (Jewish-American, African-American, Irish-American etc.) who are not the norm, and this simple hyphenation is but the most basic form of what could be a triple, quadruple form of (connected, not divided) identity, to the nth degree. In this system the existence of multiple loyalty and of difference is not a problem but a possibility. The vibrancy of pluralist societies such as modern America (and elements of modern Britain and Europe) attest to the tragic error that occurred in Central Europe’s modernization. For the lesson of that moral disaster must surely be that the central mistake was the attempt, in the interests of social and political unity and cohesion, to erase difference.
The aim should not be to produce ethnically pure nation-states, but rather to allow for “diversity in unity”. This entails respecting difference in other people’s views and values, and attempting to understand those differences. It is through mutual respect and mutual recognition that our society gains strength and insight, as a whole.
Ethnic nation-states, however they historically came about, are not in themselves bad—but they should not, cannot, be the be-all and end-all of human interaction and endeavor. Instead, the most hopeful path for all of us, Jews or not, is a liberal pluralist approach that encompasses difference, encouraging unity and synergy where others mistakenly see division and weakness. That is why I find the apparent fears among many Jews about Barack Obama so oddly misplaced, because Obama’s whole approach is based on the inclusive “both/and” logic of liberal pluralism, his campaign exudes this sense of mutual respect of difference combined with recognition of fundamental unity, and he himself, in his bi-racial, multi-ethnic self, physically embodies the principle.
The central power of Obama’s attraction resides, I would assert, in the fact that he realized at some point in his life that he was not divided and weakened by having more than one racial and ethnic origin, but that the ability to straddle, and more, unite, these diverse heritages, these diverse cultures and sets of values, gave him strengths and insights that were not to his disadvantage but rather to his immense benefit, and to the benefit of others who might share his insight. And it is that vision of a country, and of a world, that can live and flourish in a world where the “infinite variety” of the human experience is valued and cherished, and not regarded as a problem, that is the best antidote of all to the narrow, prejudiced visions of the world that gave us the Holocaust and that continue to produce and justify Man’s inhumanity to Man to this day.
©Steven Beller
Recently I was invited to give a talk in Vienna, Austria about 1968 in the United States (and Britain) in historical perspective. It got me thinking about how the current electoral campaign relates to the torrid events of forty years ago. I am not alone in this, obviously. Just a few days ago, Evan Thomas published a review of Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland and made a point about the presence of Obama and Clinton as the Democrats’ candidates proving that the events of the Sixties--aka “1968”—were not totally without their positive side. But I think we can go a lot further than that. I have mulled over the ways in which 2008 looks in light of the consequences of 1968, and how the current Democratic candidates have responded to those consequences, and have modeled themselves in their light. I have concluded that one of the best things that the Obama campaign represents, and can potentially do, is bring a resolution to the divisions and the crisis that “1968” unleashed, and that the Right, since Nixon, has so expertly and cynically exploited.
To understand the brilliant prospects that Obama has made possible for the progressive Left’s agenda, the agenda that “1968” symbolizes, and to which the actual events of 1968 also dealt such a harsh blow, we need to go back to the Sixties and look at what was really going on then. As Mark Hamilton Lytle delineates in his readable and comprehensive introduction to the Sixties, America’s Uncivil Wars (Oxford, 2006), the original moving power for the various liberation movements came from the Civil Rights movement, centered on the goal of achieving real equality, real citizenship, for African-Americans, especially in the segregated Deep South. White liberals (with a considerable Jewish component) and African-American activists joined together to advance the egalitarian and emancipatory agenda of people like Martin Luther King Jr. This movement achieved notable successes, such as the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.
