Forcing the Vote on Medicare for All: A Proven and Imperative Strategy

[Photo credit: CNN]

By Karthik Pasupula

Republished from Michigan Specter.

14.6 million. That’s the lower estimate of the number of Americans who have lost their health insurance during this pandemic. Want to guess the number of people in the same situation in other developed countries? Zero if you live in Canada, the UK, Germany, France, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Denmark, Finland, Norway, etc.

You’ve probably seen the polls. More than 70% of Americans believe that the government should be responsible for insuring all Americans, with around 88% of Democrats supporting a single-payer system. Support for government healthcare has risen across the board, presumably because pandemic-induced mass unemployment has exposed the folly of employer-based insurance.

Yet, the fight for Medicare for All isn’t happening in the halls of Congress right now. And that is a huge mistake. National media is dominated by coverage of an inept administration whose will to govern has been broken by the (un)dynamic duo of Senators Manchin and Sinema. The constant ceding of ground must end. It’s time to #ForceTheVote in order to put public pressure on establishment politicians and get them on the record.

Ever since the emergence of “The Squad” in 2018, interest in Medicare for All (M4A) has soared. This is especially relevant to Michigan voters, since 16% of residents live in poverty, including one in four children and 17% of senior citizens. These problems are especially bad in Detroit where around 30.6% of people live below the poverty level — the highest among big cities. The insane grip that corporate health insurance companies have on America harms more than just America’s very poorest. One in five voters struggle to pay their medical bills and one in three fear that they won’t be able to pay for healthcare. In order to pay those bills, they have to resort to extraordinary measures: dipping into savings, borrowing money, selling jewelry, crowdsourcing, etc. This would not exist under a single-payer system.

A single-payer healthcare system would also set prices for each service. This solves one of the biggest problems of our healthcare system, which is the variety in rates for different services. An appendectomy, for example, can cost anywhere from $1,529 to $186,955. Under single-payer, that rate would be much lower and consistent across hospitals. Administrative costs for doctors and hospitals would also go way down due to the reduction of negotiation costs. As of 2017, administrative spending made up 34.2% of total health expenditures in the United States. That is more than twice what Canada spends.

But how do we win a cheaper and more efficient healthcare system? The strategic and principled move is to demand a floor vote from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. This would prompt an “on-the-record” vote on M4A from all representatives. Right now, there are 221 Democrats in the House and 211 Republicans (and three vacancies). There are more than enough progressives to threaten the stoppage of any legislation Democrats propose. And they could use that leverage to demand a vote on M4A. But one of the main arguments against a floor vote for M4A is that it would just be an immediate flop.

So? When M4A polls so well, why should we be worried about if it flops or not? The viability of a piece of legislation is in the hands of the people, and the people have spoken: they support M4A. Putting elected representatives on the spot and showing how they’re actively voting against their constituents is absolutely crucial. If the bill fails, then it immediately lets progressives know which representatives they need to primary.

Opponents of this strategy have said that we can just look at the cosponsor list to ascertain who supports M4A. Senators Cory Booker and Kamala Harris have both cosponsored an M4A bill. But, when pressed on the issue during the Democratic presidential primary, they immediately backed down. It would be reasonable to assume many other cosponsors would do the same if forced to vote.

Moreover, a message that certain representatives argued against healthcare coverage for Americans during a pandemic would help progressives in future elections. With our healthcare system absolutely failing during this crisis, American citizens will be more open than ever to healthcare reform. With media coverage of liberal representatives voting to deny them coverage, voters will be reminded of the necessity to elect more progressives to Congress.

Historically, the president’s party tends to lose seats during midterms. Obama lost 63 House seats in 2010, the largest loss since FDR, after his Wall Street bailout. Forcing a vote on M4A would make it much easier to capitalize on dissatisfaction with the president’s party during the midterm elections. 2022 would be the perfect time to campaign against incumbent Democrats, as history shows they are weaker during midterms.

