4. Left/Right and Radical Decentralization
The main obstacle to alliances between left-wing and right-wing populists and decentralists are cultural in nature. A substantial sector of the radical right views itself as being under attack by an elite that is hell-bent on imposing militant secularism, totalitarian multiculturalism, homosexual radicalism, extremist feminism, and other manifestations of cultural Marxism on the broader society, and doing so in a way that displays total disregard for the traditional American liberties of free speech, freedom of association, economic or religious liberty, and Second Amendment rights. One need not share the cultural outlook of the socially conservative right wing to recognize that there is much truth to their complaints against the cosmopolitan liberal establishment. On this question, the radical left typically puts the cart before the horse. It is well and good to defend unpopular minorities against genuine oppression and to agitate for the ongoing expansion of civil liberties. But it is strategically foolish to adopt an antagonistic stance towards the traditional and majoritarian culture of the working masses by attempting to pit varying demographic groups against one another in the form of blacks against whites, women against men, gays against straights, immigrants against natives, tree-huggers against loggers, animal lovers against meat-eaters, eco-freaks against small property owners, peace creeps against veterans, hippies against blue-collar workers, poor Appalachian whites against Jewish bankers, or whatever. A grievous strategic error undertaken by the left during the 1960s and 1970s was its abandonment of the class struggle orientation of the historic left and reinventing itself as what the Nixonites would sneeringly refer to as “the party of amnesty, acid, and abortion.” Paul Craig Roberts describes the consequences of this:
President Bush has used “signing statements” hundreds of times to vitiate the meaning of statutes passed by Congress. In effect, Bush is vetoing the bills he signs into law by asserting unilateral authority as commander-in-chief to bypass or set aside the laws he signs. For example, Bush has asserted that he has the power to ignore the McCain amendment against torture, to ignore the law that requires a warrant to spy on Americans, to ignore the prohibition against indefinite detention without charges or trial, and to ignore the Geneva Conventions to which the US is signatory.
In effect, Bush is asserting the powers that accrued to Hitler in 1933. His Federalist Society apologists and Department of Justice appointees claim that President Bush has the same power to interpret the Constitution as the Supreme Court. An Alito Court is likely to agree with this false claim. This is the great issue that is before the country. But it is pushed into the background by political battles over abortion and homosexual rights. Many people fighting to strengthen the executive think they are fighting against legitimizing sodomy and murder in the womb. They are unaware that the real issue is that America is on the verge of elevating its president above the law.
Bush Justice Department official and Berkeley law professor John Yoo argues that no law can restrict the president in his role as commander-in-chief. Thus, once the president is at war—even a vague open-ended “war on terror”—Bush’s Justice Department says the president is free to undertake any action in pursuit of war, including the torture of children and indefinite detention of American citizens. The commander-in-chief role is probably sufficiently elastic to expand to any crisis, whether real or fabricated. Thus has the US arrived at the verge of dictatorship.
The “red-state fascists” who constitute Bush’s most enthusiastic grassroots supporters may not care if Bush and his cronies were to create an executive dictatorship for themselves, but they should consider the future consequences for their own interests when such powers subsequently fall into the hands of President Hillary Clinton. A preview of this was granted during the Bill Clinton/Janet Reno era. As the 1960s generation becomes the elderly generation, the cultural Marxists of the New Left will be the unquestioned status quo. As mentioned, the likes of Charles Schumer and Dianne Feinstein will be the “conservatives.” The goal of this crowd is the creation of a pseudo-Stalinist state where “freedom,” “democracy,” “human rights,” and other shallow pieties amount to extravagant affirmative action, unlimited abortion, gay marriage, and little else within the context of a Mussolini-like corporatist economy and an overtly fascistic police state. The old-style civil libertarian left of Nat Hentoff or the libertine “sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll” left of Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin is long dead. The establishment left of today is the left of Morris Dees, Catharine MacKinnon, and Michael Moore.
I believe the best way to approach the possibility of a rapprochement between the radical libertarian-left and the populist radical-right is to convince both sides that their cultural interests are best defended within the context of a radically decentralized political order. Much of the right should be open to this idea as respect for venerable American traditions such as “states’ rights” and “local sovereignty” is common on the right. Indeed, cultural conservatives frequently lament the alleged “judicial activism” of federal courts that have legalized abortion, pornography, and homosexuality nationwide, mandated racial desegregation, expanded criminal rights, and removed religious instruction from public schools. This is an exaggeration. The rulings of the federal courts on these matters, particularly those of the Warren and Burger Supreme Courts, only reflected prevailing trends of the times. Most of the individual states were already starting to adopt a more liberal approach in these areas when the courts stepped in and speeded up the process a bit. For example, when the Supreme Court struck down state anti-sodomy laws in 2003, only thirteen of the fifty states still retained such laws. Social conservatives, cultural, religious, racial, or otherwise, are losing the so-called “culture wars” on all fronts. The more perceptive and intelligent persons within those milieus recognize this. For example, Paul Weyrich, a founder of the religious right, has called for “cultural secession” by conservatives, recognizing that the cultural left has largely won the war. A territorial secession movement of this type, the Christian Exodus Project, has emerged. And no serious person among the white nationalists believes there will ever be a neo-Nazi regime in the United States or that the old Southern racial caste system will ever be reinstated. Instead, these forces have adopted a purely defensive position. For the cultural right, the choice is clear enough: Either adopt an outlook of separatism and decentralism, or prepare to be ruled by the cultural Marxists. The right should have no problem choosing the former over the latter.
