=======================Electronic Edition========================
RACHEL’S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH WEEKLY #459
—September 14, 1995—
News and resources for environmental justice.
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A HIGH-WAGE, LOW WASTE FUTURE–PART 2:
HOW PROGRESSIVE PEOPLE MIGHT UNITE
Last week we saw why a new democratic politics is needed. Now,
with our rose-colored glasses still removed, let’s look at our
ability to create such a thing. [1]
1. We are endlessly divided into thousands of groups and
single-issue factions. Our organizations are seldom coordinated.
When they are, the coordination is typically single-issue,
on-again-off-again, and more on paper than real.
Our lack of coordination stems from weakness, not from our
ability to go it alone and win. Most progressive activists and
groups are stretched so thin and have so few resources that they
can’t take time to coordinate with others, or even to think about
what such coordination might look like and do for them.
The failure to coordinate weakens us still further. Inside the
progressive community, opportunities for mutual gain are
routinely lost. Outside the progressive community, the image of
a hodgepodge of single-issue groups does not inspire wider
support. Among other unhappy effects: while people care about
many different issues like racial justice and the environment and
worker rights and a peaceable foreign policy, single-issue
organizations appeal to very narrow constituencies, or, within
individuals, to only parts of their identity–usually neglecting
(often completely omitting) the spiritual, healing, and
redemptive parts of life.
2. Progressives lack a comprehensive, inclusive, positive vision
of how the country should be run. With some justice, we are
perceived as having more grievances than ideas, and the ideas we
do have are seen as a laundry list, not as elements of a common
constructive vision, much less a vision accessible to ordinary
people. Ask the average American, or even a self-identified
progressive, what progressives stand for and you will get no
answer or so many different answers that it amounts to the same
thing. This lack of a common positive vision further weakens
progressive appeals. (So-called “conservatives” are good at
this. They have a vision –however fraudulent and mean-spirited
–that gives their followers a way to think about the world:
lower taxes, less regulation, hymns to a “simpler” America
without so many dark-skinned people, punishment of the weaker
groups in society, the God-given right to cut down every last
tree and fill every wetland, and so forth. The need for a rival
comprehensive view among those who value truth and reason and
equality is URGENT even though a commitment to truth, reason and
equality complicates the construction of such a vision).
When do progressive organizations flourish?
Progressive organizations thrive when they put forth practical
programs of action that benefit their members or potential
members, AND solve problems in the broader society (even solving
problems for capitalists, on whose well-being the rest of the
society unfortunately depends). Practical programs that benefit
members AND benefit the larger society earn the political respect
and social prestige needed to promote their own interests as
those of the general public and to secure support for their own
organization.
Take the case of unions in the postwar period. For decades,
unions were very popular institutions, and much more powerful
than at present. Why? Most fundamentally because they delivered
benefits (increased wages, grievance procedures, etc.) that were
of immediate importance to members and which also helped
stabilize demand and mass markets after the catastrophe of the
Great Depression, a feat that the owners of capital couldn’t
accomplish on their own. With demand stabilized, investment in
mass production industries followed. This investment raised
productivity, which lowered the real costs of consumer goods for
everyone. By doing something for their members that also clearly
helped the broader society, unions gained respect.
Or take the great modern civil rights movements of
African-Americans and women. At a time when American society was
far more deeply racist and sexist than it is today, these
movements ignited massive popular support for two reasons:
because of the clarity of the injustices against which they
spoke, and because remedying those injustices would bring
enormous benefits to the society as a whole: the liberation of
great productive energies that had been stifled by racist or
sexist patterns in the economy and private life. These movements
promised not only justice for their members but a better and more
rewarding life for nearly everyone.
(Make no mistake. The labor movement and civil rights struggles
were first and finally about simple justice and respect –demands
that stood on their own. These movements were fiercely resisted
and they succeeded by using an essential tactic –disruptive
protest –to overcome such resistance. Nevertheless, political
success requires that demands must be framed in ways that connect
their satisfaction to the satisfaction of broader, and inevitably
more mundane, social interests. However narrow their core issues
may be, successful movements usually serve as agents of a broader
and more universally appealing social goal.)
The big problem facing progressives today is that the old
mass-mobilizing projects have run out of steam, but we can’t
agree on new ones.
Progressive organizations today don’t often (if ever) mobilize
their members to action. Let’s face it. Members of progressive
organizations don’t DO much. (Grass-roots environmentalists are
an exception to this because they are often fighting to maintain
their neighborhoods, their health, and their children’s future