Not only that, but forcing a vote on M4A would use the exact same tactics the Tea Party used to ultimately excise former House Speaker John Boehner. The Tea Party tried to repeal Obamacare numerous times, to no avail, but they rode the enthusiasm from those failed attempts to enormous wins and quickly became a force to be reckoned with in Congress. By blocking nearly every piece of legislation, and thereby tying Boehner’s hands behind his back, the Tea Party effectively forced him to resign. In short, Boehner stepped down because the Tea Party used the leverage they had. Progressive Democrats should use similar leverage to bring Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi to their knees.

If you disagree with forcing the vote, then what is your plan to bring M4A into effect? What do you think we need to do before getting a vote on M4A? How do we do this, and what is the timeline? These questions are not being answered by sitting politicians. All we have are ideologies; not action on those ideologies. Denying this strategy means denying that the Tea Party was successful in being a commanding presence, and that is verifiably false. The incremental approach that doesn’t utilize the bully pulpit is failing. Everything that Biden “compromised” with progressives on during the campaign trail is falling dead in its tracks: $15 minimum wage (God save the Parliamentarian), ICE detention facilities, $2,000 checks, foreign policy, etc. Playing nice with the establishment does not work and that has been proven time and time again.

Democrats in Congress argued that we needed to impeach Donald Trump to hold him accountable for inciting the Capitol riots. Even though they didn’t have the votes to convict, I agreed with the motivations behind impeachment because it’s a moral imperative to get every single representative and senator on the record to keep them and Trump accountable. The same reasoning applies to forcing a vote on M4A.

Even recently, vote-forcing strategies have been successful at putting pressure on establishment politicians. Senator Bernie Sanders recently forced a vote and got eight senators, all of whom caucus with the Democrats, on the record as opposing a $15 minimum wage.

At this stage, opponents of this strategy complain that there is not enough thought given to step two. However, there’s a clear plan. We get politicians on record, and then exert political pressure on a popular issue. In this way, even if the bill fails, the issue only gets heightened. Just one piece of evidence is the huge outcry and shaming of Senator Sinema for her thumbs-down vote.

And what comes after this, you ask? The ammunition to primary these corrupt individuals is readily provided on an issue that the vast majority of Americans have a solid stance on. Denying a living wage is one thing, but denying healthcare during a pandemic will carry even graver consequences for Democrats who take that stance.

Something I’m completely against is calling opponents of this strategy corrupt. AOC and other members of “The Squad” have said that they are against forcing a vote on M4A because of aforementioned counterarguments, but they aren’t corrupt like the majority of DC. Progressives do NOT take money from super PACs, and that’s the main separator. We won’t always agree on everything, but we will agree on basic, reasonable political positions.

The foundations of #ForceTheVote are both principled and strategic. It’s principled because we’re fighting for something at a time when people need it most. Even if it’s “doomed to fail,” fighting for something that you believe is right is simply the morally principled action. And it’s strategic because, even if the vote fails, it gets representatives on the record as denying basic improvements in quality of life. That sets us up well to pressure incumbents and mount serious primary challenges against them.

The 2020 election showed that anti-Trump rhetoric by itself does not work. Democrats lost seats in the House and Biden won by smaller margins in swing states than Trump did in 2016. Sticking with their tradition of strategic cluelessness, the DNC recently announced that their primary focus will be on QAnon next election cycle.

Enough of this culture war bullshit, it’s time to fight for real policy. We need to have substantive arguments and a floor vote provides us with the ammunition, especially if it fails. The failure will not fall on progressives, it will fall on Democrats who voted no and they will be punished for it through democracy. There is nothing to lose from this strategy.

Keep in mind the 14.6 million people who have lost health insurance. Keep in mind the huge number of people who were already uninsured or underinsured. Keep these things in mind while consistently calling out politicians, so we can keep them accountable when the opportunity arises.

