THE RIGHT MAY BE WRONG, BUT THE LEFT ISN'T RIGHT
Judis, John
REFLECTIONS The Right may be wrong, but the Left isn't right John Judis Our philosophy has moved into the mainstream of American political thought," Representative Phillip Crane, the Illinois...
...The Right, given up for dead in 1964 and again in 1976, has fully recovered...
...They had relied on budget deficits to fight unemployment, while they had used budget surpluses to temper inflation...
...distrust of democracy' Friedman, and Arthur Laffler to peddle their wares...
...The American Left includes diverse interest groups, minorities, women's groups, a small socialist contingent, intellectuals and literati, and an influential but shrinking group of liberals who travel easily from the plant gates to the corporate boardrooms...
...Wage-price controls without investment controls essentially shift responsibility for holding down labor costs from the individual firm to the state...
...Its appeal was quasi-religious: A prosperous and energetic nation, having emerged unscathed from two major wars, would defend freedom around the world and eradicate poverty at home...
...Some left-wing economists — Robert Lekachman, for example — have argued that Government economic planning is now inevitable...
...The Right has risen precisely because the once-dominant liberals have fallen...
...But their reemergence, in modern form, has now become a practical necessity...
...To benefit from the process, she said, "we need an enlightenment on so massive a scale of the population that education alone hardly seems prepared to undertake it...
...Waiting for Teddy" is the new game in Washington...
...To become a political force, the Left will have to build a new coalition out of the non-corporate remains of the old Cold War liberal coalition and the grass-roots movements of the 1960s and the 1970s...
...With the rebuilt industries of Western Europe and Japan rivaling American producers, the capitalist nations faced an old dilemma: They could not market, at rates of profit that would justify further expansion, all the steel, textiles, petrochemicals, ships, and other goods that they could now produce...
...It will have to provide new social ideals and goals that can overcome popular fears and cynicism...
...While corporate chiefs from the Coors or Marriott families do bankroll right-wing causes, most corporate political action committees have been supporting Democratic incumbents or Republican moderates...
...But this process of coalition-building has taken place, for the most part, in the upper reaches of politics — among organization leaders and lobbyists in Washington...
...Now they were confronted with rising unemployment and rising prices...
...Instead, they looked to pre-New Deal economics for their remedies...
...The central thrust of that heritage, largely eclipsed by the Russian revolution and the rise of American communism, was the democratic ownership and control of industry...
...The Left has not only adopted a narrowly conspiratorial view of the Right's progress, but has responded to major issues by baiting the Right in nearly the same fashion that the Right used to red-bait the Left In a recent speech on Proposition Thirteen, one labor official warned her audience that Howard Jar-vis had been a member of the Liberty League in the 1930s...
...There is also no way to achieve balanced budgets, except at the expense of workers' income and security...
...There is no denying that Crane has reason to be optimistic...
...Having seen the failure of Richard Nixon's wage-price controls, which did not eliminate wage-price pressures but discouraged investment, they were unwilling to contemplate more state intervention...
...Carter succeeded precisely because he was "outside" the traditional Democratic constituencies, even in the South...
...And it will have to be thoroughly democratic...
...Charles Schultze, a prominent Johnson Administration adviser, joined the business anti-regulation chorus even before President Carter named him to head the Council of Economic Advisers...
...To keep workers' bargaining power down, the business leaders fastened upon continued high unemployment and recession...
...To discover such an approach, the Left will have to reacquaint itself with America's neglected socialist heritage...
...it will spark new investment and prevent a recession...
...It absolves movements of responsibility for their decline, and it ignores the question of popular support...
...liberals and labor leaders is that the Right has special powers of organization and special access to corporate dollars...
...An across-the-board 30 per cent tax cut will not simply make the rich richer...
...In the 1980 elections, conservatives could enjoy "an embarrassment of riches...
...Organized labor and the Nader tax reform group attacked, on grounds of equity, the conservative demands for cuts in corporate and capital gains taxes...
...In 1979, Crane noted, conservatives would have a chance to defeat SALT II and the D.C...
...And to fight the "big Government" they had helped create, they marshaled such powerful lobbies as the American Council for Capital Formation to press for corporate tax breaks and deregulation...
...As the economy stagnates, conservatives have offered new justifications for old proposals...
...The principal assumptions of Cold War liberalism, as the dominant post-World War II ideology has been termed, were a steadily rising gross national product and a monolithic Communist threat...