against some immediate, serious threat.) Progressives mail in
their checks, but the programs of most progressive organizations
don’t inspire their membership to take action.
If this is so, why don’t organizations change their programs to
make a broader and stronger appeal?
Two reasons: (1) recent conditions have made it difficult for
progressives to reach agreement; and (2) most progressives have
stopped looking for really good projects–they have given up on
trying to achieve mass appeal.
Where do mass movements come from?
They appear to spring up spontaneously, but this is deceptive.
Mass movements are created by activists who lay the groundwork
for years. Sometimes the long road of hard work can be reduced by
an event that grabs the attention of a large number of people.
The anti-war movement of the 1960s was an example.
An essential component of EVERY movement is solidarity among its
members. Sometimes this solidarity is “organic” –created by
common race or ethnic background, common neighborhood or friends,
common conditions of work. Sometimes it is created by shared
ideology –a shared view of the world and one’s place in it,
which allows people to bridge their differences and work together.
Most often solidarity is supplied by both “organic” forces and by
some general theory, usually elevating the organic to a universal
status. For example, for generations working-class solidarity was
fueled by (a) the fact of a distinctly working-class life marked
by people living near each other, common employment,
inter-marriage, shared restrictions on mobility, and by (b) the
view that workers had shared interests as a class which also
happened to be the true universal interests of society.
Today, however, those “organic” solidarities have been weakened,
and there is no agreement on what the “universal interests” of
society might be. Until recently, where working-class solidarity
didn’t exist, there was at least a civic culture rooted in fairly
stable face-to-face communities, relatively stable jobs (located
near the home), and an array of local public goods (schools,
libraries), civic associations (churches, trade unions, PTAs,
Kiwanis Clubs), sources of information (many local newspapers,
even a little labor press) and many semi-public meeting places
(sports leagues, taverns).
Such institutions permitted people to practice the arts of
democracy –to talk to neighbors about common concerns, promote
and defend arguments, listen, learn, think, and, to some degree,
develop the self-confidence and common perspectives of democratic
citizens.
Local politics, rather than national, remained a key determinant
of local well-being, so local political culture had real meaning
and had direct influence on the quality of life.
But this world is now mostly gone. Today, most people commute
several hours to work. They work in relatively small
organizations that are far more mixed (if no more satisfying)
than those of old, and that often blur the lines between
managerial and non-supervisory personnel. When people get home
from work, they don’t talk much to their neighbors, and aren’t
much involved in local community life. Shopping and watching TV
are their principal leisure activities, usually pursued alone.
The quality of their local neighborhood life seems to be–largely
is–decided somewhere else.
The physical basis of solidarity is gone, and so is the basis for
a shared ideology. No one progressive concern –whether race or
class or gender or the environment –can be elevated to the level
of general interest. Progressives deal with this problem by
making lists and assuring each other of their sincerity about
believing in each of these concerns. But ideology is not about
making lists. It is about giving enough people enough of a
common view of things that they are willing to work with people
different from themselves. In this sense, progressives sorely
lack a common ideology.
So, with the physical basis of solidarity gone, and with no
issues grabbing the attention of a mass audience, modern
progressives find themselves in a unique position. There is no
obvious basis for solidarity; no common view of what is
universally important –no common ideology –and there is no
external force (Great Depression, Vietnam War) creating popular
mobilization. What to do?
To solve these problems, progressives will need to look squarely
at their own fragmentation and CONSTRUCT ORGANIZATIONS AND
PROJECTS DESIGNED TO OVERCOME IT.
What kinds of organizations? What sorts of projects? Those with
some hope of appealing to a majority, or at least a large
plurality. Progressives have nearly given up trying to appeal to
a majority –they seem to have settled for a dignified life on
the edges of society, or a life of elite “good works.” They seem
to have made a decision not to really reach for governance.
Instead, progressives have retreated into denouncing all
exercises of public power (“government is hopeless”) or into
liberalism–the belief that power cannot be exercised by ordinary
people (“leave it to the experts”).
Despite this gloomy assessment, the present moment is bursting
with opportunity for progressive programs –a subject to which we
will turn next week.
                
                
                
                
    
–Peter Montague
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[1] These ideas originated with Joel Rogers at University of
Wisconsin, and Joshua Cohen at Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT). This week we have lifted large sections from
an unpublished paper by Joel Rogers, titled “How Divided
Progressives Might Unite” but we have modified its language, so
don’t blame Rogers for our debased version of his ideas.
Descriptor terms: strategy; environmental movement; vision; mass
movements; social change; civic culture; solidarity; ideology;