Revolution #232, May 15, 2011
Part 2: BUILDING THE MOVEMENT FOR REVOLUTION
Editors' Note: The following is the first excerpt from Part 2 of a recent talk by Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, which is being serialized in this paper. This has been edited, and footnotes have been added, for publication. The entire talk is available at revcom.us.
Culture and Morality—a Critical Arena of Struggle
Returning to what was discussed at the beginning of this talk (in Part 1) on the relations between the economic base and the political-ideological superstructure of society: While ultimately and fundamentally the base sets the terms, and the limits, of the superstructure—which must, in the final analysis, conform to the underlying economic base—the fact that this involves contradiction, and that there is significant "autonomy" and initiative in the realm of the superstructure, is very real and has very real implications. There can be, and must be, struggle—and a real, living alternative brought forward—in the realm of culture and ideology (including morals), even now, before the current system is swept aside—and as a critical part of building a movement for revolution to sweep away the current system.
Parasitism, suburbanism, and fascist forces
In the context of building this movement—for revolution—one important dimension of this is the fight in the ideological, cultural and moral arena against parasitic consumerism. Here it is worth referring to the special issue of Revolution (#199, April 6, 2010) on the environment—in particular the section "Struggling Against Consumerism" in "Some Key Principles of Socialist Sustainable Development"—and to think about the implications of this for the struggle even now.
It is worth noting that de Tocqueville, in his writings on American democracy in the first half of the 19th century, made the point that, even then, Americans valued everything in response to this sole question: how much money will it bring in? So this has been a distinguishing feature of this society not just with the heightened parasitism of the last few decades, but back to its very foundations. (Here, rather than elaborate on this particular point further, I'll refer people to the section of Democracy: Can't We Do Better Than That? which speaks to these writings of de Tocqueville and this basic point about how it struck him that Americans were obsessed with material goods and wealth.1)
In the particular context of the USA in the present historical period, in terms of the battle in the realm of ideology, culture and morality—and bringing forward a radically different culture and ideology, including morality—there is the importance of taking on "suburbanism." Now, by this I don't mean that we should try to get everybody, in particular the youth, to leave the suburbs. Some of that, to the degree that it becomes a significant phenomenon, could be part of a positive development. But I'm speaking of "suburbanism" more as a way of life and, if you will, an "ethos," an ideological force.
In this regard, it is worth referring to a book by Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton University Press, 2001), in which she analyzes, with considerable insight, as well as some limitations, the social basis and social content of suburban fascist forces (although she doesn't refer to them as that), particularly as this developed in a pronounced way in Orange County, California from the 1950s (in the wake of World War 2 and what resulted from that war) to the present. While McGirr focuses, in some depth, on the particular expressions of this in Orange County, in a larger sense Orange County serves as a kind of a "laboratory" for the larger phenomenon of the development of fascist forces in the U.S., particularly in the period after World War 2.2
McGirr makes the point that in fact this fascist social base consisted of relatively well-off and educated strata—not poor or uneducated and lower middle class strata—but (once again, a phenomenon that's so striking in this kind of context) these are people who are educated, yes, but educated on a narrow foundation. A lot of the people that she's referring to, and who are the social base for this phenomenon, are engineers, technicians, and people in similar occupations—often, it should be noted, in high-tech industries that were just beginning to develop in the period of the 1950s. Also very significant is the fact that this was linked to a large degree, sometimes indirectly but often directly, to the military, and to corporations heavily tied into the military and focused on "defense spending." And, not surprisingly, Cold War anti-communism was a major ideological pillar of this phenomenon—of what in fact constituted a fascist force in its post-World War 2 development, in places like Orange County.
It is also noteworthy, as McGirr analyzes, that a large percentage of these new suburbanites of the western U.S. (places like Orange County) were people who had migrated from the Midwest and the South, and who brought with them the "traditional values" of those areas which then took on new form, and a new virulence in fact, in the conditions of post-World War 2 suburban western social existence. And, to a significant extent, the material basis for this was these people's ability to achieve—and their actually achieving—a certain "upward mobility" and higher social status in the suburbs of the west, and the way in which this pivoted around World War 2 (this is now my analysis, but it merges with important points that McGirr makes). It specifically pivoted around the triumph and ascendancy of the U.S. among the imperialists through that war and, as McGirr does emphasize, the government projects and government spending—in particular "defense-related" spending—in the wake of that war, and with the heating up of the Cold War. This included such things as the G.I. Bill—which had, as a significant aspect, built-in discrimination and white supremacy (about which I'll have more to say shortly)—as well as things like extensive highway construction, which was federally subsidized and which was related on the one hand to "defense spending" and was also indispensable for the development and sustenance of suburban living.
McGirr talks about the phenomenon of "the creation of Sunbelt suburbanization" and explicitly "white backlash" (p. 13)—otherwise known as racism—in the form in which it reacted against the developing civil rights movement in the period after World War 2. She also, importantly, speaks to how this phenomenon built on "older evangelical and antistatist ideological inheritances deeply rooted in American life." (p. 271) Again, this was assuming particular form, and particular virulence, in this conjuncture of different forces and social influences in the suburban west in the period after World War 2.