For the libertarian-left, the question is a little more problematical. The left tends to associate slogans like “states’ rights” or “local sovereignty” with apologies for slavery and white supremacism. And much of the left ignorantly believes that in a decentralized system the entire American heartland would fall under the rule of Christian Talibanists or the American Nazi Party. This perspective reeks of elitist paranoia and bigotry. It is necessary to demonstrate to the left that their interests are also best advanced through decentralization and local sovereignty. As mentioned, the majority of the US population resides in 75 major metropolitan areas. It is in these areas where ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities, the urban poor, the youth countercultures, the homeless, marginal populations, and other groups championed by the left tend to be concentrated. If these areas were independent city-states, it would be much easier to advance to interests of these populations politically. Here’s an interesting case in point: In my own state of Virginia, there have been debates in the legislature about how to go about changing the state’s sodomy laws now that the Supreme Court has declared them unconstitutional. Generally speaking, the “pro-sodomy” delegates tend to originate from the Washington,
suburbs in northern Virginia, the heavily populated Atlantic coast region, and the metropolitan area around the capital city of Richmond. The “anti-sodomy” delegates tend to originate from the conservative, rural areas in the western part of the state. Obviously, it would be more advantageous for the “pro-sodomy
” crowd if the more liberal, densely populated areas could simply legalize sodomy on their own and by-pass the state legislature.
Such a political framework would be very advantageous in ending the drug war. The large urban areas in the United States, where most drug addicts as well as most prohibition-related crime is located (and where most drug war prisoners come from), could simply end the drug war à la Amsterdam on their own with conservative, rural areas, and smaller towns maintaining prohibition on the “dry county” model. Leftists often argue that in such a decentralized system abortion rights would disappear, but this perception is inadequate. Abortion rights advocates will point out that roughly 85 percent of American localities (cities, towns, and counties) do not have any abortion services available due to poverty, local taboos, or whatever. In other words, decades after abortion was legalized nationwide, it is still de facto prohibited in most American communities through sheer unavailability, legal or not. Meanwhile, if Roe v. Wade were to be overturned, state governments would be authorized to prohibit abortion even in metropolitan areas where “pro-choice” sentiment is quite strong and urban abortion rights activists would be at the mercy of state legislators from counties with strong religious fundamentalist leanings. Of course, we could reverse this and apply the same analysis to Second Amendment rights. If the Supreme Court were to rule that the Second Amendment protects only state militias and not an individual’s right to bear arms, then rural gun owners would be at the mercy of suburban and urban state legislators representing vociferously anti-gun constituencies. So it works both ways.
5. Black/White and Radical Decentralization
A libertarian-populist insurgency will out of strategic necessity need to divide and disrupt the popular coalitions that comprise the grassroots support base of the left and right wings of the ruling class. We can draw from the right in the ways already mentioned, i.e., defending both the economic interests and the cultural liberties of the conventional working class. Our ability to draw from the left will be dependent on our aptitude for pulling the rank and file members of the traditional minority groups out from under their bourgeois leadership and cultivating not-so-traditional minorities as constituent groups. Of all the issues raised by this question, none are quite as inflammatory as the matter of race. Ruling classes have maintained a “divide and conquer” stratagem for the subjugation of their populations since time immemorial. In the interest of frankness, here’s how I interpret America’s present racial situation: Cultural openings and cultural conflicts of the past fifty years have created a situation where a multi-ethnic ruling class attempts to micromanage social conflict and expand the reaches of the state with the ideology of totalitarian multiculturalism. The US ruling class is still primarily European in its ancestry, but is increasingly accepting of members of other ethnic groups into its ranks. Contrary to the imaginings of professional anti-Semites, “the Jews” do not rule America but organized Jewish ethnic interests do play the role of junior partners to the broader plutocracy. We might say that the Jewish elite play the role of Tony Blair with the mainstream white ruling class assuming the role of George W. Bush. Meanwhile, the loyalty of the elite members of the African population is maintained through an elaborate racial spoils system operating at the expense of the white working class majority. This in turn creates resentment on the part of whites which the elites channel into the scapegoating of poor, urban minorities who are the most subject to attack under the cover of public hysteria concerning drugs, guns, and crime, and whose plight their ethnic leadership ignores or helps perpetuate by acting as a buffer between the ruling class and an authentic black insurgency.