...Formerly distrustful of democracy, conservatives now champion "direct democracy" through the use of initiatives and referenda...
...Similarly, the labor and environmental groups attacked the injustice of gas deregulation, but they presented no proposals that could have countered the companies' threats to limit production unless price incentives were increased...
...In a recent speech, one labor leader spoke of "the right-wing conspiracy, fueled by corporate dollars...
...voting rights amendment, as well as to promote fiscal conservatism through the balanced budget drive...
...full employment was achieved at the price of an ugly war and growing budget deficits, a battered dollar, and a declining balance of trade...
...Inevitably, the Right has prospered...
...In the 1970s, many conservative organizations, identified with the "New Right" and fueled by Richard Viguerie's direct-mail, have sprung up, focusing on the "social issues" — abortion, the Equal Rights Amendment, homosexuality, patriotism, prayer, and gun control...
...If the policymakers cut spending and tightened the money supply, as the bankers urged, they risked the social and political costs of greater unemployment at home...
...Most conservatives are now for "containment" rather than "rollback" of communism — they see liberals as acquiescing in communist superiority...
...In the instance of the Equal Rights Amendment, the Humphrey-Hawkins "full employment" bill, and now even SALT II, defeat will be much more significant than victory...
...Business leaders were among the first to abandon liberal Keynesianism...
...The central economic problem of our time is how to stop inflation, increase jobs, spur investment, and steady the dollar...
...Socialist policies are relevant to social unrest' So long as corporate investment decisions are made privately according to market criteria, there is no way to stimulate production without holding down labor income...
...They would not put the highway system under private ownership, but call for an end to Government "waste" and regulation and deficit spending...
...The Carter Administration's policies epitomize the liberal impasse...
...While a balanced budget may not seem the best solution to the nation's economic woes, it is certainly as plausible and as popular as wage-price guidelines and behind-the-scenes dollar manipulation...
...As historian Martin J. Sklar has noted, they put the Left in the Hamiltonian-Federalist tradition of rule by elites, and the Right in the Jeffersorrian tradition of rule by the people...
...These Eurodollars were declining in value as the dollar declined...
...Winpisinger has urged the union's rank-and-file to oppose the rising defense budget (on which some machinists' jobs have been dependent...
...Until the Left does so, the Right will continue to win the battle of ideas in America, and the Left will continue to mourn and rationalize its own decline...
...Such a political approach will have to pose credible solutions to the inflation /employment /investment /dollar dilemma...
...Here, the Left has largely let the liberals run the show...
...In Minnesota, for instance, where there is no initiative process, Democrats have fought Republican proposals to introduce one...
...A left-wing Democrat recently argued against "direct voter participation" because it "has handed us many more defeats than it has victories...
...That vision was shared by significant parts of the business community and the college-educated middle class, and united them with labor, urban ethnics, and minorities...
...Full-employment planning is essential to easing racial and sexual antagonisms and laying the foundation for a spirit of cooperation and neighborliness, a sense of community...
...With a growing and prosperous capitalism, socialist politics have been a luxury...
...the main target is retreating liberalism...
...There was no way they could simultaneously stimulate investment, increase employment, hold down prices, and strengthen the dollar...
...The recession of 1974 and 1975 was the worst since the 1930s, and the subsequent recovery did not end high levels of unemployment...
...Many leftists have also adopted the Right's former distrust of democracy...
...But on domestic policies, they have shifted rightward as a bloc, and by doing so they have shifted the national debate to the Right and provided an opening for such right-wing luminaries as Alan Greenspan, William Simon, Milton 'Many leftists have...
...Leftists have been no less sparing in condemning the idea of a constitutional convention...
...To some extent, the process of unification has already begun...
...It has not penetrated down to the grass roots...
...Cold War liberalism peaked with the Presidency of Lyndon Johnson, who turned its wildest dreams into nightmares: A free people ended up defending a dictatorship against indigenous rebels who invoked the precepts of the Declaration of Independence...
...And it drew upon early American traditions of cooperation and community...
...Most business leaders have not become ardent right-wingers...
...The bankers demanded that the United States put the brakes on the economy in an effort to cut down on both rising prices and import demand...
...In the late 1960s, some leftists advocated a new constitutional convention that would make America's guiding principles more equitable...
...The Left must look to its own program...