As is suggested in what I've pointed to so far, there are some rather striking ironies involved in all this. Here are people whose objective position—and in fact their upward mobility and achieving of a higher economic and social status, so to speak—hinged around and depended to a very large degree on government spending, in particular military spending, while this stood in contradiction to the extreme assertions of individualism on these people's part and the mythology of being "self-made." In other words, to put it baldly, they were subsidized, their position was underwritten to a very significant degree, by government spending; but on the other hand, there was the strong assertion of this mythology of individualism and of being "self-made." Think again of my earlier comments3 in terms of the role of the federal government throughout the history of this country and what these people have, virulently and viciously, opposed the federal government doing—but, on the other hand, what they were very much for, in terms of the involvement of and massive spending by the federal government, especially as this underwrote their rise to higher economic position and social status.
Along with this assertion of individualism, the mythology of being "self-made," and this contradictory attitude toward the federal government, was "a rejection of 'collectivism' in all of its forms," (p. 35) as McGirr characterizes it. This involved a rejection of the whole liberal outlook and how these reactionaries saw that as a promotion of "collectivism" and "statism" on behalf of the "undeserving." (And I don't have to elaborate further for it to be obvious who falls into the category of "undeserving" in the eyes of these people.) In other words: a bitter opposition to government spending on behalf of certain groups. Here again is the phenomenon of "white backlash"—or, more simply put, racism—and a certain self-righteous viciousness founded on parasitism.
Along with this, McGirr characterizes something important—in her words, "artificial communities...visions that emphasized individual privacy, private property, and public spaces defined by consumption." (p. 40) Now, that is very significant: "individual privacy, private property, and public spaces defined by consumption"—not the role of people as citizens of a democracy so much as consumers, underwritten to a great extent by government spending, as I've emphasized.
McGirr also refers to a "strange mixture of traditionalism and modernity" (p. 8) that characterizes this general outlook and the fascist movement that developed among these sections of the population—not that everyone among these strata was part of this fascist phenomenon, but this has been a significant phenomenon with its base among these types, and among these types there is in fact a "strange mixture of traditionalism and modernity," as McGirr puts it. Along with that is the notion of (in McGirr's words again) "common sense" based on libertarianism (and more specifically "Western libertarianism," in the case of places like Orange County and similar western incarnations of this phenomenon) "combined with a theoretically incompatible social and cultural conservatism." (p. 9) We see this in these fascist movements today—a continuation of this phenomenon, this strange brew of "libertarian common sense" combined with "a theoretically incompatible social and cultural conservatism."
McGirr refers to the role of churches—and it's important that we add, and underline, increasingly fundamentalist Christian churches—serving as "the cornerstone in developing a sense of community." (p. 48) So, along with consumerism (or consumptionism) we have fundamentalist Christianity and its churches playing the role of providing, or acting as a "cornerstone" in developing, "a sense of community" in these otherwise fragmenting and isolating suburbs.
In the framework of this development of suburbanism after World War 2, as a major feature of the U.S. landscape (literally the landscape, as well as a social and political landscape), we see the development of this fascist kind of movement riddled with these rather striking ironies or contradictions—including, once again, the whole way in which this was underwritten and fostered through conscious government policy: defense spending, the subsidizing of highways and of suburbanization, the G.I. Bill with its built-in racism and discrimination and the ways in which this promoted segregation and white supremacy.4
These features that I've been referring to have continued to stand out—and today rather acutely stand out—as major expressions of the phenomenon of "suburbanism," and in particular the significant right-wing social and political expression of this. "Suburbanism" is, as part of this whole package, an expression of, and a certain retrenching in, individualism and arid "anti-socialism," in both senses of that word—with, again, consumptionism and fundamentalist religion filling the void of community, so to speak: religious fundamentalism playing that role as an expression of, and as a "socializing force" which is consistent with, and furthers the ethos of, "suburbanism." And, of course, linked with all this is an aggressive "patriotism," which ties in directly with militarism and, in turn, the promotion of Christian fundamentalism within the U.S. military, which has been a marked phenomenon over the past several decades. So there is a kind of strange poisonous brew involved in all this.
At the same time, as has happened in earlier periods—and even with the very notable differences between now and the 1960s in particular—there is both a great need, and a real possibility and potential, for a rebellion, particularly of youth, in opposition to all this—especially to the right-wing expressions of this but also more generally to the assumptions and dynamics, the motivations and ethos, at the core of "suburbanism"—to what is in fact a whole way of life grounded in imperialist plunder which, to use Lenin's phrase again, puts "the seal of parasitism" on society as a whole. What is needed is a rebellion which would not be in the service of reformist and utopian schemes, and which does not further feed into and reinforce religious fundamentalism but, in opposition to all that, contributes to a movement for revolution, inspired by the aims and vision, and, yes, the morality and culture, of communism.