By the later Sixties, however, this Civil Rights movement had been joined, complicated, and fractured by other movements of liberation, such as the student’s Free Speech movement, the anti-Vietnam-War movement, the New Left plans for social change among members of the SDS, Women’s liberation (feminism), liberation movements in the Hispanic/Latino community and among Native Americans, and the more anarchic fringe movements such as Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman’s Yippies. This spirit of liberation had begun to enter the mainstream of American life, as expressed in more liberal sexual mores and the ubiquity of “rock” music, along with a much wider usage of “recreational” drugs; at the same time, even before 1968, the original emancipatory, egalitarian and inclusive impetus of the Civil Rights movement, as well as of these other movements, had begun to shear off into much more exclusive movements of group-assertion, such as Black Nationalism, or indeed more radical forms of Feminism. Moreover, the initial emphasis on civil disobedience and non-violence had been replaced in many circles by a much more combative approach, that considered violence against “the System” and “the Man” increasingly legitimate.
There was more than enough cause for this turn to violence and pugnacity. The forces arrayed against the liberation movements, especially in the Deep South, were the ones with the power and a virtual monopoly of force, and they were not afraid to use it. There were, of course the Ku Klux Klan and other “citizens’ groups” that launched attacks on Civil Rightists, most notably during the Freedom Rides. And many of these attacks on Civil Rights activists, we need to remember, ended up in murder.
A very considerable amount of the violence targeted at the “movement” came from the established political and institutional structures, and it should be recalled that most of the politicians, mayors and police chiefs involved in the clashes against the Civil Rights activists were Southern Democrats, Dixiecrats, defending their white, segregationist privileges against interfering Northerners and rebellious Blacks, as they saw it. The opposition to the war, which most Civil Rights activists, King included, shared, also meant that the federal (Democrat-led) government and its state-level and municipal-level allies also came to oppose the “movement” with force that often brimmed over into quite shocking violence. Then there was the fact that the de facto segregation and racial inequality in inner cities in the West and North, where police forces were still virtually all-white, and African-Americans, despite being an increasingly large segment of the population, were shut out from most public jobs, also fuelled deep resentment that exploded in the inner city riots of the 1960s.
Yet we need to acknowledge that the turn to violence, no matter how understandable, was also one approved of by many leaders in the various liberation movements, and this was, in retrospect, a tragic mistake. Whether as a response to the violence of the oppressors, or out of some more ideological, pseudo-Nietzschean belief in violence as a form of anarchic, creative destruction, the readiness to turn to violence among the liberation movements was a deeply counter-productive aspect of “1968”.
We also need to remember that 1968 was a disastrous year for the Left and progressives in the United States. In Europe, perhaps, 1968 can be looked back on with a certain whimsical nostalgia by those on the Left. Not so for 1968 in the USA. In April Martin Luther King was assassinated; in June Robert Kennedy was assassinated. The progressive domestic policy agenda of the Democratic administration of Lyndon Johnson was being subsumed by a war in Vietnam that was not going well. Riots in the wake of King’s assassination in Washington DC and other cities left considerable areas of urban America a wasteland that was to take decades to reclaim. In August the Democratic convention was an unmitigated disaster, with party feuds, anti-war demonstrations and massive street violence (largely on the part, admittedly, of Chicago Democratic Mayor Daley’s police force). The end result was that in November Richard M. Nixon was elected president, bringing an end to only eight years of progressive Democratic government. That was not the end of the “uncivil wars”, not by any means, indeed they became more vitriolic and violent with Nixon in the White House, but not to the benefit of the forces of progress and liberation. Far from it—Nixon was reelected easily in 1972. Admittedly, Watergate gave this portion of the story an apparently happy ending for liberals, but even so the discordant and adversarial nature of “the movement”, and its tendency to violent expression, so evidently on display in 1968, had severely compromised the progressive cause, and left openings to the reactionary Right that figures such as Ronald Reagan and Lee Atwater were fully to exploit in the following years.
But of course that was only one side of the Sixties. During the Chicago Convention whose events were to destroy so many progressive hopes the Beatles released their single “Revolution”. Its lyrics convey vividly, I think, what the other side of the Sixties thought of the politically activist side evident at Chicago:
“You say you want a revolution
Well you know
we all want to change the world
You tell me that it’s evolution
We all want to change the world
But when you talk about destruction
Don’t you know that you can count me out
Don’t you know it’s gonna be alright…
You say you got a real solution
We’d all love to see the plan
You ask me for a contribution
We’re doing what we can
But when you want money for people with minds that hate
All I can tell you is brother you have to wait
Don’t you know it’s gonna be alright….
