New Left, Netroots and the In-Between Lefts
I'm glad Matt is engaging with what to make of the Netroots movement in the broader historical picture, since there's something new going on. But I think he creates too binary a story of a disappeared New Left divided from the new Netroots movement by an interim political wasteland-- where the story is more optimistic at the grassroots. For example, the following just doesn't seem right:
It's not a surprise that the left of the time saw little value in institutional takeover, and retreated to the private and academic spheres...
In fact, after the media hype of the Vietnam War, this country saw an explosion of institutional rejuvenation and creation the likes of which we have rarely seen.
- Local and state governments were challenged and radically changed. Cities where rightwing local leaders had sicked dogs on civil rights campaigners were taken over by new black progressive leaders, who would become mayors of cities across the country.
- New community organizations, from ACORN to Citizen Action groups to a range of other organizations grew and expanded throughout the 1970s, becoming the backbone of what some called the "Backyard Revolution" that changed local politics across the country in ways we often take for granted.
- From barely being a blip in American consciousness, the environmental movement built a host of new institutions, from the PIRGs to the League of Conservation Voters to local environmental organizations in communities across the country.
- The feminist movement similarly emerged out of the New Left and built its own set of institutions and sought leadership in a range of existing institutions-- and the new female Speaker of the House is just one testament to the success of that long march through the institutions by progressive women.
Maybe it's because my political consciousness was shaped by the supposed "dead zone" in between the New Left and the present that I am so conscious of that vibrant institution-building and organizing that continued long after the media's attention had wandered.
There were definitely problems with how many of those post-New Left institutions developed-- balkanized at times, too localized on particular issues or localities, etc. -- but there were significant successes, especially in the environment and civil rights, that continued even into the 1980s and 1990s. We are seeing a minimum wage enacted at the federal level finally (we hope) but it probably wouldn't be happening if local organizations had not forced passage in states across the country first.
So what's new? As Matt says, the anger at the Clinton impeachment and post-2000 election brought a new generation of folks into the process, but they entered a political culture, especially in the Democratic Party, radically reshaped by a generation of activists reforming party primaries and creating a new base of institutions for insurgent candidates to work with in demanding change. Some of those post-New Left organizations are creaky and need rejuvenation themselves, but I think it's hard for people to realize how few of the political organizations they take for granted just plain didn't exist before the 1970s.
The big ungainly exception is labor, which itself was reshaped radically by the New Left and the post-New Left community organizations. In some cases, new organizations among workers were absorbed into the labor movement-- feminists at 9to5 organized clerical unions and ACORN service unions that were each absorbed into traditional unions. And organizers from those community organizations were hired by unions across the country, reshaping tactics and the culture of many unions.
The rise of the Internet is encouraging a cross-fertilization of institutions-- new conversations, new ways to mobilize together and so on. What the blogs do is allow visibility for organizing that would once have been ignored by the media, no matter how successful they were below the radar. But this change in media, while pervasively important, should not lead to ignoring the vast organizing that happened in the last generation.
In twenty years of organizing, it's often felt like every five years was a new "generation" of activists mocking the rigidity of the "establishment Left" (itself often only a few years from its own righteous newness). The current blog conversation feels like a very public version of this "generational" conversation I've seen new organizers in all sorts of groups engaged in. The hope is that the more inclusive and cross-organizational nature of the Internet-assisted conversation happening now can create more radical and pervasive left reformation-- but if it does, it will be done on the backs of organizers who toiled over the last thirty years outside the media glare.
Interesting in a way. But the issue is how the far right on 1970 is the left of center today. I have found myself ever so much further marginalized every year. Reagan was too extreme to elect, but he was elected. Now he seems comparatively moderate. Matt and his hordes abandoned us. Now they have converted back and think they are the leaders. We need their votes, so we cannot hold them in contempt. But we are hardly moving forward. This is not the heyday of progressive thought, it is merely the beginning of recovery.
January 15, 2007 3:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
If congress empowers unionization by passing things like card checkoff there is a chance that the balance between capital and labor may be partially restored.
We will see if the 50+% who say they would really like to join a union follow through. Without a new mass labor movement I don't see the left getting much done beyond fixing some things around the edges like the flawed Medicare drug benefit.
