27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Critical Reading, October 17, 2008
This review is from: The Democrats: A Critical History (Paperback)
With less than a month to go before the election and Obama's inauguration a mere three months away, Lance Selfa's "The Democrats: A Critical History" is critical reading for anyone interested in real change we can believe in i.e. not the kind Obama will bring.
For the American working class movement and the organized left, the Democratic Party has been a key stumbling block since the Populist Movement shook the country back in the 1890s. The Democratic Party has managed, contained, controlled, co-opted, rolled back and eventually destroyed every social movement that has arisen since then.
Selfa begins the book by looking at Obama's ascension to the throne of the American Empire in the wake of 9/11, eight years of Bush, and the collapse of the Republican Party after three decades of political dominance. In the second chapter, he analyzes the class nature of the Democratic Party, and points out that the Democrats are unlike most other parties in the world in that individual candidates, rather than the party platform, dictate their policies. He argues convincingly that the Democratic Party is a capitalist party and cites as evidence where its politicians get money from, which think-tanks it takes advice from, who they staff campaigns with, its record on legislation, and its record on foreign policy. He devotes an entire chapter to explaining how and why the Democrats are just as imperialist as their counterparts across the aisle, and points out that all the major wars of the 20th century were launched by Democratic politicians who claimed to want peace while they prepared for war. The fact the party is viewed as being less pro-war than the Republicans is a feat that would impress Karl Rove, given that Democrats jumped into two world wars, used nuclear weapons, designed the Cold War, and started "small" wars in Korea and Vietnam.
Unlike the Republicans, the Democrats incorporate representatives of the oppressed and exploited (women, blacks, gays, unions) within the party as a subordinate component, giving them a meaningless "seat at the table." Doing so helps the Democrats maintain the fiction that they are the "party of the people," or that they're "friends of labor," unlike the big business-backed Republicans. The third chapter is dedicated to looking at the rise of the "New Democrats," i.e. Bill Clinton and the unapologetically pro-business GOP-lite Democratic Leadership Council that has controlled the party since the 1990s.
In the remaining chapters of the book, Selfa turns his attention from the nature of the party and its current trajectory to focusing on the Democratic Party's (abusive) relationship with social movements, unions, and the organized left. He starts with the Populist movement that united black and white sharecroppers in the rural West and South(!) against the growing power of the robber barons but made the fatal mistake of entering into an alliance with the Democrats. Next, he shows how the tremendous working-class rebellion in the 1930s that won Social Security and made the American Dream a reality for generations of workers was blocked from creating a European-style Labor Party, parties that single-payer universal health care systems in Europe and Canada that Michael Moore so envied in Sicko. Lastly, Selfa looks at the rise and fall of the civil rights, anti-war, women's rights, and gay liberation movements of the 60s and 70s.
In each case, the Democrats resisted these movements but eventually granted meaningful reforms because these movements became too powerful to crush. These movements ignored pleas by Democratic politicians to moderate their demands, to shut up and wait, and to stop organizing (Attorney General Robert Kennedy, the darling of liberals to this day, told civil rights organizers: "If you stop all this sitting-in s--- and concentrate on voter registration, I'll get you a tax-exemption.") At the same time, the Democrats worked hard to incorporate and co-opt movement leaders into the machinery of government, to transform community organizers into party/government bureaucrats sitting behind desks.
Sadly, in many cases, the strategy worked. Jesse Jackson, for example, agreed to endorse conservative Democratic loser Michael Dukakis and give him the Rainbow Coalition's delegates in exchange for putting several Jackson staffers (including Jackson's son) on the Democratic National Committee. While big business-friendly candidates kept its hands firmly on the wheel of the Democratic Party, progressives and their issues took their seats at the back of the bus. The book is rife with examples of movement leaders that decide "a seat at the table" is more important than changing the menu, the portions, or who gets served what.
The last few chapters of the book are devoted to whether or not the left can take over or use the party as a vehicle for social change. He uses Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition in the 1980s and today's Progressive Democrats of America as examples of how activists who set out to change and takeover the Democratic party end up changing, getting co-opted and neutered by the very forces they sought to challenge.
The book closes by examining the missed opportunities to create broad-based third parties free of corporate domination, opportunities which the Democratic party sabotaged, more often than not with help from forces within social movements. The most ugly example is the American Communist Party during the 1930s and 40s. No matter how many strikes the Democrats broke, or how many working-class radicals were victimized by McCarthyism (another invention of the Democratic party), the CP toed a pro-FDR line even though there was a groundswell of support rank-and-file workers for an independent Labor Party due to strikebreaking and political betrayals by Democratic governors and FDR at the time. To read more about that, check out Sharon Smith's excellent book on U.S. labor history, "Subterranean Fire."