On the Ideal Canada and its Consequences

By Miranda Schreiber

So many things have been proposed as constitutive of the Canadian identity, “the north” being one, or public healthcare. What these propositions omit is the role the United States plays in Canada’s self-definition. In part we feel we are in the north because we are north of the United States; our healthcare system seems unique because the U.S. doesn’t have it. Always refracted through the lens of American hegemony, Canada seems to be what America is not. We even voted the “father of socialized healthcare,” Tommy Douglas, the greatest Canadian in 2004. The former premier of Saskatchewan is often described as a Canadian hero.

What accounts of Douglas’ legacy often fail to include is that, for much of his life, Douglas was also a eugenicist. His masters thesis, The Problems of the Subnormal Family, recommended the sterilization of the disabled, sex workers, and “delinquents” with police records. And Douglas, the architect of socialized healthcare, used healthcare to make his point. On page ten of his masters thesis he wrote: “In addition to the cost of keeping these families, is the cost of their medical attention….The cost of bringing most of their children into the world is borne by the city. The cost of dental work, eye correction, and operations is borne by the citizens’ relief organization.” These violent eugenic ideals endorsed by Douglas, and other “Canadian heroes,” are not relegated to history. They continue to have material consequences. The sterilization of Indigenous people in Canada is still occurring.

Americans and Canadians alike refer to an ideal Canada, one which is defined as it diverges from the United States. This idealized country is habitually alluded to on both sides of the border. Senator Ted Kennedy, arguing in favor of single-payer healthcare in 1979, said, “the best evidence is in Canada…the last country that implemented national health insurance and one with which we have shared values and a shared standard of living.” Forty years later in 2019 Bernie Sanders crossed the Canadian border to purchase insulin at one tenth of the cost. During the debates for Democratic leadership in 2019, Sanders said, “…my neighbor fifty miles to the north Canada somehow has figured out how to provide healthcare to every man, woman, and child.” Sanders continued, “in our country, it is a much different story”. On December 4, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted about COVID relief: “Canada did $2000/monthly. The US is the richest nation earth and a 2nd stimulus check is getting blocked.”

Justin Trudeau engages in the same style of comparative rhetoric. On January 27, 2017 Trump instituted the Muslim ban. The next day Trudeau tweeted: “To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength.” Trudeau used the hashtag #WelcomeToCanada. But when over 11,000 people crossed into Canada on foot from the United States, Trudeau suddenly retracted his message. “For someone to successfully seek asylum it’s not about economic migration,” he told the press. He said, “You must follow the rules.”

The ideal Canada exists abstracted from everything else; it plays no role in the displacement of people. But in reality transnational Canadian mining companies are currently involved in the extraction of resources from Haiti, the country 85% of the migrants Trudeau criticized were from. In 2019, a report accused six Canadian peacekeepers of sexually assaulting Haitians. Afterwards, nothing happened.

The ideal Canada, which no one has visited, which exists nowhere, seems to serve everyone but the oppressed. For in reality the glare of this Canada obscures a settler-colonial state on stolen land. The $2000/month checks Ocasio-Cortez praised were withheld from disabled Canadians who weren’t working. Medical racism, homophobia, and transphobia flourish in our healthcare system. The mayor of Toronto tweets about Toronto’s diversity while overseeing mass evictions during a pandemic and presiding over an anti-Black police force. Trudeau speaks about reconciliation while appealing court rulings to give Indigenous children compensation. At a point “better than America” begins to mean very little.

And the idealized Canada doesn’t just serve Canadian politicians. American politicians gesture towards “Canada” as a model for healthcare and argue the United States is wealthy enough to have a similar system. This of course is true. But why is the United States so wealthy in the first place? The economic structure which creates American hegemony is never discussed; Americans are just encouraged to integrate public healthcare into an existing capitalist order. In 1979 Ted Kennedy described Canada as a country with shared values and standards of living. Implicitly, places like Cuba, which also had single-payer healthcare, were not aligned with capitalist American values. The ideal Canada is perfect for these sorts of arguments because it in no way contradicts a neocolonial agenda. It presents an aspirational image for leftist American politicians which can be imitated without compromising the United States’ accumulation of capital. Therefore this ideal Canada, which isn’t a country because it doesn’t exist, becomes a perfect national myth. The fantasy serves a mutually beneficial function for politicians occupying Turtle Island, allowing them espouse progressive politics while maintaining white supremacist oppressive structures.

