Has the SWP Moved Right? Or the Republicans Left?

(SWP refers to the Socialist Workers Party, aka "the Party," which publishes The Militant newspaper.)

In a comment thread to the recent post entitled News From the SWP, reader JohnB asks a question. (The entire thread is worth your attention.)

By the way, Dan, a while back you took exception to my assertion that the SWP is moving to the right:

https://trotskyschildren.blogspot.com/2017/08/is-swp-moving-right.html

Have you changed your mind now?

The short answer is No I have not. Indeed, I've gone back and reread my old posts on the topic (here, here, here and here), and I still agree with all of them. Those span a stretch from November, 2019, all the way back to December, 2013. So my opinions about the direction of the SWP have remained remarkably constant. (I surprise even myself. Usually I find my old posts to be somewhat cringeworthy--but not these.)

Beginning in 1975, the Party instituted the Turn, which was a serious effort to get comrades into the unionized, industrial labor force. Ex-SWPers mostly dismiss the effort as ridiculous. Far from building the Party, membership dropped from about 3000 in the early 70s, to perhaps less than a hundred today. The Turn gradually fizzled out beginning in the late 90s as comrades left the movement, and as the remaining members aged into retirement. It never succeeded in recruiting new members.  My review describes the Turn and its consequences succinctly.

While the Turn failed at its intended purpose, it had other consequences. It did drive a lot of people out of the movement--likely including me (though I wasn't really aware of it at the time). The emphasis on being a union member in an industrial fraction never appealed to those of us attending college. I never imagined myself working in a steel mill--I wouldn't have been any good at that.

The Turn's biggest mistake was to move comrades around from city to city--like traveling preachers. This made it impossible for them to establish serious, personal connections with the people they were trying to reach. It prevented comrades from ever developing a career--not even a blue collar career. Not for them was any investment in personal skills or talents. They strove toward the Marxist ideal of a proletarian worker--nothing to lose, not even chains, with only cheap and brute labor for sale.

I felt sorry for my former comrades, because if you never develop a career, and never put down any roots in any one place, and likely never start a family, and more, contribute any extra money you earn to Jack Barnes the Party, then you're in for a tedious, lonely life and an impoverished retirement. They're like Franciscan friars who take vows of obedience and poverty--and lead itinerant, childless lives.

No wonder our now elderly comrades are still working at Walmart or driving Uber cars. They need the money.

But in one respect the Turn was spectacularly successful. One goal was to "proletarianize" the Party--and this has undoubtedly been accomplished. The college-educated sorts, teachers, welfare caseworkers, college professors, grad students--the lumpen intelligentsia all--have been ruthlessly purged. What's left are the blue-collar sorts.

Is it any surprise that they'd thrill to Trump's blue collar appeal? Of course they do.

Now consider the Republican Party, which prior to 1980 was known as the home of the bourgeoisie--the Boston brahmins, the Upper East Side's brownstone denizens, the folks who hang out in Hollywood or Beverly Hills. Their presidents were Eisenhower and Nixon. Then Reagan came along and worked to extend the GOP's reach into the middle class. He didn't talk Ivy League--but was instead an Illinois farm boy, the son of an alcoholic.

The GOP subsequently partially walked back the Reagan Revolution, reestablishing its upper crust credentials during the Bush years--both of whom were Ivy League grads. Bush 1 promised no new taxes--only to renege in obedience to the wealthy. The rich don't mind paying taxes because they can always pass the cost on to the middle and lower classes. It's the middle class that mostly ends up with the bill--and they knew it. That was the end of Reagan's coalition--the blue collars returned to the Democrats.

Obama's relentless efforts to impoverish middle- and working class America spawned the Tea Party rebellion, leading to the Republican sweep of Congress in 2010. For obvious reasons, blue-collar America depends on a literal interpretation of the Constitution for their well-being. For without Constitutional limits on government they become slaves of the Federal bureaucracy--reduced to being wards of the state. To use The Militant's phrase, they become a population to be "administered."

On the other hand, they don't object when the government gives them free money. Of course, the money is never "free." It always comes with strings attached, usually losing your freedom. It is this contradiction--between "don't tread on me" and "give it to me for free" that eventually leads to Trump.

Gone was the longtime GOP fixation on balanced budgets. The party-poopers who worried about the solvency of social security were exiled to the wilderness. Obamacare was fine after the individual mandate was repealed--then it became just another free lunch. A few old-fashioned Republicans now complain about Biden's stimulus--though it is nearly certain that Trump would've done the same thing.

So I think it's a myth that Trump moved the GOP to the right. On the contrary, he expanded government in ways tailored to help his blue-collar base--and at the same time he dissed the pinheads who wanted to "administer" them. Many government posts were left vacant, the universities were defunded, and self-righteous international institutions were appropriately disrespected.

The Dems, by now the party of the lumpen intelligentsia (along with the traditional lumpen proletariat), hated that. How could he! That very hatred thrilled the working class all the more, and along with it Trump's popularity.

The SWP is moved by the same emotions that power the working class. In this respect they differ dramatically from the other grouplets and bloggers on my Beat--all of whom speak for the lumpen intelligentsia.

The SWP and blue-collar America have something else in common--they're old. Old people realize that the world needs boundaries--for without boundaries society simply can't function. In the simple case, a boundary means a literal border wall--as Trump put it "a country without borders isn't a country." It means that sex roles remain reasonably well-defined--one can't switch genders just by putting on a dress. It means that the language of political conversation is English--not Spanish, Chinese, or Tagalog.

It means a balancing act in the right to free speech. Yes, that right is nearly absolute. But the "right" to get a paycheck from a state university is reasonably a lot more restrictive. Professors need to believe at some level in the American civic religion--for if they don't constructive conversation becomes impossible. For this reason, we don't hire KKK members as college professors, no matter how smart or creative they are. Likewise, membership in BLM should disqualify, and for the same reason.

Nikole Hannah-Jones was recently denied tenure at the University of North Carolina. She should never have been hired in the first place.

The SWP sort of understands that. They disdain the fluid model of gender roles championed by the lumpen intelligentsia. They're attitude on race relations is at least sane, unlike that now popular on college campuses. They acknowledge that Jews and Arabs somehow have to live together in Israel/Palestine.

True to its masthead, The Militant is "published in the interests of working people," however inconsistent that may sometimes be.

Further Reading:

• Book Review: The Cult of the Smart
• The Revenge of the Lumpen Proletariat
• Louis Proyect and the Pro-Poverty Girl