You say you’ll change the constitution
we all want to change your head
You tell me it’s the institution
You better free your mind instead
But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao
You ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhow
Don’t you know it’s gonna be alright
Alright Alright” (Lennon/McCartney,1968)
My contention is that these song lyrics are about as good and accurate a commentary of where the 1968ers went wrong in America, and that of the two contenders for the Democratic nomination only one has really understood the lessons to be learned here, and that the other is still stuck in the negative spiral that the progressive Left has still not gotten out of in this country. Things have changed dramatically since 1968, of course, and the sort of violence (and revolutionary, messianic hopes for society) that accompanied political events then, are highly unlikely to occur in the context of the 2008 campaign. Nevertheless, the approaches of the two candidates do show parallels with those of 1968, and much to the benefit of one over the other.
Hillary Clinton is the candidate who is still stuck in the political past and is still fighting the wars of the Sixties, still trapped in the adversarial thought patterns of that era. This is, perhaps, to be expected, as the sixty-year old grew up and became politically active in precisely these years. She came from a well-to-do background, and was initially a Republican before her experience at Wellesley made her an activist and a feminist. (The fact that she now portrays Obama as the elitist and herself as the straight-talkin’ triboon of the people is quite ironic given her actual background.) Clinton has always had many of the combative instincts of the ‘68ers. One can argue that the antagonism she has evoked from the “vast right-wing conspiracy” and other right-wing Republicans was and is based very much on the Right’s—correct—sense that Hillary is still fighting the wars of the Sixties.
Ironically, she combines this combative, quasi-populist attitude with relying on the top-down approach of the Democratic political machine, which, when one thinks about it, was another problem with the progressive Left of the Sixties, whether in the Johnson administration or opposed to it—everything was for the people, very little was expected to come from the people. There is something truly elitist about the big-state solutions of the Great Society programs, and this is precisely what Clinton’s policies would seek to emulate today: top-down, “we know what is good for you” programs where the citizen has little input. It is a machine-client, interest-based model that is traditional and it is perhaps this that appeals to the less educated, and more traditionally “Democratic” blue-collar white voters that are her main base (especially in Appalachia). Clinton’s comment about Johnson being as or more important than King in getting Civil Rights legislation passed may or may not have been dabbling with the race card, but it most certainly revealed this top-down faith in the political establishment as opposed to the politics of the grass roots.
Clinton seems also to have retained the tendency to divisiveness and sectarianism of the 68ers. One might argue that it was Mark Penn’s proclivity to see the American electorate as only a series of discrete voting blocks that gives this impression of a segmented view of American society. Yet comments by Clinton since Penn’s departure suggest the reason she was so reliant on Penn in the first place is that she shares his dissectory view of demography. The comment about “hardworking white people” very much fit this view of American society being just a collection of constituent groups, without any commonality to speak of. Her recent accusations about misogyny in the media, suggesting that the failure of her campaign has been due to the sexism of American society (when the Democratic electorate who has not voted for her has been in a very large majority a female one) also point to the fact that she has not gotten beyond the identity politics and competing categorizations of the Sixties and its aftermath.
What I think such comments reveal is that her picture of the world is still one in which society is composed of a series of competing groups engaged in a zero-sum game in which the aim must always be to obtain 51% support in order to get your side, your constituents and your interests represented, and dominant, at the table of public goods. The world, and American society, remain a dangerous, Hobbesian place, where the hopes of the more idealistic 68ers are revealed to be pipedreams, ignorant of the divisions, racial, sexual, cultural, economic, which have governed human action, now govern human action, and will ever do so. In an odd way, Revd. Jeremiah Wright, a closer contemporary to Clinton than Obama, is more spiritually akin to the Senator from New York than the one from Illinois. For Wright too sees a society that has not fundamentally changed, and cannot fundamentally change, in which the opportunities for black people, or in Clinton’s case women, remain compromised and curtailed, with only incremental progress possible, if at all. Hillary Clinton, like Wright, continues to put faith in the same old adversarial politics of the past, because she believes, as a disillusioned 68er, that that is the only kind possible. Change, fundamental change in attitudes, is an illusion as far as she is concerned. Hers is, despite the superficial can-do nature of the program and the “fighter” image, at base a very pessimistic message, which has learnt, if anything, only the negative lessons of 68’s failure.