In 2010, Weyburn Saskatchewan unveiled a statue of their former premier, Tommy Douglas, father of Canadian medicare and author of the thesis The Problems of the Subnormal Family. There is an ongoing campaign to put his face on the $5 bill. The statue of Douglas outstretches its hand, gesturing almost towards the sky. The inscription reads simply, the Greatest Canadian.

A Humanist Capitalism?: Dissecting Andrew Yang's 2020 Presidential Platform

By Charles Wofford

One of the most delightful experiences I've had as a leftist is when I hear someone who has no apparent class consciousness express, seemingly from nowhere, a remarkably perceptive comment on class society. I recall a coworker once mentioning aloud how strange it was that we were all so frightened of the boss and what they might do to us. Entrepreneur and 2020 democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang of Venture for America has given us another example with his essay, " Humanity is more important than money - it's time for capitalism to get an upgrade ." Throughout the article, Yang advocates for a new capitalism, based on three principles: that humanity is more important than money, that the individual person ought to be the unit of the economy rather than the dollar, and that markets exist to serve "common goals and values." In the end, Yang explicitly calls for federal government intervention to "reorganize the economy."

There is little to disagree with in Yang's moral analysis and his point that capitalism does not serve the interests of the great mass of people. To be clear, I also think the government ought to reorganize the society along more egalitarian lines. But Yang also appeals to certain widely accepted economic beliefs about the "invisible hand," and self-interest and competition being the main drivers of economic prosperity. As a result, Yang's case is subject to the same critique that Marx made of the classical political economists in his 1844 economic manuscripts :

"Political economy starts with the fact of private property; it does not explain it to us. It expresses in general, abstract formulas the material process through which private property actually passes, and these formulas it then takes for laws. It does not comprehend these laws - i.e., it does not demonstrate how they arise from the very nature of private property...Precisely because political economy does not grasp the way the movement is connected, it was possible to oppose, for instance, the doctrine of competition to the doctrine of monopoly, the doctrine of craft freedom to the doctrine of the guild..."

Translation: Like the classical political economists, Yang looks at the capitalist world in which we live and simply takes it as a natural order, whose economic tendencies are unchanging laws. Because he does not understand the historical origins of the divisions of labor that make up capitalism, Yang can posit such oxymorons as "human-centered capitalism." Because he sees capitalism in the misleading and pedantic terms of supply-and-demand ("capitalism prioritizes what the world does more of") he thinks we need to merely demand a more just world and capitalism will provide it. Yang is clearly not involved in activist spaces, otherwise he would know that people have been making radically humanist and egalitarian political demands for longer than capitalism has been around, and at no time has capitalism worked toward those goals. If Yang read up on the founding of the United States (particularly Madison's Federalist Paper No. 10), he would know that the founding fathers intended this anti-egalitarianism. If Yang read up on Hamilton, he would know that many founding fathers thought the wealthy were the natural representatives of all people - a complete fabrication and a lie.

Yang argues for a conception of markets that meet human needs rather than compelling humans to meet the needs of markets. But then he talks about how we can change our behavior as economic subjects in order for the market to provide what we want. The contradiction seems lost on him: if markets are to be geared toward human need, then the question is not an economic one, but a political one. The question is not "how do we read the market?" The real question is "how do we get the power to create a human-centric society?" And this is the conceptual problem behind Universal Basic Income (UBI). Yang justifies it in terms of the productivity it may increase. But that's not a humanist concern; it is a capitalist-economic concern.