What I am really saying here is that the socially or even racially conservative white working class shares a common enemy with the black urban lumpenproletarian class. Political leaders who are able to build bridges across the divide between these two classes will possess a mighty weapon to be used against the ruling class enemy. How can this be accomplished? Rather than emulating the conventional liberal “strategy” of promoting some sort of utopian ideal of endless brotherly love where the lion and the lamb lie down together, it might be best to adopt an approach more consistent with the principles of realpolitik. We need to create a political program where both poor blacks and the white working class have more to gain from aligning themselves with each other than either does by aligning themselves with the ruling class against the other. The best approach would probably be one of sovereignty, reparations, and amnesty to advance the interests of blacks, and the elimination of race-based favoritism, affirmative action, antidiscrimination laws, etc., to advance the interests of whites. The black bourgeoisie would not find this to be an acceptable trade-off but many nationalist, separatist, or urban “underclass” blacks might. The white liberal bourgeoisie would be appalled by such a suggestion but the white working class would probably approve. Therefore, the anti-ruling class black factions and the anti-ruling white factions would find themselves on the same side of the fence against the common class enemy. This is how it should be.
The matter of implementing such a settlement to America’s historic ethnic divides brings with it certain complications. The “pro-white” aspects of the settlement proposed above would be simple enough to enact. It is merely a matter of repealing particular laws (like antidiscrimination statutes) and policies (like affirmative action) and ending subsidies to particular interests (like “minority set-asides”). The “pro-black” aspects of the settlement are a little more difficult. On the question of sovereignty, various black nationalist factions have proposed widely divergent ideas. It would seem that the best approach would be one that involved the least amount of disruption possible. Some years ago, the Peoples’ Democratic Uhuru Movement proposed that the majority black section of St. Petersburg, Florida, be separated from the rest of the city into a sovereign municipality. There is no reason why such an arrangement could not be put into place in all American cities with sizable black sections. The only serious criticism of this approach is that the disconnected black communities might degenerate into Bantustans of the type the former South Africa was famous for. At least a partial solution to this problem would be for sovereign black municipalities and their satellite towns and villages to be federated into larger “black nationalist” states on a national or regional basis. There is certainly sufficient precedent for such a territorially disconnected nation. One need only think of the United Kingdom at its height with its scattered island states and protectorates. On the question of reparations, it is obviously best to avoid an approach that requires administration by a large, obtrusive state bureaucracy. Instead, we might consider the suggestions of Kevin Carson:
In frontier areas like America, the ruling classes feared the economic independence that open land would give laborers, and relied on the state to restrict access to unclaimed land. Even when land was opened to settlement, as in the much-vaunted Homestead Act, the state gave wealthy land speculators preference over ordinary settlers. Most of the white laborers who settled America, through the early nineteenth century, were indentured servants or convicts. Considering the harshness of punishment under the indenture system, and the number of minor infractions for which the term of indenture could be extended for years, it is likely that most indentured laborers died in service. We are today forced to sell our labor on the bosses’ terms, because in the past we were robbed. “Forty acres and a mule”—for all of us—ain’t just a cliché. It’s JUSTICE.
Which brings me to the point of this article—reparations. The furor over reparations must really be a hoot for the ruling class. It’s the oldest trick in the book: keep the producing classes fighting each other so they’ll be too busy to fight the bosses. For example, for most of the seventeenth century in Virginia, there was little legal distinction between black and white servants. Servants of both races often intermarried, and began to develop a common class consciousness. The servant class, black and white, fought the planters in Bacon’s Rebellion. Clearly, this w
ouldn’t do. The Slave Codes, “white skin privilege,” and racist ideology on a large scale, were the ruling class response to this crisis. And it worked pretty well, didn’t it?
The same is true of the reparations movement. Like “affirmative action” for professional jobs (“black faces in high places”), it is more about the interests of the black bourgeoisie than those of working people. Cabinets, legislatures, and boardrooms that “look like America” just mean everyone can have the pleasure of being screwed by people of the same skin color. Likewise, although I’ve seen a few people on the libertarian left, like Lorenzo Komboa Ervin, who genuinely intend to use the proceeds of reparations for grassroots empowerment, it’s a fair guess that most of the civil rights establishment view it as a cash cow for themselves. For Jesse Jackson, it’s probably just another shakedown like the Anheuser-Busch distributorship.
At the same time, reparations will not hurt the plutocracy. So long as the statist roots of class privilege are left untouched, the usurers, profiteers and landlords will manage to adapt any “reform” to their own benefit. Monopoly capitalism will just pass the increased cost of reparations along to consumers, as it does all other forms of “progressive” taxation. Which means that the descendants of convict laborers and indentured servants will effectively be taxed to pay reparations, which in turn will almost certainly be skimmed off by people like Jackson. Just another example of how identity politics is being used to disrupt solidarity between working people of all races.
Attack the System Page 21
