Conservatives believe in conservative ideas

For many liberals in the U.S., one of the great recurring hopes is that a moment will come when social conservatives lay down the culture wars and realize that their real interests lie with supporting progressive economic policies. Such a hope grows from a view, most famously expressed in Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas, that predominately white working-class voters are being suckered by "culture war" issues into voting GOP. More fundamentally, it lies in an analysis of the right-wing in the U.S. that sees a distinct "social conservative" base as opposed to the "economic conservatives," who are portrayed as small in numbers, rich in dollars.

Such views are overly simplistic and misunderstand a basic point: conservative activists believe in conservative ideas and such notions for many are based in a worldview that easily encompasses "economic" and "social" concerns. As Seth Ackerman points out in a terrific piece at Jacobin on Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson's new book on the Tea Party, "liberals have spent too long condescending to conservatives as if they were the perpetual victims of a bait-and-switch scam." For the thing is, the "social conservative" wing of the party which came roaring to the fore of GOP politics in the late 1970s did not focus on "cultural" issues in distinction to economics, but saw them as wrapped together in an ideological whole. As Michael Sean Winter's argues in his new biography of Jerry Falwell, many on the religious right always viewed laissez-faire capitalist ideas and social conservatism as deeply intertwined, with important origins in mutual hatred of communism.

While the story of the interconnections between the Christian right and free-market ideology has many facets, one piece of it involves conservative Protestants' reaction to the leftward shift of many white mainline Protestant churches in the 1970s on economics, and particularly their challenge to multinational corporations. Starting in the mid and late 1960s, particularly in response to the black freedom struggle, many Protestant churches began looking institutionally, financially, and morally, at their place in the larger economy. The role of church endowments became of special interest and by the early 1970s, many churches were seeing church investments as a tool for fighting for justice.

One prime manifestation of this came in 1974 when National Council of Churches merged two existing projects to create the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility. ICCR helped church groups and denominations use shareholder resolutions and other means to challenge corporate policies domestically and overseas. Most prominently, ICCR and the churches took on U.S. multinational corporations over investments made in South Africa under apartheid. Furthermore, it was ICCR that helped to launch the Nestle boycott in the late 1970s, which many corporations (as well as conservative groups such as the Heritage Foundation) viewed as a major front in what was seen as a national and global "war" on the free market in these years.

In response, in the late 1970s and through the 1980s, a number of conservative religious thinkers connected to the larger "religious right" began actively formulating arguments tying Christianity to pro-market values. This was an important part of creating the overall ideological message of the Religious Right. For example, in 1982, Catholic conservative thinker (an important part of Falwell's legacy being the uniting of Catholic and Protestant conservatives), released his book, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism, constructing a theologically-based argument for capitalism. Jerry Falwell's newsletter the Journal-Champion in its early years carried numerous articles defending corporations from government regulators such as OSHA, tying into the sense within the U.S. corporate community that they were under attack at home by a combination of government regulators and leftist activist groups, such as ICCR. Such trends continue to this day; while the Tea Party at first was seen as an economics-focused libertarian uprising, with more careful research and with time the deep ideological and social links between much of the Tea Party base and the religious right have become apparent.

For political activists of all stripes, moving beyond easy cliches towards understanding your opponents is important, whether that is to create a more humanistic and understanding politics or to better crush them in future fights. Whatever the case, progressives should recognize that conservative ideas, as contradictory as one might think they seem, are their actual beliefs.

Thoughts on #OccupyWallStreet

I. Occupy Wall Street

In Warren Beatty's epic film Reds, there is a scene where journalist and communist activist John Reed debates the course of the still infant Bolshevik revolution with the anarchist Emma Goldman. While Reed has plunged into the work of aiding the Soviets, Goldman already recoils at the horrors being perpetrated by the Bolsheviks. Pensive and tired, Reed eventually answers her critiques by saying:

"It's just the beginning E.G. It's not happening the way we thought it would, it's not happening the way we wanted it to, but it's happening."