A brief history of how capitalist relations came to be is in order. Yang never defines exactly what he means by capitalism, but he suggests that it goes back over 5,000 years, conflating it with the invention of money. In reality, the notion of capitalism - private, for-profit ownership of industry with wage labor and commodity production - has its origins in 17th-century England. Over the centuries the city dwellers of the country - who were mostly merchants and exchangers by profession - had acquired so much money, and thereby power, that they were able to appropriate common-owned land in England. Up until the late 18th century, most of the land in England was commons: the people who lived there had rights to the land irrespective of whatever the "owner" may wish to do with it. Modern concepts of ownership did not exist at the time. As the merchants in the cities grew more wealthy, they bought out or often outright stole commons land in order to expand their holdings, and thereby their businesses. By the late 18th century, the merchant class (who Marx called the bourgeoisie, which literally just means "city-dweller") had bought parliament itself, and started passing parliamentary laws of enclosure to finish up the long consolidation process the bourgeoisie had begun over 100 years prior. At the end of this process, a tiny number of people concentrated in the cities owned some 98% of the land and industry in the UK. 99% of the population, formerly peasants, had to go work for them in a condition called "employment" in order to live. They were now wage laborers: the proletariat. This is the origins of what we now call capitalism. It did not come about through some peaceful transition, but through a violent process of robbery by a small class of an entire country. One of the relevant points to take from this history is that the peasants of England did not voluntarily employ themselves to the nascent bourgeoisie. They were compelled to go to work in the factories because they had been robbed of their own access to the means of existence. None of this has anything to do with freedom; it is all coercion.

The standard economic view of money is that it is a neutral means of exchange. However, if any one individual or clique acquires enough money then they may purchase and bribe politicians, control entire fields of media coverage giving them huge influence on political opinion, and they may commit horrible crimes with impunity because no one will take them to court, etc. In short, having enough money allows one to shape society to one's whims at the expense of others. The conclusion is that money is not merely a neutral means of exchange; it is a form of social power. A society focused around human need, and not markets and money, would therefore have, at the very least, strict limits on the amount of money any individual may possess. Ideally, it would abolish money altogether. But this is against the capitalist premise, which is about free exchange.

With this in mind, where does Yang propose that the government get the power to do these things that he suggests? Short of forcibly expropriating the wealth of the 1%, I do not see a way. Money is a form of social power, and the government is a prime target for that power. Yang has perhaps watched one too many episodes of the television show The West Wing, which shows some fairy-tale vision of politics as an honest journey of visionaries. Yang does not seem to understand that it's all about accumulation of wealth, exploitation of resources, the maintenance of power systems, and that capitalist society is unavoidably inhuman.

David Harvey gives a beautiful example that may help to illustrate the point. In almost every major city in the world today one can find thousands of high-rise condominiums existing in the same city as thousands of homeless people. The condos are empty except for a few weeks of the year. They were not purchased to be lived in; they were purchased to be speculated on in a housing market. This housing market grew to such proportions and has been given such reign that it caused a housing crisis which foreclosed some 4 million people of their homes. Those who lost their homes are not the same people who speculated on the housing market; those people are doing just fine. What does this show? Precisely that the market itself, if allowed to grow unchecked, may wreak havoc upon a society; a truism that seems obvious to everyone except business people and economists.

Ok, so we control the market via government regulation. But those market owners do not like that, and they lobby against regulation laws, they bribe politicians, they control the media discourse etc. Those without the money do not have any real recourse within the system to stop them, for the system has been hijacked via its own methods. So it's not as simple as "well, the government can just do this." The government has long ago been bought out by the capitalists, and politics is treated like another market now. Since the 1980s laws have been made such that it is all but impossible to reregulate the markets. The solution is that we need a completely new system, because "capitalist democracy" (so-called) has fallen past the event horizon into unworkability. This means the end of capitalism, and it means a newer, more direct, less representational form of government. It means public banking rather than private banking. It means the redistribution of wealth from those at the top who have robbed from all of humanity through a coercive system. Interestingly, this would also entail smaller government in many ways, as institutions like the FBI, the CIA, the military industrial complex, and others which exist to protect the status quo would be abolished. Just to drive the nail home, it would also mean the abolition of the Constitution and its replacing with something more progressive and centered around human values rather than defending the "minority of the opulent." (Madison)

Harvey rightly blasts the UBI idea as simply a front for Silicon Valley to get more effective demand for their products. The UBI is really a subsidy to Silicon Valley, not a method of providing for the people. That Yang is an entrepreneur from Silicon Valley is no coincidence.

