A Symposium
West, Cornell
The fundamental task of the left has always been to create the conditions that make it possible for ordinary people to live lives of decency and dignity. I believe this task is best achieved—or...
...Rather, a utopian impulse forces me always to look beyond the possible—even though I know that in a conservative civilization such as ours (in which corporate priorities and chronic sexism, homophobia, and, above all, racism are more the norm than the exception) we must not downplay the reforms that result from revolutionary endeavor...
...My fundamental aim is never mere amelioration or incremental change...
...it also means creating new local and national vehicles for organizing and mobilizing ordinary people so as to provide them with more attractive political options...
...In short, these stages build on the best work of John Dewey, W.E.B...
...Nor is my expectation that of paradise...
...We must forge new democratic spaces in which public life can come alive among our fellow citizens...
...The New Party as well as the Industrial Areas Foundation are trying to do this...
...I envision three basic stages in our protracted march to a more substantive democracy...
...body politic, the best we can do now is to keep alive the radical democratic tradition: deepening its vision, sharpening its analyses, exemplifying its praxis...
...First, a shift from consumption to investment in physical, civic, and social infrastructures in order to reconstruct families, neighborhoods, and workplaces that can beat back escalating anomie (including WINTER • 1994 • 15 The Left Atter Forty Years crime and violence...
...Yet there is some stirring of idealism and activism among young people...
...We have tried to do this in the Democratic Socialists of America...
...Du Bois, and Audre Lorde...
...Needless to say, in these difficult times of economic decline, cultural decay, and political malaise, we cut very much against the grain...
...I have tried to do this in prophetic black, brown, and white churches and Jewish synagogues...
...I believe this task is best achieved—or has a better chance of being achieved—when these same ordinary people have significant say in the decision-making processes of the basic institutions that guide and regulate their lives...
...I still take seriously Raymond Williams's notion of the "long revolution" or Michael Harrington's vision of an epochal revolution that requires a sustained (democratic) march through economic, political, and cultural institutions...
...I am a radical democrat or improvisational socialist—as opposed to a social democrat or left liberal— because I am convinced that the rule of capital (an interlocking network of corporate, bank, and political elites), the hegemony of white and male supremacist ideologies, the proliferation of homophobic sensibilities, and the relative weakness of ecological consciousness are the major obstacles to our task...
...And third, a moral and spiritual awakening that targets xenophobic sentiments of every kind...
...Our challenge is to create political opportunities— as in the 1890s, 1930s, and 1960s—and then convince our fellow citizens that the radical democratic risk is worth taking on moral and practical grounds...
...This means committing ourselves to sustained intellectual work in academic and popular forms...
...Given the feeble and fragmented American left and the polarized and balkanized U.S...
...For me, this is a radical democratic project that is still worth fighting for...
...Second, a serious and nearly unprecedented debate on direct taxation of wealth (not just income), profit-sharing in the corporate workplace, and the restructuring of the wage system (including a decent minimum wage...
Vol. 41 • January 1994 • No. 1