While Reed was dramatically wrong about the Soviet Union, his sentiments have something to say about responses to the ongoing mobilization known as #OccupyWallStreet. For progressives who have been hoping for some kind of public mass uprising against our financial overlords since the onset of the Great Recession, a couple hundred young, "activist-y" types camping out on Wall Street may seem far from the dream of a mass uprising by everyday people. Yet, this is what is actually happening, and it appears to be gaining momentum as local unions and other activist groups join in. As Mark Engler details in a very thoughtful piece at Dissent magazine, the protestors have done a number of things "right" - especially on point I would say is how protestors have made their general youth into an advantage. Rather than seeming like spoiled kids, they are pointing to how the finance-led, deregulated economy and the Great Recession are betraying the implicit notion in the U.S. that the nation's society and economy will build opportunities for subsequent generations.

A lively debate continues to rage over the protests, particularly over what their demands are and should be. This is a vital dialogue to have and I appreciate the urgency of those demanding more concreteness from the protests. That said, looking historically, often more important than demands has been momentum. Such mobilizations have long been a target of frustration and scorn from sympathetic observers and activists. In the lead up to the American Revolution, street protests became commonplace, but members of the Revolutionary elite typically viewed with apprehension such actions. Similarly, the first major street actions after the crash of 1929 were not run by wholesome grassroots activists, but were organized by cadres of the Communist and Socialist Parties. While it would have been preferable to have marches not organized by people (in the CPUSA case) looking to Stalin as their model, it was the communists who had the energy to get out and so something. If progressives want to shape the protests, they should do it directly - after all, this is an action emphasizing its internally democratic character!

II. A Modest Protest and History Suggestion

Given the Tea Party loves to reference history, it couldn't hurt for our side as well. One off the top of my head that is completely unoriginal, but counterintuitively might make a splash, is to have protests dress like the Tea Party. After all, why should conservatives have a monopoly on the Revolution? The American Revolution is all our inheritance - it is an event distant and distinct enough from today that for anyone to claim a direct political lineage is rather silly. Certainly, progressives and radicals have as much claim to the American Revolution and its ideals as anyone.

This is especially the case with the actual event of the Boston Tea Party. For one, the original action in Boston was essentially a demonstration against the collusion of government and high finance - the acts being protested were designed by the British crown to prop up the faltering British East India Company. Furthermore, the first post-Tea Party protest in U.S. history to explicitly reference that event came with demonstrations in the 1840s against foreclosures of New York farmers by banks - a slightly relevant historical dynamic for today.

Thomas Paine and the Wisconsin Workers

A quick note: I see that Tea Party groups are organizing a march to counter the massive protests being spearheaded by pubic workers in Wisconsin, a response to the governors' attempt to essentially eliminate public sector unions. I will be shocked if, as usual, the founders' eighteenth century economic thought and broad ideas are not easily converted by that march into a standard union-busting drumbeat from the days of the Pinkertons.

Uncomfortably for the Tea Partiers, when we examine the actual record of a key revolutionary icon, Thomas Paine, we find a man who himself was an agitator for justice and dignity for public workers. Paine's legacy for U.S. independence is of course vital; he famously wrote the pamphlet Common Sense, which played a crucial part in moving many North American colonists firmly in support of independence and the construction of a democratic state. Paine, however, was not a long-time resident of the colonies - in fact he only moved to Philadelphia in 1774.

What was he doing before? Well, most immediately prior, he had worked as an Officer of Excise, a tax collector, in Lewes, England. That is until he joined a movement of fellow excise officers demanding that their wages be increased to allow these public servants to escape poverty. Throughout the winter of 1772-1773 Paine worked to organize and prepare a petition to Parliament, an attempt which failed. The following year Paine was fired from his job and would make his way to Philadelphia.

The main contribution Paine made to this effort was to write his first political pamphlet, The Case of the Officers of Excise. While many of the specifics in this piece are more relevant to the eighteenth century world, in it we can find some of the same principles at work in Wisconsin today:

On the problems of low wages:

When a Year’s Salary is mentioned in the Gross, it acquires a Degree of Consequence from its Sound, which it would not have if separated into daily Payments, and if the Charges attending the receiving and other unavoidable Expences were considered with it. Fifty Pounds a Year, and One Shilling and Ninepence Farthing a Day. carry as different Degrees of Significancy with them, as My Lord’s Steward, and the Steward’s Labourer; and yet an Out-Ride Officer in the Excise, under the Name of Fifty Pounds a Year, receives for himself no more than One Shilling and Ninepence Farthing a Day.