In this light it is worth examining some of the contradictory character and trends within at least some of the "youth revolt" and the "counter-culture," and in particular the "hippie phenomenon," of the 1960s and into the early 1970s. There was, among white middle class youth in the 1960s, a genuinely "generational" phenomenon of mass revolt against the dominant values and, yes, (to use that term) the "zeitgeist" of the society in those times (even while some people of that generation, such as George W. Bush, or William Kristol, went in the opposite direction, in reaction—to use that word in a double sense—against this very positive revolt and in hide-bound stubborn defense of everything it was righteously revolting against).
This positive upheaval, not only in the political but also in the cultural sphere, did include large numbers of youth in the suburbs, some of whose parents were liberals (or even "lefties" of the more revisionist and social-democratic type) but no small number of whom were "conservatives" or even outright fascist types. I myself encountered many people whose parents were Goldwater Republicans who became very radicalized in a good way within a few short years in the latter part of the 1960s. And, again, if you look at the movie Taking Woodstock, you see some of this phenomenon portrayed there, with its contradictoriness but its mainly positive character.
Yet, especially as the great upsurge of the 1960s ebbed, right-wing Christian forces were able to co-opt and "turn" some—though, of course, far from all—of this, steering it into Christian fundamentalist channels, a phenomenon that was strengthened by the fact that the 1960s upheaval and its revolutionary thrust was not able to "break on through to the other side," to actually make revolution. And here I'm reminded of something that I used to always laugh at (more at the time than I do now): There was, back in the late '60s/early '70s, a poster which was ironically commenting on this phenomenon—a poster entitled "Billy Graham meets the hippies." This depicted Billy Graham giving his usual sermon about Jesus and being "saved," and so on, and there were all these hippies portrayed in the audience going: "Wow, far out man." The point was that these right-wing Christian forces were able to find some common ground with some aspects—even though they were secondary aspects, at the best points—of this 1960s cultural rebellion or "counter-cultural revolution," understanding that in its proper sense.
And beyond that, it seems very likely that one of the main reasons and purposes with which Christian fundamentalist fascism has been promoted and supported so aggressively by sections of the ruling class and forces tied to them, in the decades since the upheaval of the 1960s, has been to preempt the kind of positive youth revolt and "counter-culture" that arose so powerfully through the '60s upsurge—to divert in a reactionary direction the very real alienation among many youth, including in the suburbs today—to feed this into reactionary channels, seeking to "cement" this ideologically with an absolutist worldview. Besides the "Christian rock" phenomenon and various Christian festivals for youth and so on, you also have things like summer camps for Christian youth who have graduated from high school and are preparing to go to college. They go to these training sessions at summer camps to be "inoculated" before they go off to college where they're going to be exposed to all kinds of "evil" things, like the science of evolution as well as "leftist political indoctrination." So this seems to be another example of how these forces—ruling class forces particularly of the fascist kind—have tried to learn from the period of the 1960s and act to prevent another upsurge of youth in a positive radical sense.
1. Bob Avakian, Democracy: Can't We Do Better Than That?, Banner Press, 1986—see especially Chapter 4, "The USA as Democratic Example...Leader of the Pack," and in particular the section "The 'Special Situation' of the USA Historically," pp. 116-127. The observations by de Tocqueville referred to here are found in his work Democracy in America (New York: Vintage Books). [back]
2. The book (which was referred to not long ago in a New York Times column by Frank Rich), Invisible Hands, The Businessmen's Crusade Against The New Deal, by Kim Phillips-Fein (New York: Norton, 2009), also sheds light on the role of what are essentially fascist forces within the U.S.—and more specifically the promotion and backing of these forces by sections of the ruling class—over a number of decades, going back to the New Deal, beginning in the 1930s. Although she focuses her analysis on the economic arena—and reactionary forces which might be identified as "business conservatives" more than the "social conservatives," and in particular Christian fundamentalists, who to a large degree are preoccupied with and concentrate their line of attack on forcefully upholding traditional gender relations, targeting abortion (and birth control) as well as homosexuality and gay rights—Phillips-Fein's analysis does actually counter, in some significant ways, the notion that the increasing power and influence of reactionary movements in the U.S. can be attributed essentially to a "backlash" against the upheavals of the 1960s. [back]
3. This refers to an observation found in Part 1, Revolution and the State, in the section "The Peculiar History of the United States: Slavery, 'States' Rights' and the Federal Government." [back]
4. In this regard, it is worth referring to Thomas Sugrue's book, The Origins of the Urban Crisis, Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit, which takes Detroit as a case study of how in major urban areas in the period after World War 2, as Black people were struggling to integrate certain neighborhoods, these efforts were opposed, often violently, by the white residents, and there was increasing "white flight" to the suburbs. Along with this, When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold Story of Racial Inequality in Twentieth Century America, by Ira Katznelson, and David R. Roediger's book, Working Toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White, illustrate the role of the G.I. Bill in actually promoting segregation; and this, once again, is tied in with the development of suburbanization, and of the social and political configuration that has marked America increasingly over the past several decades. [back]