In other ways, Yang's entrepreneurial training implicates him in the very values he attempts to refute. His "human-centered capitalism" is not a society that is in fact based on human need, but simply around the old fallacy of "meritocracy." A moment's reflection would tell us that a truly humane society would not be meritocratic, as the notion of "merit" is inherently politically implicated. Who defines what counts as merit? A truly humanist society would allow all people the means to develop to their fullest potential on their own terms.

Yang proposes a "parallel economy around social good." The capitalist economy would simply allow this parallel economy to get plump before taking it over. That is exactly what the capitalists are currently doing with the internet. If Yang's "parallel economy" were possible, it wouldn't be needed.

Yang writes, "Most entrepreneurs, technologists and young people I know are chomping at the bit to work on our problems." Our problems are known and have been known for at least 100 years. The problem is capitalism: private control over the means of production. The solution is socialism: worker control over the means of production. The means are popular revolution, which is above and beyond electoral politics. Unless and until you are speaking that language, your "human-centric" ideology is just a sham. Technology will not save us on its own; otherwise it would already have done so.

Lastly is Yang's line about how a humanist capitalism could "spur unprecedented levels of social activity without spending that much." This sounds like the opposite of a humanistic anything, and very capitalist. Why? Because Yang is thinking of more ways to get people to work more, produce more, engage in more activity. But we are already working ourselves to death; American worker productivity is higher than it's ever been. We don't need new ways to do more; we need new ways to do less. We need a new concept of what it means to "contribute" to society. A humanist society would not be obsessed with getting people to work, producing, exchanging, etc. but would rather leave them in relative peace while providing at least for their basic needs. But this is what the entrepreneur is trained to do: produce more, take more risks, and be more daring in the market. In this mindset, people are inherently viewed as commodities, tools to be used by the entrepreneur. We need to move beyond capitalist thinking if we are to move beyond the problems of capitalism.

In conclusion, Mr. Yang's proposed solutions are impressive to those armchair theorists and liberals who lack a deeper understanding of capitalism. They will not solve our problems. They may, in fact, empower capitalism to appropriate even more of our lives. I cannot help but suspect that Mr. Yang is just the liberal version of Donald Trump: the "successful" businessman who is "outside the system." Yang is noticing that there is a political market for progressive values and he is attempting to cash in on it.

He is, after all, an entrepreneur. But treating politics like a business is part of our problem. We've seen how capitalism can posture around the idea of "freedom." Do we not think it could do the same with ideas like "humanism?"

Charles Wofford is an activist and PhD student in historical musicology.

The Universal and the Particular: Chomsky, Foucault, and Post-New Left Political Discourse

By Derek Ide

Postmodern theory was a relatively recent intellectual phenomenon in 1971 when Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault sat down to discuss a wide range of topics, including the nature of justice, power, and intellectual inquiry. At one point Chomsky, who Peter Novick suggests as an example of left-wing empiricism in post-war academia, engages the concrete issue of social activism and invokes the notion of "justice," to which Foucault asks poignantly: "When, in the United States, you commit an illegal act, do you justify it in terms of justice or of a superior legality, or do you justify it by the necessity of the class struggle, which is at the present time essential for the proletariat in their struggle against the ruling class?" After a brief period he quickly reiterates the question again: "Are you committing this act in virtue of an ideal justice, or because the class struggle makes it useful and necessary?" Chomsky attempts to situate a notion of justice within international law, to which Foucault replies: "I will be a little bit Nietzschean about this… the idea of justice in itself is an idea which in effect has been invented and put to work in different types of societies as an instrument of a certain political and economic power or as a weapon against that power… And in a classless society, I am not sure that we would still use this notion of justice." In other words, for Foucault justice is only intelligible within a relative framework of class antagonisms. Meanings of justice may differ, but they are only understandable vis-à-vis certain class positions. Chomsky responds: "Well, here I really disagree. I think there is some sort of an absolute basis--if you press me too hard I'll be in trouble, because I can't sketch it out-ultimately residing in fundamental human qualities, in terms of which a 'real' notion of justice is grounded."[1]