Two themes run throughout the book and form Selfa's conclusion: 1) the Democratic Party is part of the problem, not part of the solution if you want real, meaningful change and 2) change comes from grassroots movements independent of (and in opposition to) the Republican and Democratic parties. The lesser-evil strategy has been and will always be a complete disaster, allowing both parties the freedom to become more and more "evil" as time goes on, so long as they don't ever become equally "evil."
The only shortcoming of this book is that Selfa neglects to mention the fact that the Democratic Party is itself a misnomer. Forty percent of the votes that a nominee needs to win at the Democratic Convention are controlled by "super-delegates," current and former elected officials, who can vote however they want, regardless of how people in their districts or state vote. This system was instituted after George McGovern lost in 1972 to Nixon for the explicit purpose of blocking candidates that were deemed by party bosses as "too left-wing." This voting bloc exists to put a check on democracy within the party. Furthermore, the road to the nomination begins in rural conservative states (Iowa, New Hampshire) and continues through a gauntlet of the other 48 states, each of which have different and complicated formulas for awarding delegates, a system whose lunacy was on full display in the Clinton-Obama death march to the nomination that lasted twice as long as the general election. The system is rigged to ensure that only conservative nominees with millions of dollars to burn can win. Kuciniches need not apply.
This book is essential reading for any activist who wants to understand how to win change in this country and anyone who thinks we need an alternative to the two party state.
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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Slouching Toward Extinction, March 21, 2009
This review is from: The Democrats: A Critical History (Paperback)
Anyone expecting change beyond the margins from an Obama administration should read this book first. Unfortunately, generation after generation of voters has opted for Democrats as the lesser of two evils. As a result, here we are today, a nation of hollowed-out economy, rotted-out empire, and max'ed-out consumers, thanks largely to the "lesser-evilism" of a Democratic Party. Worse, contrary to occasional pretentions, the party has never really offered an alternative to any of these pathologies. Author Selfa lays bare the party's dreary record of Wall St. collusion and imperialist expansion, despite fitful posturing from a parade of devious leaders. It's a sorry record that includes even the sainted FDR who is shown backing into New Deal reforms strictly as a defensive measure against deeper change.
Then there's the party's historical function to co-opt popular movements more progressive than itself. Presenting their candidates as the only realistic alternative, the party makes tactical concessions in order to maintain strategic dominance over the political left. But that dominance ironically traces back to the same moneyed interests that sponsor the political party of the right, the Republicans. No wonder the end result shapes up as change but no change, and the most disengaged electorate in the Western world. The Green Party is only the latest of political fall-guys to tumble into the graveyard of lesser-evilism. It's really a sorry record, especially when a lesser-evil like Bill Clinton seeks to undo what he can of a meagre New Deal legacy. How surprising is it, that the last 30-years of Repubocrat rule reads like a social survey of the 19th century in free-fall. The historical lesson is clear. Democrats don't make change, but mobilized social movements do. Readers can learn more about our biggest political party from this book than from a typical course in political science. I know I did.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
bout sums it up..., October 17, 2009
This review is from: The Democrats: A Critical History (Paperback)
The Democratic party has long been a sort of Venus flytrap of politics for Left Wing movements. God knows how Huey Long got as far as he did. People react with shock at the apparent weakness of the democrats despite a super majority, never realizing, that most of the party doesn't want real reforms in health care, regulation of the Financial markets, Full Employment, the list goes on. There have been a few good ones, but they are the exception.
At times Selfa does go a bit overboard. George McGovern was at least as acceptable a leftist as Ralph Nader, but he is somewhat casually dismissed. The Democratic Socialists of America...well okay they pretty much deserved it for backing Mondale over Jackson when there most prominent member was Ron Dellums? WTF??!!, and FDR....well, he wasn't perfect, but he was decent enough. Overall, some very unpleasant truths for the left are expounded upon throughout the course of the book
Fundamentally what one should take from this book, is that the Dems will never ever do the right thing unless pushed to the limit. They seem to be learning it now, and may ever carry it into midterms. But as the book makes clear, the lessons they learn will inevitably be forgotten when the other Corporate party waves Sarah Palin, or Mike Huckabee, or Mitt Romney in there faces.
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