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Roll Back the Right
by Azine Boston
2/23 /02
What should be the main focus of the work of activists? Progressive activism has been growing and the need for structural changes in U.S. society is clear. Yet, the state of the movement today operates from limited resources and must prioritize its efforts. The Azine argues that we should focus on fighting the reactionary trend today, while paying a lot of attention to building alternative visions and structures.
The Right Trend
During the last several decades, the ruling class has moved increasingly to
the right and is now adopting reactionary policies. Look around us. Presently,
our social structure considers as the norm Christian fundamentalism in government,
monopolization and commercialization of all parts of our lives, privatization
of public resources from utilities to parks, libraries to schools, growing
inequality and the concentration of wealth in fewer hands, the denial of
racial and gender oppression, constriction of civil and individual rights,
and global militarism and unilateralism. This move to the right has swept
up not just the Republicans but also the Democrats, who argue over the margins.
Growing Ruling Class Divisions
However, not all in the U.S. ruling class agree with these extreme policies.
Some fear that this present course, which pits the U.S. against much of the
world, will undermine the “multilateralism” and the world free
trade system that the US has dominated over the post-war period. While our
superpower hegemony allows us to impose many of our policies, it creates
resistance among different parts of the world. Even during the post-9/11
years, economically the world has adopted more regional economic and political
camps. Europe has taken steps to form its own army separate from the U.S.
China has begun to become the center of an Asian economic zone, and South
America has become more independent economically and politically. Brazil
in particular has organized regional resistance to the World Trade Organization
and International Monetary Fund, most recently seen in its role in the Free
Trade of the Americas Association meeting in Miami.
Many in the ruling class fear that inequality and racial and social divisions
could lead to instability and social unrest. As the Congressional Budget
Office has pointed out, the average families’ real income has grown
10% over the last twenty years while the top 1% of families’ income
has grown 157%. Homelessness is on the rise, and the attack on what remains
of affirmative action programs will wipe out any acknowledgement of a history
of oppression of people of color. Witness the outrageous
attack on the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, which basically denies the
forcible annexation of HI.
The revolt of a significant sector of the country over first globalization
and then against War has given some backbone to more moderate institutions.
Thus, divisions are appearing in the ruling class consensus over their reactionary
drift. Democratic Presidential candidates have begun to more openly criticize
the present hard right administration. A number of local governments have
formally opposed the War and restrictions on civil rights embodied in the
Patriot Act. These are positive events of division and resistance. There
are parallels in the present conditions with ruling class divisions around
the Vietnam War that laid the ground where a rebellion against the structure
of the U.S. system could take place.