Foucault's position appears correct, at least on the surface, because it is deeply rooted in the recognition of class-based power, hegemony, and contestation. Chomsky, on the other hand, has trouble sketching out any "pure form" or "absolute basis" of justice. Instead, it appears to be an abstraction to which he has some, perhaps understandably, visceral attachment. Yet, Foucault's position seems at odds with the stance that Patricia O'Brien attributes to him when she explains that, for Foucault, "culture is studied through technologies of power-not class, not progress, not the indomitability of the human spirit. Power cannot be apprehended through the study of conflict, struggle, and resistance… Power is not characteristic of a class (the bourgeoisie) or a ruling elite, nor is it attributable to one… Power does not originate in either the economy or politics, and it is not grounded there."[2] Instead, it is an "infinitely complex network of 'micro-powers,' of power relations that permeate every aspect of social life."[3]

In one way, the adoption by "critical" leftists (the proliferation of critical race theory, whiteness studies, etc. may be a reflection of this) of this notion that power is an "infinitely complex network of micro-powers" may help to explain the rise of the post-New Left vocabulary and the political orientation of those who engage in privilege discourse. Thus, institutional "oppression" as a "pattern of persistent and systematic disadvantage imposed on large groups of people" becomes sublimated by "privilege," where the criticism is centered on "set of unearned benefits that some individuals enjoy (and others are denied) in their everyday lives." Likewise, "liberation," referring to ultimate victory against systems of exploitation and oppression, is abandoned in favor of fighting for "safe spaces," where "the attempt to create occasions or locations wherein the adverse effects of privilege on marginalized people are minimized in everyday interpersonal interactions."[4] Thus, Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob characterize postmodernists as "deeply disillusioned intellectuals who denounce en masse Marxism and liberal humanism, communism and capitalism, and all expectations of liberation."[5] The persistence of postmodernist intellectual parameters on the post-New Left political discourse could not be clearer.

What O'Brien says is "most challenging of all is the realization that power creates truth and hence its own legitimation," [6] a position which seemingly aligns with Foucault's comment to Chomsky that justice is an "invented idea...put to work in different types of societies as an instrument of a certain political and economic power or as a weapon against that power." The notion that "power is not characteristic of a class" or that it "does not originate in either the economy or politics" seems far from the position Foucault takes when discussing the issue of justice and class power with Chomsky. Thus, at best one finds a level of disconnect between Foucault's position a la O'Brien and the position he seemed to be articulating vis-à-vis Chomsky. At times it seems that Foucault is even at odds with himself. Contradictions aside, others such as Daniel Zamora have posited that the very questions Foucault asks are incorrect, and have "disoriented the left." The problem for Zamora is "not that [Foucault] seeks to 'move beyond' the welfare state, but that he actively contributed to its destruction, and that he did so in a way that was entirely in step with the neoliberal critiques of the moment."[7]

Despite such contradiction and critique, one of the most recognizable transitions in history that occurred with the advent of postmodernism was the so-called "linguistic turn." Thus, as O'Brien explains, "one of Foucault's recognized contributions, which a wide variety of the new cultural historians embrace, lie in the importance he attributed to language/discourse as a means of apprehending change."[8] Clifford Geertz, albeit in a very different way, also posited the importance of linguistic and textual interpretation. For Geertz, "materialism of any kind" was "an implicit target."[9] Conversely, action is text and "the real is as imagined as the imaginary."[10] Thus, "man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he has himself spun." [11] In many ways, language and discourse came to dominate and displace discussions of power and oppression for postmodernists. This "interpretative turn," as Aletta Biersack refers to it, is a sort of hyper-hermeneutics, where etymology in essence becomes epistemology.