...Some conservatives, on the other hand, oppose a convention because they fear the Left would dominate it, as it did the November 1977 women's conference in Houston...
...A balanced budget will not eliminate needed social programs or cause a recession: By freeing funds for the private sector, it will spark new investment, increase Federal revenues, and allow needed social programs to continue...
...Solutions must be sought elsewhere — away from the din of Presidential politics and the galloping hooves of liberal knights on horseback...
...Predictably, the Left is also relying on a Presidential bid by a liberal politician to get it out of its quandary...
...But most of the Left continues to chug along, aware of the challenge, eager for new unity, sensing that a period of political realignment is upon us, but unwilling to cross the road that divides socialist politics from liberalism...
...But a Kennedy candidacy or Presidency will not provide solutions to the Left's dilemmas any more than a Carter Presidency did...
...As often as not, right-wing challengers are out-spent by their liberal opponents...
...For 1980, debt payments will amount to $57 billion, or about 10 per cent of the Federal budget...
...They believe it is not a question of whether it will occur, but what form it will take — whether it will be administered through a corporate-dominated Executive branch, staffed with Brookings Institution alumni, or whether it will be under the control of labor and an aroused citizenry...
...But conservatives have benefitted not only from the confused economic policies of the liberals and from the rightward drift of corporate leaders, but also from the social caution that usually accompanies economic hardship — a desire for stability and roots and a rejection of any perceived threat to family and neighborhood...
...By discouraging investments that would increase productivity, the slump also accelerated an existing trend toward rising prices and the decline of the dollar in world trade...
...If they continued with their stimulative policies, they risked rising prices and perhaps a greater recession later...
...Since the Progressive Era, and certainly since the New Deal and World War II, the Left has followed the liberal lead in formulating its objectives...
...Particularly on foreign policy issues, they are deeply at odds with the Right...
...They favor "equal opportunities" for whites instead of opposing opportunities for blacks...
...The conservatives have also gained intellectual converts...
...Kennedy liberal John K. Gal-braith has openly embraced social democracy...
...They have taken a few pages from the Right's old book...
...Liberal policymakers were stymied...
...Abroad, they see Soviet communism as the main threat...
...The collapse of the liberal coalition was as evident in George McGovern's defeat in 1972 as it was in Jimmy Carter's nomination and election in 1976...
...Nor has it developed the political approach that, as America's economic difficulties deepen, could mobilize a popular majority...
...Foreign bankers might even begin cashing in their Eurodollars in anticipation of a decline in their value and precipitate a world crash...
...Ironically, the Right's opponents explain its rise with the same corporate-conspiracy arguments the Right formerly used to explain the liberals' ascendancy...
...In California, the Campaign for Economic Democracy (CED), founded in the wake of Tom Hayden's 1976 Senate campaign, has developed a program calling for popular control of corporate decisions...
...California Governor Jerry Brown has taken a similar stance...
...While Richard Viguerie's direct-mail techniques have revolutionized right-wing fund-raising, the Right has, for the most part, simply adapted organizing methods long used by the AFL-CIO's Committees on Political Education and by liberal organizations...
...Public economic planning is the only means of re-invigorating our cities and saving our neighborhoods...
...They have to be sought in the recognition that Cold War and New Deal liberalism is dead and cannot be revived...
...But they did not advance proposals that would be both redistribu-tive and stimulative...
...The question is: Why...
...Initiatives and referenda were first introduced during the Progressive Era, under left-wing pressure...
...Under the pressure of adversity, organized labor and the movements of the 1960s have fought side by side for Humphrey-Hawkins, labor law reform, a higher minimum wage, and the ERA...
...Lacking a general approach, the Left has been trapped into fighting rearguard single-issue battles, often on behalf of symbolic rather than substantive goals...
...The groups that make up the broader Left in American politics — labor, feminists, minority groups, environmentalists, and anti-milifarists — have responded to the Right's rise in a self-defeating manner...
...adopted the Right's...
...Carter has proposed two ways of fighting inflation: Wage-price guidelines, which have a history of proven failure, and fiscal and monetary restraints that threaten to plunge the country into deep recession...
...But faced with these same proposals today, leftists blanch...
...And it will have to develop politics that can unite these forces and provide new solutions to the problems Americans face...
...Last October, the United Auto Workers' Douglas Fraser brought these groups into an organization called the Progressive Alliance, which includes groups (such as the Plumbers' Union, the New American Movement, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, the National Organization for Women, and Environmental Action) that would not have been willing to sit in the same room five years ago...
