Twilight of the Liberals

The sun shone brightly at the One Nation Working Together rally in Washington, D.C. on October 2, and there may have been 100,000 people there, but watching all four hours of it on C-Span, I realized that I was watching the Twilight of the Liberals. It was perhaps not yet their death agony, and there was energy and eloquence throughout, but the speakers were caught up in the dilemma of reformists, the dilemma of the social democracy, and the dilemma of the parties of the Second International. Indeed there was not even the electoral campaign of a party like Britain’s compromised Labour Party to support --although there were numerous speakers from the Democratic Socialists of America, a group that has been given Second International recognition. The DSA, however, supports the Democrats, and that points up the fatal contradiction in the claim to relevance made by the participating groups.

The contradiction that was almost always at work was evident in one of the best speeches, that by Harry Belafonte. He clearly condemned Obama’s decision to escalate the war in Afghanistan and pointed to Congress’s having funded it over social programs. Then he went into a sustained litany about being sure to vote in November.

For whom are we supposed to vote? One guy had a sign that said, “I’ll vote. You betcha.” Yeah, but for whom?

This movement, sincere and eloquent, has no electoral outlet. And some of the speakers were the same kind of trade unionists who killed off the Labor Party that we were trying to create with them.

The One Nation rally was undertaken to show the relevance of these activist groups in meeting the unmet needs of this country, but such groups come up against the fact that capitalism cannot be reformed. The Democrats and Republicans will finally say, “We can’t afford it”--a statement that means that Our Masters cannot afford it.  Systemic change is needed, but the corporation-supported parties--Democrats and Republicans, ultimately the parties of Wall Street-- cannot run on a platform of genuine change. How would they get campaign contributions?

It was the end of an era, a twilight, for the forces that ended segregation, fought for basic healthcare, equal pay, and educational opportunity. It was the end of the Great Society, the end of the 1960s, a twilight or worse. Without a party to sustain it, the movement is dead.

The most encouraging aspect of the day’s events was the presence of many young people. They heard what demands can be made. And, although not invited to speak, the socialists did turn out. I hope that they succeeded in revealing some glimmerings of the socialist alternative.

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In the meantime, the struggle continues in Europe. The RMT has shut down London again today in its effort to stop job cuts on the Underground. The new leader of the Labour Party, Ed Miliband, has not yet endorsed the strike and is unlikely to do so. Ironically enough, he was called “Red Ed’” as a candidate for the party leadership. Instead, good old “Red Ken” (as he’s been called for ages) Livingstone has come out in support of the RMT. The Left in Britain has rightly been critical of Livingstone since his return to the reformist Labour Party, but he does have some memory of what it means to be pro-labor. In the UK, and in the USA, what is needed is a new mass worker’s party. In the USA, we haven’t approached that since the days of Eugene V. Debs.