After Tax, Charity, and sitting Expences are deducted, there remains very little more than Forty-six pounds; and the expences of Horse-keeping in many Places cannot be brought under Fourteen Pounds a Year, besides the Purchase at first, and the Hazard of Life, which reduces it to Thirty-two Pounds per Annum, or One Shilling and Ninepence Farthing per Day.

On the questions of wealth and poverty:

The Rich, in Ease and Affluence, may think I have drawn an unnatural Portrait; but could they descend to the cold Regions of Want, the Circle of Polar Poverty, they would find their Opinions changing with the Climate. There are Habits of Thinking peculiar to different Conditions, and to find them out is truly to study Mankind.

The final call for justice:

With an Addition of Salary, the Excise would wear a new Aspect, and recover its former Constitution. Languor and Neglect would give Place to Care and Chearfulness. Men of Reputation and Abilities would seek after it, and finding a comfortable Maintenance, would stick to it. The unworthy and the incapable would be rejected; the Power of Superiors be re-established, and Laws and Instructions receive new Force.

The 1830s Cartoon That Explains Today's Tea Party

Sometimes a historical document comes along which seems to reach across the centuries and achieve an almost timeless resonance. While doing research on the English anti-slavery movement I came across such an item in the form of an early 1830s political cartoon satirizing the English anti-slavery movement. What is striking is how, in one image, it encapsulates the complexities of a strain of conservative populism that has been an important force in U.S. and global politics (albeit in dramatically different ways) for a long, long time.

First, here is the cartoon in question (clicking on the link you can go to a page that allows for zooming in closer on the image):

Before going into detail, a few more words about the idea of "conservative populism." As Michael Kazin, one of the leading scholar of the topic, explains in his book The Populist Persuasion, conservative populism premises itself on the defense of the great "middle" of American society. These are the people and families who "paid America's taxes, fought its wars, and upheld the ideal of economic independence." While not by definition white, throughout U.S. history and to this day, that middle has, sometimes more expressly than others, been defined as white Americans.

The spark for initiating populist uprisings comes when the middle is threatened by forces of insecurity, whether they be direct material challenges to the "middle" economically and politically or focus more on abstract notions of identity (social, racial, political, etc). What distinguishes right-wing populism lies in its emphasis on threats from both "above" and "below." Progressive and left-wing populism focuses overwhelmingly on dangers from above, particularly emanating from the business classes. As Kazin describes, conservative populism sees both threats from "above," consisting of "a tiny elite that lived off the labor of others," along with a related danger from below, made up of "a larger group whose poverty seemed perpetual and whose behavior appeared servile, undisciplined, and childlike."

All of these themes are expressed in this one image. On the left side we find a hard-working, white middle or working class English family, crushed by taxation and debt. The man's attentive wife laments their situation, questioning "What [probably meaning "why] must an industrious and honest man starve in a country like this?" Meanwhile, the man decries his situation, bemoaning the fact that his plight (and of those like him) does not receive the same care and attention from elites as does that of the slaves. He notes that people like himself can get no help, "unless I draw a cart harnessed like a beast and get fed by the Parish." Meanwhile, the obviously affluent abolitionist chides the white workers for not recognizing how well off they are, and for not caring more deeply about the plight of the slaves. Finally, to the right, a group of slaves merrily dance in the background and those foreground seem both slothful and by no means in dire straits (they are well-fed and clothed for example)

Anything seem familiar? It is all here: the snide, wealthy liberal elites who care more about the undeserving (and racially different) than they do about the dignified common (read: white) middle and working classes. The beset upon, earnest white working-class family struggling to be independent and productive. And finally, in the image of the "happy slaves," the racialized "other" who represent social inferiors, yet who still receive all of elite society's sympathy and assistance.

All of this I believe is present in the current conservative movement. Besides the obvious racism of some elements of the Tea Party, for much of the movement there seems to exist an undercurrent of resentment not totally unlike the cartoon above. This feeling, for example, helps explain how so many Tea Party activists can sincerely proclaim the need to roll back government (even to pre-New Deal days), while seeing no problem with big government programs like Medicare and Social Security. The problem is not the existence of such programs, but the fact that to the Tea Party, the liberal elites care more about helping those who do not contribute to society than looking out for the interests of the majority. Take this exchange from Matt Taibbi with several Tea Party activists (bolded text is my emphasis):

"I'm anti-spending and anti-government," crows David, as scooter-bound Janice looks on. "The welfare state is out of control."