Barack Obama’s relation to ’68 and its lessons, whether consciously realized or not, offers a stark study in contrasts to the Clintonian approach.
To begin with, probably out of necessity but possibly by design as well, Obama’s team has used his outsider/newcomer status to build a campaign very much structured from the grass roots up. Building on Howard Dean’s pioneering use of the Internet for fundraising and campaign creation, the Obama campaign has used the new possibilities of IT to create the most broad-based political campaign this country has yet seen, as exemplified in its phenomenal fund-raising achievements, not only in terms of money, but also in the sheer numbers of donors (over 1.5 million). This is admittedly a rather armchair sort of grass roots campaign, with people vicariously “participating” by staring at computer screens, but even so there has also been a remarkable outpouring of more traditional participation, as in the floods of canvassers and phone bankers that have been mobilized in pursuit of Obama’s nomination, especially among students (and ex-students). Most crucially, there has been a huge turnout of people voting, a key goal of the Sixties idealists who looked to participatory democracy not only as a means to but also as an end of the Good Society. It is worth noting that much of this grass roots emphasis, and the whole tenor of Obama’s campaign, is directly traceable to Obama’s own theoretical and practical knowledge of the community organization advocated by Saul Alinsky, from the 1930s onward, that was such an inspiration of radicals back in the Sixties.
Following on from this Alinskian heritage, Obama’s campaign is very much marked by an emphasis on inclusion, not exclusion. While Obama has yet to be as successful as he wanted to in attracting the full spectrum of America’s diversity to his cause, with much work yet to do with the Hispanic community, Jews, women (for obvious, Clinton-related reasons) and the by now well-known Appalachian blue collar working class, his message and approach has been consistently to include all parts of the American nation. Not to exclude anyone. And this is more than just rhetoric—it is fundamental to the sort of logic that the community organizing movement has followed. America, in this image, is not a set of discrete client-groups with separate, mutually exclusive interests—as the Pennian model that Clinton adhered to so long suggests—but rather a collection of diverse individuals and groups that, for all their differences, share fundamentally similar goals, interests and values. For Obama’s campaign, at least in theory, getting 51% of the vote can not be the goal, because the aim is to get as many Americans on board, no matter their background, color, beliefs or culture, anyone indeed whose deepest conviction is that America and Americans can only succeed if they reject the things that divide them and concentrate on what unites them, for only by coming together, by listening to each other, by connecting with each other, by forming once again a true community, can Americans solve the problems that confront them.
It is this emphasis on connection and inclusion, on seeing society as a connected whole, that is, I think, behind Obama’s attraction for usually conservative columnists such as David Brooks. Instead of approaching American politics as an exercise in slice-and-dice demographics, with the aim only to satisfy one’s client base, Obama has tapped into what is really a very conservative, even patriotic notion of “not red-states America or blue-states America, but the United States of America”, which is a mightily attractive theme for what in Britain is called “one nation” conservatism. Similarly, if ironically given voting patterns in the primaries, this view of society as a web of interconnection, in which individuals can only achieve their goals and realize themselves within the context of others, and with their help, in which no one is an island and all are—ultimately--reliant on his or her neighbor, should be most attractive to Catholics, for it parallels the socially based, even corporatist approach of that religious heritage. Moreover, Obama’s emphasis on communication, co-operation and inclusiveness, rather than divisiveness, competitiveness, and “winning at all costs”, would seem to be tailor-made to what many, including many feminists, have seen as the “feminine” approach to society and politics.