...By the 1970s, the economy was in serious disarray...
...It is a comforting explanation...
...With public, democratically controlled investment planning, the United States could have full employment, a balanced budget, a sound dollar, and economic growth...
...He could make each group imagine he was its man without committing himself programmatically to any of them...
...And he is the first major labor leader in forty years to proclaim himself a socialist...
...In the United States, this development aggravated the normal cycle of recession and recovery...
...CED has also developed a constructive approach to the quest for a balanced budget, proposing — and having adopted at the California state Democratic Party meeting — a resolution calling for a "full employment balanced budget," to be achieved in part by reduced military spending and redistribution of the tax burden...
...The Left has assumed that the Right would dominate a constitutional convention...
...In the 1970s, the unemployment rising and social spending jeopardized, the liberal coalition has dissolved into warring camps — business against labor, white ethnics against minorities, militarists against peace activists, traditionalists against feminists, and North against South...
...They have packaged outdated economics in new wrapping (the Laffler curve) and cast aside impractical antistatism...
...William Winpisinger, who became president of the Machinists' Union in 1977 and sits on the AFL-CIO Executive Council, is transforming that union into a bastion of left-wing heresy...
...Leading liberal intellectuals have responded to the crisis in varying ways...
...What I see is not a nation moving to the Right," one liberal member of Congress explained, "but a well-organized minority dominating the political arena...
...Socialist politics are also relevant to America's social unrest...
...Their first premise was that if rates of profit were not high enough to encourage investment, they would have to be increased...
...He pointed to a number of right-wing election upsets last year, beginning with Jeffrey Bell's victory over Clifford Case in the New Jersey Republican Senate primary and extending through Senate victories over targeted liberal incumbents in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Colorado...
...At home, they largely ignore homegrown communists, who are deemed insignificant...
...They were also confronted with angry European bankers who were holding $500 billion in "Eurodollars...
...So long as the state functions as the willing servant of a nervous private economy, there is no way to achieve full employment without jeopardizing profit rates, prices, and the dollar...
...If these economists are right, it becomes all the more urgent for the Left to develop a socialist program...
...Led by such fugitives from the Left as The Public Interest's Irving Kristol and Commentary's Norman Podhoretz, as well as by such free-market economists as Arthur Laffler and Michael Boskin, these neo-conservatives have adapted right-wing thought to the challenge of the late 1970s...
...The explanation preferred by most John Judis is the political editor of In These Times...
...Crane rattled off an impressive list of accomplishments, from Proposition Thirteen and the balanced budget campaign to the denial of Federal abortion funds, the halt in the drive to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), and Wyoming's defiance of the Federal fifty-five-miles-per-hour speed limit...
...This was most apparent in last fall's Congressional struggles over tax reform and natural gas deregulation...
...He countered corporate rejection of gas regulation with a call for socialization of the energy industry...
...I don't want a convention," democratic socialist author Michael Harrington remarked, "where some screwball gets up and says, 'Let's take out the Fifth Amendment.' " Such attitudes betray a distrust of popular democracy...
...Western capitalism had become too productive for its own good...
...Balanced budgets have a certain common-sense appeal and even a populist one: Why should taxpayers pay a growing amount each year to banks, corporations, and wealthy individuals in the form of interest payments on the debts incurred by past generations...
...at best, it is a partial truth...
...And the way to do that, the businessmen argued, was to keep wage increases down and eliminate Government hindrances to greater profits, especially Government regulations and taxes...
...It built on the Populist movement's respect for democracy...
...Some tentative steps have been taken on the Left toward developing socialist politics of this kind...
...Pluralist Robert Dahl has become a socialist...
...This explanation of the Right's success does not suffice...
...It fails completely to take account of the structural factors behind the rise and fall of political movements...
...Some are even calling for a new constitutional convention...
...REFLECTIONS The Right may be wrong, but the Left isn't right John Judis Our philosophy has moved into the mainstream of American political thought," Representative Phillip Crane, the Illinois Republican who aspires to be the New Right's Presidential candidate in 1980, told a gathering of conservative activists in Washington, D.C., early this year...
...But in continuing to follow liberalism in the present period, the Left has foregone the possibility of offering any serious alternatives to the politics of the Right...
Vol. 43 • August 1979 • No. 8