"OK," I say. "And what do you do for a living?"

"Me?" he says proudly. "Oh, I'm a property appraiser. Have been my whole life."

I frown. "Are either of you on Medicare?"

Silence: Then Janice, a nice enough woman, it seems, slowly raises her hand, offering a faint smile, as if to say, You got me!

"Let me get this straight," I say to David. "You've been picking up a check from the government for decades, as a tax assessor, and your wife is on Medicare. How can you complain about the welfare state?"

"Well," he says, "there's a lot of people on welfare who don't deserve it. Too many people are living off the government."

"But," I protest, "you live off the government. And have been your whole life!"

"Yeah," he says, "but I don't make very much."

It is essentially the same message as the cartoon: I deserve assistance because I am a model citizen, yet the elites who spend our taxes and have the power in society spend all their time helping the undeserving "other."

How do we deal with this? In future posts I hope to talk more about these racial dimensions. I should note that this comparison is not supposed to dip into territory somehow suggesting the Tea Party is pro-slavery. Nor do I think most of the movement is racist, not in the way most people still think about that term. Having a more honest dialogue about racism could be a small part of the solution. Then there is the issue of making a populism which unites people more than it divides them. That my friends, represents the ultimate question (and thus one I will try to pick at in some small way, another time).

The Battle to Claim the Founders, Part 105896

Ron Chernow's piece in the New York Times today about the relationship (or lack thereof) between the Tea Party's views and the thought of the founders is well worth reading. The sections detailing debate over different interpretations of the Constitution are really fascinating (I did not realize just how quickly arguments over how "strict construction" emerged!) That said, Chernow's piece contains some slightly puzzling assertions. Most problematically, he writes as if clear lines of lineage exist from the two original political parties in the U.S., the Federalists and Republicans, to our modern day political ideas and parties. For example, here is Chernow on Jefferson and the Tea Party:

Jefferson and his Republicans (not related to today’s Republicans) advocated states’ rights, a weak federal government and strict construction of the Constitution. The Tea Party can claim legitimate descent from Jefferson and Madison, even though they founded what became the Democratic Party.

This is unfortunately what happens when you take general philosophical ideals expressed in the past and wrench them out of their specific social, economic, and political context. It is true that Jefferson and Madison believed in concepts such as "weak federal government." The critical political experience in their lives up to the point of the revolution had been dealing with an authoritarian British government which clamped down severely on independent governance. Yet, that does not necessarily translate into saying that Jefferson's reasons for advocating small government bear no difference that those espoused by the Tea Party. As I wrote about in a previous entry, Jeffersonian opposition to large government had much to do with the fear that a strong federal state would employ its power to maintain and expand the power of wealthy interests (including private businesses), at the expense of independent farmers and working people. Not exactly the philosophical underpinnings of modern conservatism in the United States.

Furthermore, Chernow seems to imply that Washington and Hamilton represent the fore-bearers of American liberalism; after all they "espoused a strong federal government, led by a powerful executive branch, and endorsed a liberal reading of the Constitution." Yet, such a reading seems to fall into the trap that if conservatives are for "small government" philosophically, then liberals must be for "big government." Hamilton's desire for big government came in large part out of a desire to create a strong, imperial state and to promote the development of large enterprises and businesses. While progressives do not categorically oppose such concepts, philosophically they see a strong state as a tool to help the marginalized in society and provide a check on powerful private influences. Try pairing that with a key Hamilton statement on his vision for the new government and society:

"All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and well born, the other the mass of the people . . . The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in the government. They will check the unsteadiness of the second, as they cannot receive any advantage by change, they therefore will ever maintain good government."

Chernow's piece and any similar ones are incredibly welcome to creating a more historically accurate and complex political dialogue. What I would merely propose is that when we talk about the founders in today's politics, let's render them (to a realistic extent), the complexities of their views. One can find relevant political ideas not only from the "founding fathers," but from the slaves, working men, women activists, and so many others who forged the nation. But we should not pretend that any of us are their direct and unique descendants.