The End of a Decade the Start of a New Political Era If We Do Our Work Well, It Is Ques Tions Such As These That Should Properly Occupy the 1990S
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The End of a Decade The Start of a New Political Era If we do our work well, it is ques tions such as these that should properly occupy the 1990s. EDITORIAL - by HAROLD MEYERSON DEMOCRATIC LEFT A New Decade, ANew Era Founding Editor Michael Harringt.on (1928-1989) Managing Editor s what -- to mix up Marx, Hegel, other nations. That is the crux of the A Sherri Levine and Twain -- does a gilded age repeat 80s ambivalence: Americans celebrate the market -- anxiously. Editorial Committee itself? Tinsel Time? The Age of Junk? Joanne Barkan Which is where, I think, the left Whatever the most appropriate sobri Neil McLaughlin should part company from our comrade quet, the 1980s, as a chronological and Mazine Phillipe maybe even political period, are shud Robert Heilbroner. It was more the Jan Rosenberg dering to a halt. The most relentlessly market as an economic arrangement DEMOCRATIC LEFT (ISSN 0164- materialistic decade in modern mem than capitalism as an ideology which 3207) is published six times a year at ory is over. triumphed in the 1980s. The decade be 15 Dutch St., Suite 500, New York, If a decade is known by its crimi gan, let us remember, with the market NY 10038. Second Class postage paid nals, it is clear that nothing but money undermining Keynesianism with a newly at New York, NY Subscription $8 regular; $15 institutional. Postmas matteredin the 1980s. It was a time de global economy of transnational corpo rations and electronic banking subvert ter; Send address changes to 15 Dutch void of great crimes of passion. Kill for Street, Suit.e 500, New York, ::-.,·y 10038. ing the moderately egalitarian postwar love? Where is the percentage? Spying, DEMOCRATIC LEFT is published social contracts throughout the West. It too, became entirely a matter of eco by the Democratic Socialists of Amer nomics, not belief: ideology motivated concluded with the leaders of fossilized ica, 15 Dutch Street, #500, New Ycrk. hardly anyone to break the law. (Well, Stalinism forced to abandon their rule NY 10038, (212) 962-0390. there was Jonathan Pollard and, come so that their nations might survive in Signed articles express the opinions to think of it, Ollie North and his boss - the newly reintegrated world ~momy. of the authors and not neoessanly - but that is another story). The crimes But this does not mean that capital those of the organization. of the decade were inside trading, mail ism is the ideal to which both East and fraud, income tax evasion. Indeed, in a West aspire, or even that capitalism is dim light, the decade's great crimes and the ideology best suited to advancing the decade's great success stories were the national interest in the new world European Unity and Democratic difficult to distinguish. economy. (The United States gets clob Socialism After the Cold War And in that, the 1980s were not en bered on a daily basis by Asian mercan by Bogdan Denitch.......... .......... 3 tirely the 1920s, not entirely the Gilded tilism on rates of growth, and by Euro Lafzlo Brusta: Hungaey through Age Redux. It was a more conflicted pean social democracy on every index of the Eyes of a Trade Unionists decade: the claims of economic neces human well-being). Capitalism has not an Interview by Sherri Le\':ine-4 sity and moral superiority which clung won a permanent victory by virtue of DSAers Score Election Victories the market's going global, no more than to the accumulation of wealth in those I by Harry Fleischman. .......... 7 earlier times were less compelling this it won a permanent victory by virtue of DSA Convention Report: time out. Our latter-day social Darwin the market's going national in the early by Nancy Kleniewski ..... ····-··-··8 ist, George Gilder, was not accorded the part of the century. It has altered the Women and Wages: Then and authority that Herbert Spencer once playing field; it has forced the mass left Now commanded. Michael Milkin has not to become as international as the econ by Alice Kessler-Harris ............ 15 reached quite the guru status of Henry omy. The European Community's so Grassroots Politics in Action: Ford (except, perhaps, in New Perspec cial charter is the opening ofa very long Long Island Progressive Coali tives Quart€rly). The new wealth is term counter-offensive. tion wealth without divine sanction or social At decade's end, theclaimsforcapi by Hugh Cleland ....................... 17 utility. It's great if you got it, but it talism are less those of morality and El Salvador Revisited seems to lack a larger purpose. utility, and more that it is somehow by Patrick Lacefield, Linnea In part, the difference is that Henry synonymous with democracy. The equa Capps, and Bill Spencer........... 