An American Labor Party?
By Simon J Black
Published: 09/16/2004
In 1828 the world’s first Labour Party was formed. The party was not organized by Manchester mill workers or London dockers, but by a group of Philadelphia artisans. In 2004, despite massive job loss, deindustrialization and job insecurity, the working class people of Ohio voted overwhelmingly for George Bush. In fact, throughout the United States many working people voted Republican. Why do so many Americans continually vote against their class interests?
Patriotism, fear and the media may all factor into this phenomenon. Yet we must acknowledge that throughout the presidential race, pollsters found the average American voter ranked ‘values’ as their most important issue, ahead of the economy, security and the war in Iraq. ‘Values’ is not a neutral term in the political discourse of America. To the detriment of the Democrats, and I would argue to the determinant of the Left throughout the West, ‘values’ have been claimed by the Right. In the United States, values are now equated with the family values espoused by conservatives and religious fundamentalists. According to the Right, most social problems stem from the deterioration of values in American society. And where does that leave the Democrats?
Many of America’s social problems stem not from a lack of ‘values’ but from the destructive effects of a capitalist system. With their decisive turn to the right, Democrats can no longer convey an economic understanding of social problems to the voting public. Take the issues of unemployment, poverty and social assistance. The Clinton administration’s welfare reforms were the envy of Republicans. According to the Clinton Democrats, poverty resulted from an inadequate work ethic and welfare was meant “to be a second chance, not a way of life.” In turn, unemployment can be put down to a breakdown in values and the Democrats conceded that welfare was a disincentive to work. If we follow this logic, the 20th century is odd indeed: Americans tended to be lazy and energetic in cycles while synchronizing their moods with large numbers of their fellow citizens.
American cultural critic Thomas Frank says that it’s not so much that the working class has abandoned the Democrats, it’s the Democrats that have abandoned the working class. Frank argues that the Democratic shift to the right has left the party indistinguishable with the Republicans on a range of economic issues important to the American people. John Kerry supported NAFTA, welfare reform and the privatization of public services. Under Clinton, the labour movement continued to see its numbers decline. Democrats have abandoned full employment as a guiding economic principle and appear happy to promise workers a miserly increase in the minimum wage come election time. With economic policies geared to the interests of the rich and powerful, the Democrats force working class voters to turn to values-based issues. We may not like it, but those of us on the left must accept that not all working class people (like people of any class) are going to agree with gay marriage, abortion, gun control or a number of other values-based issues. If I was a deeply religious American living in the swing state of Ohio, I might just stomach gay marriage if it meant I could take my kid to the hospital without having to put a second mortgage on the house. But with economic issues out of play, why not vote my conscience and follow my values and beliefs?
In the U.S., the need for a party of the working class has never been more apparent. Yet the left must learn not to be so righteous when confronting those that have differing opinions on values-based issues, just as the American Right is able to accommodate religious fundamentalists, Pat Buchannan protectionists, and godless neo-cons who worship the free market not Jesus Christ. The Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci, understood that political movements were messy affairs. What Gramsci termed hegemonic movements often contained contradictory elements or sub-movements that were held together by an agenda that was of greater importance than the agenda of each faction. One would hope that a party of the American Left would provide the political glue necessary to hold together the economic interests of the working class despite the differing sets of ‘values’ working people may have.