As bad as some people feel the standard of living of the working class is, they haven't yet shown any inclination to do anything about it. The Dem takeover was mostly about the war and corruption and not about restructuring society.
--- Policies not Politics
Daily Landscape
January 15, 2007 4:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
There are quite a few things that a revived labor movement either has to make clear, or put into new paradigms. For example, if an industry depends heavily on individual performance and initiative, a proposal to organize a bargaining unit that will want seniority to be the basic job progress rule is going either to make that relevant, or find other models.
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Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
January 15, 2007 5:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Matt and his hordes? Did you know I was born in 1981? Matt is only a few years older than I am. These are the people who came of age under Clinton. We thought Clinton had it under control, there were brilliant new break-throughs and discoveries every day, the Playstation was invented, many that are the netroots now were financially doing good or solid, and while there were problems in the world, we were pretty confident that Clinton would call together a bunch of people and come up with something.
The Bush years are our FIRST CHANCE to do something.
Besides, I think we have realized something important that older generations didn't: Top Down almost NEVER works. It has to be Grassroots first or it will be very hard to sustain.
Now of course the bloggers are not young. But even those born in Nixon's last term really didn't see a need to be active until the impeachment. Things were tough in the 80s for some people (hell even most people) but not quite as horrendous because the gap was smaller.
January 15, 2007 6:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm going out to my network of steam-powered Babbage machines and sulk.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
January 15, 2007 6:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
I want a Babbage difference engine of my own, can I have it when you pass on, any day now apparently?
Also was Ada Lovelace as cute as she appears?
January 15, 2007 6:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ah, but our Babbage engineers are trained in Haiti. None of this stuff about botnet zombies; ours are maintained by the Real Thing.
Seriously, I do remember the start of the ARPANET. Perhaps even more important, a good number of the true technical innovators are still active, and there is a lot of serendipity. A few years back, Vint Cerf wrote a paper on the "Interplanetary Internet", dealing with extremely long-delay communications. More recently, Avri Doria found its model quite workable for Internet access for Lapp reindeer herders frequently out of sight of ground-based antennas (satellites are impractical in this application).
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
January 15, 2007 6:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
And to think I feel ancient when I realize that I wandered about on the DOS based Prodigy when I was a child.
Yes, having looked into satellite internet I find the restrictions rather frustrating.
January 15, 2007 6:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
I was really, really disappointed when my first explanation of her project was completely off: I thought she aluminized antlers and taught the reindeer bucks how to track satellites in Moliyna orbit.
Later, in Oslo, I only had brief thoughts of Rudolph before having a delicious reindeer dinner.
Seriously, I strongly recommend Tom Standish's The Victorian Internet, to see how many of today's Internet customs had origins in the very limited-access culture of wired telegraphy -- and even heliograph stations. Ham radio was a major leap forward.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
January 15, 2007 6:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Then I'll pick it up over Spring Break when I'm laid up from surgery. That kind of stuff entertains me to no end.
January 15, 2007 6:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Clinton... Our first right wing Democratic president since ... Wilson? Wilson wasn't all that right wing. I guess we have to go back to Grover Cleveland, so long ago that he is right wing by default.
Had it under control? What could you possibly be talking about? I still cannot figure out why the Dems selected him, there were some good candidates in that crowd. Clinton moved the Democratic party to the right so fast the boat nearly flipped.
And what is this top down crap? If you are into rejecting the likes of Mondale and other focus-group Democrats, you are hardly covering new territory. Grassroots pretty much defines what happened to Nixon. Ford's pardon and the "heal the nation" bull crap was the Republican response.
I got the very strong impression that the hippies of the left went back to nature and found that small businesses sooner or later became medium sized businesses, so they turned into republicans because it suited their essentially me-first libertarian ideals. Meanwhile, the children of the 70s and 80s (not all of 'em, I have two that didn't) opted for me first most of the time. With the easy rhetoric of Reaganism, me first and other Randish shit sounded patriotic, so extreme right became the moderate left, while the true left got pushed over the cliff.
Those few of us who are still hanging on out here in mid-air recognize we need your votes, but considering the bright lights shining around the lies that the rightwingers, including Democratic rightwingers, for the last 30 years, it is hard to take claims of leadership by those who have finally noticed that something is amiss seriously.