19 Ford actually made things, that Her tion fails to explain why most Ameri- I bert Spencer apologized for industrial cans surrender their citizenship rights DEPARTMENTS ists. George Gilder has a tougher task; when they enter their workplace, or Editorial...................................... 2 he must apologize for de-industrialists. why this most capitalist of democracies DSAction ..................... .............. 11 The market in the 80s genemt.ed greater, has a political participation rate more On The Left. ...................... ....... 12 not less, inequality. It diminished suitable to an earlier epoch (the Paleo Classifieds .......... ............ ... .. ......23 America's stature relative to that of lithic). DEMOCRA Tl<" LEFT 2 JANUARY- FEBRUARY 1990 European Unity and Democratic Socialism After the Cold War by Bogdan benitch maintaining the party monopoly, but unions defending workers, a mixed with a human face, to a multiparty economy with a larger chunk in the (This article is adapted from a speech system, to a multiparty system plus an publicsector,andessentiallytheparty's given on November 10 to the conven anti-left offensive against "overadven heavy hand out of the economy. For tion oftlu! Democrati.c Socialists ofAmer turous" types. These reactionary ten others it means the idealized version of ica on the morning after the fall of the dencies are quite thinly buried under Margaret Thatcher and Reagan, because Berlin Wall.) the surface in much of Eastern Europe. of the notion that the enemy ofyour en This is the first problem we face: emy is necessarily your friend. The more when one lifts the hd off societies which hostile Reagan and Thatcher were to T he occurrences this year, culmi- have been dull, gray, and repressive for the ruling systems in Eastern Europe, nating with the dancing on the Berlin decades, what emerges is not the be the more rosy and popular they ap Wall, are probably the most important loved community, not a culture of coop peared. If there's one way to popularize set of political events in the lifetime of eration and democracy and tolerance. an idea in Eastern Europe, it was to anyone born since the Second World What emerges is all kinds of stuff that have the party attack it. War. I refer to the collapse of the rele- you would expect to emerge after years I sympathize with Gorbachev. He vance of the Cold War. You can see the of repression. Not the least of the his has done a historical good deed by be desperate scrambling to maintain items torical costs of the decades of dictator ginning this entire process. The diffi of unnecessary baggage that are be- ship in Eastern Europe is the massive culty is that they're talking about mov coming very difficult to justify. For right-wing populist phenomenon, which ing into a market economy with exactly example, what is the point of NATO if is evident in Russia, Poland, Hungary, the same incompetent party hacks as the Warsaw Pact does not exist? What and now in Yugoslavia. So the path to managers who have ruined their econ is the point of maintaining large con- democratization runs through excee omy. The notion that simply changing ventional U.S. forces in Germany if Ger- dingly difficult and troubled waters. the rules of the economic game can take many is about to go neutral in exchange The second question is around the place without a radical transformation for unity? issue of the market and what the mar- of the society and its political culture is Eastem Europe is a mora.93 of words ket means. Everybody is for the market illusory. The same thing that was wrong that really don't mean what they used in Eastern Europe, except a few dino with the command economies would be to mean. Everybody now is for plural- saurs. It's like pluralism; it means all wrong with market economies unless ism -- everybody under the age of sixty. sorts ofthings . To some people, it means they are accompanied by a pluralistic When you begin to probe what plural- somethingmoreorlesslikeSweden:an democracy. The most radical single ism means, it means everything from ~ advanced welfare state, powerful trade demand in Eastern Europe is for trade unions that act as trade unions. European unification is very im portant in this context of the waning of the Cold War. It means the beginning of a long divorce between Europe and the United States. You cannot have a major advance toward socialist politics in a Europe that remains allied with the United States. As the wall collapses, the boundaries of Europe are going to be come fluid. It is this that makes the games being played by what remains of the communist regimes dangerous. In Poland and Hungazy, for instance, they are saying: come and invest here. We will provide you with low wages, weak trade unions, And practically no Demonstration in Prague, Czcchoslavakia in December, 1989.