At its core, Obama’s campaign is one based on the idea of its candidate as a uniter not a fighter. (Were it not for the prevalent, macho political culture of this land, one could even dust off the old Sixties phrase of being “a lover not a fighter”.) Instead of going the way of disuniting the progressive forces in the country, the path of divisiveness and exclusive identity politics that undermined the mission of 68, the Obama campaign has very consciously set about connecting groups, bringing them together under the mantle of the campaign. This does not deny difference or diversity, but it does strive to find commonality and emphasize what unites rather than divides. It is not too difficult to see where the inspiration of this aspect of the campaign comes from. The whole of Obama’s book, Dreams from my Father, is in essence a journey of realization that the “problem” of Obama’s multi-racial and multi-cultural background is not so much a problem of “divided identity” but a massive opportunity for connecting and uniting diverse values, diverse experiences, and diverse heritages, in one person, and, by extension, in one campaign and, by a further extension, one nation. Obama, in that sense, is the embodiment of what his whole campaign, and the Obama movement, stands for.
This diversity within unity at times appears a very “post-modern” concept, but it really goes back to the best sort of thinking of the Sixties, or even before, the liberal pluralism of someone such as Isaiah Berlin, acknowledging and embracing the existence of difference, while still asserting a fundamental unity in the human experience that many subsequent, “post-modern” versions of multi-culturalism unwisely abandoned. In this sense, “Obamaism” is a return to a Sixties optimism about the human condition that disillusioned 68er radicals rejected in their pessimistic reaction to the events of the last decades.
This optimism is not a naïve one. As Obama has constantly repeated, “hope” in his understanding is not pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking, but rather a commitment, almost an existential commitment, to belief in the “better angels of our nature” despite our full realization of the many challenges to any worthy cause, and the many imperfections of our own nature that we have yet to overcome. Yet the driving force of the Obama campaign is the belief that, if we do come together, a dynamic solution to our problems is indeed possible. Change is thus not just a slogan, but fundamental to the campaign’s premiss. It is only if we can change (in the Sixties we might have said “revolutionize”) the way we do politics, the way we approach each other, and other societies, only if we can replace the adversarial, zero-sum game, “gotcha” politics that has perverted and made stagnant the American political process these last decades, that we can really start with truly solving our many problems. In that sense the one thing that Obama and his campaign really is up to fighting against is the old politics where fighting is the be all and end all of the process.
From the start, and still now, the position of the Obama campaign has been that they are beyond all that, that they are in the business of transcending the old divisions and divisiveness of the American political scene. In this they show themselves to be both a movement emanating from a new generation (Obama at 46 is a post-babyboomer), and aimed at an even newer generation (the students, and youth generally, who have been such a central and vital part of Obama’s success). Their aim is not to settle old scores, but to get beyond all that, not get locked in the past but—having taken full note of it--transcend it. It is at times a strangely self-conscious movement, one in which spontaneity sometimes looks as though it comes pre-packaged, as with so much in our self-referential, post-modern age. Yet its yearning to look forward, and its willingness to have confidence in the future, to have the confidence to move beyond the inadequate political structures of the present to something more positive, more affirmative, and more suited to the future challenges that await us, remains deeply attractive. And it is, I think, a potential new synthesis that will, if the road is indeed taken, bring us beyond the conflicted heritage of 68.
Obama is, in the end, the one candidate in this election, who is a candidate of 2008, not some previous era. For those who, to paraphrase Lennon and McCartney, do “want to change the world”, he is the one candidate who can finally bring the demons that were unleashed forty or more years ago not to rest but to a more positive, beneficial and benevolent situation. The final irony is, given Obama’s African and American heritage, his election could well be the most fitting way to bring full circle an era in American history that began with a Civil Rights movement for African-American liberation and equality. Or perhaps it is that, in transcending the conflicts of the Sixties, Obama’s success will finally be enabling the best impulses of that era to achieve the goals that events and the internal logic of the movement then so cruelly frustrated? In overcoming 68, Obama will be realizing 68. Ann Dunham would be extremely proud of her son if that were the case.
