Which Side Are You On?

"How do we change our position on budget and fiscal issues so we're not always looking like an impediment? We need an ideology based around working WITH employers...that message and approach can attract different people than the 'we need to stand up for the working class' approach. That approach is about conflict and a lot of people don't want conflict."
Andy Stern former head of SEIU and Change To Win

This Wisconsin fight-back is a difficult issue to unpack. Of course I support any resistance to the status quo that is equalizing, that's a given. But I also feel a radical critique is necessary in every case so that we don't head down dead ends, waste time and energy, or otherwise allow an emancipatory vision to be co-opted. Andy Stern pretty well sums up the problems moving forward.He thought everyone could just get along and share and boy was he wrong.

The Right has been successful in promoting a vision of unity (as a universal social Good) that is oppositional and loyal. This is what Carl Schmidt identified as the friend-enemy position but it is essentially reactionary, with fascist undertones.( Schmidt was a successful Nazi theorist) There is no positive program as such,( unless you buy the Fantasia of "free markets" and individualism) only WE ARE UNITED AGAINST THEM. This is what appeals to Pagan, united AGAINST. Contrary to what Andy Stern says, they do want conflict, as long as it against The Other. Labor got in bed with Capital in a Grand Bargain (see past post) and abandoned it's own positive, oppositional position of deep struggle to change the actual forces of production.

Yes, Wisconsin is helping to define the true antagonistic positions. The workers have already surrendered to the capitalist logic that they must pay for the crisis. They are so far back on their heels they are fighting for something won decades ago. (the right to organize) Just as women are fighting for something won decades ago. But these gains were never consolidated and those fights were never joined to the broader struggle for radical democracy.

I stand by my proscription that the challenge for the Left is to give Capital enough rope to hang itself. Stand aside and offer no resistance. They should be calling the Rights bluff on every occasion and propose even deeper cuts to all sectors. They should call for an end to all unions, corporate ownership of all sectors, the end of all NGO's and civil society, absolute rule by the Tea Party and it's minions. In other words hand it all over to them and watch the Free Market reign for awhile (a short while). This is the only way to get rid of them, as a serious opposition, once and for all.