The global progressive movement is not the US Democratic Party.
The US Democratic Party is not the global progressive movement.
The extent to which these two are getting mixed up in discourse concerns me.
An interest in the Dems is important for those on the left. We want them to be strong, and smart. We want them to field electable candidates. Faced with a choice between them and the Republicans, we want the Dems to win in any contest you’d care to name.
But the Dems are not the progressive movement.
We should care about the Dems, try and make them strong, because at this point in time they are the best hope the world has for redirecting the US. But first we need to look to ourselves.
We need to expand the progressive movement. We need to make it larger, more robust, more certain. We need more people aware and involved. We need to find the common ground that its many elements share and articulate clearly what we want.
We need the movement to become an undeniable and major political constituency.
The Democratic party will not become a party of the left again with political reality as it is now. Every political indicator says that all it can do is keep colonizing further rightward. To call for them to move left is to ask them to reduce their share of voter support – a futile call. In a game like this one, with players like these, principles are negotiable.
We cannot shift the Dems to the left from within. We need to expand the progressive movement in the real world. We need to bring more people around to our understanding and our values.
We need to grow into a constituency that will swing elections.
We aren’t there yet, but we’re growing. Look back just a few short years to Seattle and the WTO protests. Since that time we have grown beyond any expectation. Our literature, our arguments, our information, are spreading everywhere. In parts of Europe we are mighty. It will be the same everywhere, in time. Even in the US. The US will not be easy to crack – it is in fact our greatest challenge because of its singular command over the heavily-mediated reality of its citizens and its skill in exercising this command – but it too will fall. In time.
It is inescapable. We in the progressive movement understand the true, long-range cost of our current global system. We have exposed the exploitation and unsustainability on which this system stands. The lies of our opponents will not survive against our truth. The cog-blindness of those who do not understand us will not survive against our truth.
This isn’t a political struggle of two equivalent poles offering different models for political decision-making and resource-distribution. This is the survival struggle of a system that is breaking the world and its peoples. The system will change, perhaps piece by hard-won piece, perhaps in massive revolution, but it will change, because as it is it cannot last.
The only question is how long it will take for us to win, and whether it will then be too late to repair the damage already done.
We are right. And that is our strength. That is what will help us grow. As we grow, our political strength increases. As our political strength increases, the political landscape will begin to change. Our task isn’t to make the Bush-supporter down the street love the Dems – it is to make her see the truth about international exploitation, environmental degradation, the deceiving myths of the system’s controllers.
The failure of the Democratic party in the US is not the failure of the global progressive movement. It is a sign that there is more work for us to do.
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In the last entry, Matt interrogates the use of the term ‘Progressive’.
“Progressive is a fairly bad word, in my opinion, to call anything because Progression is defined in terms of the goal. I could be a totally and extremely right wing and call myself progressive because I am moving towards a political goal.”
The word ‘progressive’ is an umbrella term. I’m not sure of its provenance but it’s a recent coinage. It is used for the wide range of groups and ideologies that support the notion that ‘another world is possible’. It is a positive phrasing – one of the noxious memes of the current global system is equating itself with progress, and progress with the greater good. Movements that oppose unfettered globalised capitalism are thus de facto tarred as luddite, backward and working against the greater good out of fear or intellectual failure.
The ‘progressive’ label stakes different ground, challenging the notion that corporate primacy is the end of history. It is a positive framing, rife with meaning, and a significant and useful term that cannot be as easily undermined as, say, the word ‘liberal’ has been.
It isn’t a satisfactory term. All the concerns Matt has are legitimate ones. At some point in the future, what is now known as the progressive movement will have to divorce itself from that term, and that divorce may well be difficult and even costly. Nonetheless, at this stage in the political struggle, it is the best name we have.
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There will be some non-election stuff soon, I promise. I’m not even thinking about the election 24/7 any more, and that’s got to count for something, right?