January 15, 2007 7:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Good points, Nathan. CCAG, which was the organizational vessel that trained the organizers who took on Lieberman, was originally founded by the Naderites/New leftists. And labor as a progressive instead of reactionary force is entirely due to the work of radical organizers.
January 15, 2007 9:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Maybe this post should be a Discussion Table topic, but it is a sincere request for information. I haven't had much direct experience being in a union shop, so I don't know how a modern, especially technological one, operates.
When I've been in places where there has been an attempt to organize professionals, the organizers kept pushing the benefits of a seniority system, in a place where people respected one another based on skill level and creativity rather than length of employment.
There are unquestionable corporate wrongs even in a professional workplace. What I would like to understand is what a union offers to such a group.
Another factor that affects certain professionals, especially in research and development, is craft jurisdiction. When you are experimenting with networking equipment, it's the most natural thing in the world to run a cable from one location to another. The person running the cable may even have designed it. At least in New York, however, I've seen union electricians go in and yank out every cable they didn't run -- even if they didn't have the technical skills for the specialized cable and connector installation.
How does a modern labor movement address these concerns? Is there grounds for a broad system of cooperation? In one installation, I had a very carefully developed and truly friendly relationship with the local of the Communications Workers, who never raised jurisdictional issues but focused on cooperative problem solving. That was very much a people-to-people thing; they were shocked, for example, when we presented the assigned technicians with coffee mugs and told them how to find the break room -- and there was a cake waiting for them. I'd swear at least one of those guys was close to crying, and did blurt out that they had never been treated with such respect on a job.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
January 16, 2007 9:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
You might start by researching Boeing; the engineers below dept head, designers, and draftspeople have been unionized there for 60 years and they don't seem to be suffering too much from lack of innovation or drive. Corporate complacency from time to time, yes, but lack of innovation no.
As a person with a somewhat similar career, btw, I understand your question. But what happens to people such as you describe when they are laid off at 44 years 11 months of age, there are no other jobs anywhere near their pay or skill level in their metro area, they don't even get interviews for other positions due to being "overqualified" and/or "career changers" - and then their spouse gets sick?
Some exceptionally talented and exceptionally strong-willed people I have known in this situation have fought their way through and found equivalent new employment, but most do not. Yet there is plenty of work out there to be done at their level and plenty of profits to pay reasonably salaries. Most human beings are not at the exceptional level; do we really want a society where if you aren't you have a very good chance (repeated throws of the coin, eh?) of starving to death? Wasn't that the Gilded Age? Aren't you a bit too self-confident about your ability to survive in the face of Andrew Carnegie's wrath?
sPh
January 16, 2007 9:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm not objecting to unionization per se. At Boeing, do they use strict seniority in professional roles?
Believe me, I have been facing the layoff issues, being older and having current health issues. 2006 was a terrible year, for assorted reasons. I think I'm seeing things starting to turn around, now consulting (with full-time possibiity) to folks I know and trust, and being in a state where I have healthcare.
I have some theories on improving flexibility for older, competent, and underemployed workers. Some are economic, a major one being the ability to deal with house equity and still relocate. I am of the opinion that some areas with strong H1B populations are such because qualified citizens can't afford to move there.
I literally don't understand your comment about Andrew Carnegie's wrath, because I still don't understand the protective mechanisms being proposed. You speak of "unionization at Boeing", but I literally don't know how that union is different from the IBEW local that ripped out my cables, or the CWA people that I cultivated as colleagues and friends.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
January 16, 2007 9:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think your idea of a discussion table diary on this topic would be useful. Why not paraphrase or expand your comments above and invite further discussion?
Certainly many of the traditional union rules were designed for mass production, industrialized, firms and need adjustment to work in a new environment. Perhaps unions need to focus on general issues like health care and retirement benefits and allow some other mechanism to control actual work assignments.
Several such quasi-unions have recently been started including one aimed a professionals by Barbara Ehrenreich and partners.
--- Policies not Politics
Daily Landscape
January 16, 2007 6:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks...I shall do so, probably in the morning.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
January 16, 2007 8:15 PM | Reply | Permalink