American Extremism

The great English Radical, William Cobbett, once said “I defy you to agitate a fellow with a full stomach”. Economic security and wellbeing make for a very comfortable if not complacent populace. Perhaps the contrary is true. Perhaps the source of our current malaise and the extremist threat to our democracy embodied in the Tea Party is the long term failure of economic policy to deliver such wellbeing.

At least to those who, in their own estimation, have obeyed the “rules”, worked hard, and otherwise behaved according the precepts of American mythology.

We on the left seem to forget the huge triumphs of the past few decades. America has been reconstructed. It is more equal in terms of social rights than ever before, and the great social programs so reviled by the right have been sustained – sometimes barely – throughout. We progressives tend to get lost in our issues. We advocate environmental safety, product safety, workplace equality, voting rights, abortion rights, and a host of other similar things, yet we rarely advocate growth. We do this because many of us see growth as an arbitrary and dangerous phenomenon. We see it as threat to the planet. We see the side-effects of capitalist activity as permanent scars. We see them as intractable unless we turn capitalism on its head. That is to say we attempt to render capitalism without capitalists. It isn’t possible. Yet we talk as if it is.

I do not hew to this line. I do not see growth as a problem. Indeed I see it as a savior. Thus I do not dismiss capitalists. I see them in need of restraint. And if that restraint needs to be imposed, so be it.

I am passionate about democracy, which is not capitalism. We should be careful to value them both because the balance between them is crucial to our long term stability and prosperity. If we err one way or the other the balance is undone and our entire social system is threatened.

Which is where we are today.

Extremism has grown pernicious on the right side of our politics, whilst we on the left continue to tally our victories we are perplexed and frustrated by the obstinacy of the Tea Party and its willingness to destroy everything. In order to defuse the threat, to heal our discourse, and to protect our progressive gains, we need to understand why that destructive tendency has arisen.

Cobbett was right. There are empty stomachs, metaphorically, so there is agitation.

I know this sounds preposterous to those who have only recently emerged into equal status, or who still struggle against the residual resistance against such status. But all periods of great social change breed a counter reformation. The Tea Party is our version of such a movement.

As we re-balance society and establish the hard won rights we applaud on the left we must remember that our relentless focus on them creates an image of uncaring about those whose pre-eminence is being eroded. It is important not to stop our effort. It is equally important to recognize the only too human counter reaction. Especially when much of our messaging creates an endless series of “others”, each winning more space on the national stage. We needed to avoid the perception of a zero-sum game, we needed to leave space for those being diminished to flourish in other ways, but we didn’t.

In the heat of battle it is easy to forget that after the victory we will need to cohabit with the losers. The sting of loss has to be assuaged.

Which is why I see growth as so important. We need to fill the stomachs of those who are now agitating.

The right is up in arms, but it is incoherent. Its succession of losses on social issues masks its great victory on economic issues. The entire Reagan/Clinton era of deregulation and pro-business policy making, abetted by free-market economic thinking has wrought our current economy. It sucks. It is a dismal failure. But, and this is the right’s deep problem, is is a bigger failure for its core voters than for anyone else. White male blue collar workers are now the loyalists of the right. And they are also the biggest losers of the right’s economic policies. they don’t change sides because they also perceive they are the losers on those social issues. Indeed in many ways they attribute their economic losses to the social progress of the “others”. In other words they conflate economic and social issues, and since progressives talk about social issues more, the right’s failure on the economy is hidden from view.

That the right won on the economy is unequivocally true. Profits and capital are privileged. Wages and job security are sidelined. Policy makers fret over how to encourage investment and how to protect creditors, but give scant thought to workers or working conditions. Inflation, the great enemy of creditors, is viewed with fanatical hysteria by central banks – even when it doesn’t exist – but debt relief is viewed as morally evil. Lenders are bailed out. Borrowers are treated as selfish spendthrift fools. The minimum wage languishes at decades old levels, while bonuses soar even after the financial crash.

But right wing economic policies, by giving full rein to corporate pursuit of profit, put in place the exact squeeze on wages that drove so many people to borrow. The security to borrow rested on the illusion of future wage growth that would “surely” turn up some day, and on the more illusory one way direction of property values. By ignoring the wage engine of the economy the free market ideas of the past few decades simply created a series of bubbles. It relied on magic rather than substance.

And those most suckered by the belief in magic are those most agitated today. They still believe in magic because their leaders cannot tell the truth. To do so would deny the entire arc of the Reagan/Clinton era. They cannot turn back, so they lead on further into the extremist wilderness.

The message of inequality is inherently populist. It ought to appeal to the disaffected who are that core of the right’s supporters. But it is insufficiently spoken to. Especially by the left where the multiplicity of “others” keeps the focus on social rather than economic populism.

To defang extremism – to fill those stomachs – we progressives need a coherent economic alternative to free market magic that is not encumbered by anti-growth sentiment. We need to embrace issues that appeal to those who oppose our ideas because they see them as threats to their wellbeing. We need to tone down our rhetoric without reducing our effort and we need to add growth to our agenda. Balanced, sensible, environmentally astute growth. Higher taxes on the wealthy? Of course. But also simpler, lower taxes on everyone else. Keep business honest? Naturally. But with less red tape and fewer silly rules, not endless extensions of either. We need to encourage small business, not pile more regulations on it. We need to encourage local efforts not centralize everything. We need to reduce government where we can and not relentlessly add to its remit. We need to ease up on issues we cannot win soon in order to buy time to renew our attack. We need to reduce the antisocial efforts of business without calling every business evil. And so on.

The great Reform Act of 1832 in Britain came after a period of intense unrest. The word reform itself was unusual back then, and the memories of the horror of revolution was fresh in the establishment’s mind. The emancipation of Catholics had recently split the Tories, with some extremists arguing it was an attack on Britain and the re-introduction of papacy. The rhetoric was absurd. There had been a series of failed harvests. Starvation was a real threat. Industrialization was underway and re-shaping society in every way. Huge population centers had sprung up and were not represented in Parliament, while some rural centers – some with no population at all – were still represented in Parliament. The tension was palpable. Revolutionary talk was in the air. Yet, somehow, the Reform Act, to fix all that rotten Parliamentary rigging, was passed by the rotten Parliament itself. It cleaned up its own act. By one vote. By one vote society moved forward.

I don’t think it a great stretch to say that it was that one vote margin that transformed the old much feared British “mob” with its tendency to riot, into what has become the modern British “people”.

And throughout that transformation Cobbett’s observation held true. Whenever stomachs are empty, extremist can agitate and create a mob. Whenever stomachs are full, calm and the people predominate.

We need to fill those stomachs. And we on the left need a policy to do just that.