My friends over at Left Voice are very modest.
No final solutions do they propose; instead they put forth a supposedly tentative document entitled Fight Racism, Imperialism, and the Current Crisis: A Program to Unify the Exploited and Oppressed.
The programmatic issues raised in this statement are not intended to be a complete or finished program. They are a first proposal — to the Left, to the activists of the BLM movement, and to workers’ and community organizations — to discuss the tasks we face now to defend ourselves and prepare for future struggle.
It doesn't seem all that tentative to me: at over 5,000 words it contains 51 programmatic bullet points! How incomplete or unfinished can that be? Far from uniting the Left, this is as sectarian as any document issued by the Spartacist League.
Independent of substance, my friends need to learn a few tricks from the Trump campaign. People are persuaded by short, catchy, somewhat ambiguous slogans--Make America Great Again is a good example. While one can argue about what it actually means (I, for one, categorically reject the idea that it's racist), there is no doubt that it means something--enough to inspire millions to go out and vote for Trump. America First and Drain the Swamp are two other marvelous bullet points from the Trump doctrine. The Biden campaign chimes in with Build Back Better, and that's not bad. Much better than Hillary's I'm with her (which is literally meaningless).
The 51 bullets, meanwhile, will only generate argument and disagreement. All you'll get from them is a faculty-meeting talk-shop.
There are better examples closer to home. While Left Voice apparently aspires to become a vanguard party, it could take some advice from an already-existing vanguard party, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). Their Updated 2020 Campaign Platform (pdf) only has 13 bullets, which is still probably twelve too many--but at least they're snappy, e.g., Millions need jobs today!
Left Voice will agree with most of the SWP's bullets, so it's not clear to me why they're trying to reinvent the wheel here. I'll suggest that this whole I wanna be the vanguard business is inherently sectarian.
I can't possibly go through all 51 points, but a few of them are likely civilization-ending--on the order of an asteroid hitting the earth.
They demand, for example, that
we must nationalize the banking system with the expropriation of private banks (while protecting the savings of working people) and form a single public bank that is controlled by workers and the people who keep their money there.
Bankrupting all the world's banks will completely freeze up the economy. All trade, finance, and savings will instantly disappear. Hundreds of millions of people across the globe will die of famine within a few months, and the death toll will likely reach billions within a few years. This deeply unserious proposal reflects the class composition of Left Voice--they're typically failed academics and artists from New York City who know nothing about money, finance, savings, economics, or anything else.
Similarly (boldface in original),
Establish total conversion to renewable energy, which can be accomplished only by taking U.S. industry out of capitalist control and centralizing production for a rapid economic transition.
Again, our friendly English professors know nothing about how the electrical grid works. None of them have any background in electrical engineering. If they did, they would know that this is completely gonzo and will reduce the planet to a medieval lifestyle. As the lights are turned off and transport is reduced to horseback, billions of people will die of starvation and disease in short order.
They write:
Further, we reject the U.S. Constitution and the deeply undemocratic and oppressive system it upholds. A document written by slave owners more than 200 years ago should not stand as the highest law of the land. The reactionary institutions enshrined in this document, from the presidency to the Senate, were designed to keep power concentrated in the hands of the ruling-class minority, excluding the vast majority from society’s most important decisions.
On it's face, this merely destroys the United States rather than the entire world. But given the importance of the USA in food and energy production, not to mention our financial wherewithal, it's likely that this demand will have the same effect as the previous two--namely mass starvation on a global scale.
Left Voice's opinion is held by extremists on both the Right and the Left. Not only do BLM and Antifa reject the Constitution, but so also do the Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan. For a description of the modern alt-right, I suggest they read my review of Bronze Age Mindset, whose author shares Left Voice's distaste for Constitutional government.
The alternative to the Constitution is not some better world, but instead rule by warlords and street gangs. Our silly academics look down into the abyss and somehow they see utopia down there. What have they been smoking?
That's a sample of the truly stupid, destructive demands. There are some others that, while less catastrophic, are ridiculous. For example,
Free and unrestricted access that makes voting easy, by making Election Day a federal holiday, instituting easy vote-by-mail nationwide, opening more polling places, abolishing all discriminatory voter ID laws, and ensuring free public transport to and from polling places.
Why bother with all the folderol? Why not just have internet voting, accessible to anybody around the world. After all, if voting in US elections in a human right, then surely people in China should have as much a right to vote as I do--and without having to sneak across the border first. We can save money too--we won't need polling stations, holidays, or transport. If it's mob rule that you want, then surely this is the best way to get it.
Finally, there is this:
Demand a democratic, secular, single Palestine state in all the historic Palestinian territory, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean, and an immediate halt to any further annexation of the West Bank. The only way to realize this demand of the Palestinian people is to fight for the dismantling of the Israeli state as a pro-imperialist and colonial enclave in the perspective for a workers’ and socialist Palestine where Arabs and Jews can live in peace.
Why do they restrict their demand to Israel? How about civil rights the Rohingya in Burma, or the Uighurs in China, or the Catalans in Spain, or the Serbs in Bosnia, or...? There are hundreds of other examples of ethnic conflict for which a "democratic, secular, single" state could be a solution. Yet they pick out Palestine. Why?
First, there's the very incongruity of it--a secular state with its capital in Jerusalem? Jerusalem, where the al Aqsa mosque is built upon the foundations of the Jewish Temple, surrounded by the streets where Jesus walked--and this is supposed to be a secular capital? If there's one thing we can all agree on, it's that none of the disputants want a secular solution. It's impossible.
Second, just as there are valid political arguments to be made for all the other listed ethnic conflicts, there is also a good political case to be made against Zionism. Perhaps some of our Left Voice friends are honest about their political motivations. But some are probably not--some are not merely anti-Zionist, but instead they're antisemitic. For however honest the merely political anti-Zionists are, antisemites will also flock to the banner. And there are a lot more antisemites than there are anti-Rohingya, anti-Uighur, or anti-Serb.
It's antisemitism that drives the passion behind the Israel/Palestine conflict--and that's why it finds a unique place amongst the 51 bullet points.
Anyway, as befits a group of English professors, Left Voice's document is well and engagingly written. If you want an adventure in kooky, topsy-turvy land, it's worth the read.
Further Reading:
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