This linguistic turn may also have some relevance to the post-New Left discourse as well. As the radical left retreated into academia, and in the absence of social movements in the first world on a large scale, power become viewed as an infinitely complex web of micro-powers which permeate everyday life. Likewise, the political-linguistic discourse reflected a by now largely alienated intellectual leftist community. Thus, for critical postmodern left-wing academics language and every-day, small scale interactions sublimate material reality and large-scale, institutional structures.

This has been explored in detail by Steve D'Arcy's "The Rise of Post New-Left Political Discourse," which asks the poignant question of whether activists from the New Left era would even find the discourse of today's left intelligible. Juxtaposing words like "oppression" vs. "privilege," "exploitation" vs. "classism," "alliances" vs. "being an ally" (a fundamental distinction!), and "consciousness-raising" vs. "calling out," D'Arcy explicates upon the seismic shift that has gripped leftist discourse.[12] Strategic alliances between oppressed groups or blocs are replaced with hyper-individualized conceptions of being an ally, economic and structural analyses associated with words like exploitation are replaced with "classism," suggesting personal prejudice against members of certain economic backgrounds, etc. This "post-New Left" lexicon is fundamentally different than the language utilized by groups and organizations spanning the New Left of the 1960s and 1970s, or even the old left of the 1930s and before. It is also a language keenly peculiar to the first world, and in particular North America and a few European states. The implications of this shift are contentious, but however one views the linguistic transition it is clear that both the political goals and results have been restructured with its advent.

More generally, poststructuralists have put forward a "theoretical critique of the assumptions of modernity found in philosophy, art, and criticism since the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries."[13] They "argue against the possibility of any certain knowledge… [and] question the superiority of the present and the usefulness of general worldviews, whether Christian, Marxist, or liberal… there is no truth outside ideology."[14] For them "no reality can possibly transcend the discourse in which it is expressed" and while scientists or empiricists may think certain practices "bring them closer to reality… they are simply privileging the language that they speak, the technologies of their own self-fashioning."[15] Thus, historical truth, objectivity, and the narrative form of history have all been targets of the postmodernist critique. Jacques Derrida, for instance, advocated deconstruction "to show how all texts repressed as much as they expressed in order to maintain the fundamental Western conceit of 'logocentrism,' the (erroneous) idea that words expressed truth in reality."[16] Since "texts could be interested in multiple, if not infinite, ways because signifiers had no essential connection to what they were signified."[17] In this way, language was a barrier to truth and precluded human capacity to know truth.

The effect this has had on history is complex. For instance, "the history of what postmodernists called 'subaltern' groups-workers, immigrants, women, slaves, and gays-in fact proved difficult to integrate into the story of one American nation."[18] Partha Chatterjee, for instance, is one of the intellectual founders and banner holders for postcolonial and subaltern studies. Chatterjee, in his study of the "nationalist imagination" in Asia and Africa, The Nation and Its Fragments, cites Foucault as helping him recognize how "power is meant not to prohibit but to facilitate, to produce."[19] For Chatterjee, colonial rule created "a social order that bore striking resemblance to its own caricature of 'traditional India': late colonial society was 'nearer to the ideal-type of Asiatic Despotism than anything South Asia had seen before.'"[20]Specifically referring to search for pre-European capitalism in India, Chatterjee asserts that the "development of industrial capital in… Western Europe or North America, was the result of a very specific history. It is the perversity of Eurocentric historical theories that has led to the search for similar developments everywhere else in the world." [21] Thus, for postcolonial scholars, and implicit in the subset of subaltern studies, totalizing and universal theories are an intellectual and historical impossibility.

This has not permeated all of academia, however. There has been a spirited defense of the radical Enlightenment tradition, especially from the left, as the heated exchanges between Vivek Chibber and Partha Chatterjee have shown. Chibber, in his magnum opus Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital, demonstrates the intellectual inconsistences and failures of subaltern studies and offers a comprehensive critique of postcolonial theory. His argument is that it is possible, indeed necessary, to posit a totalizing, universal theory without succumbing to Eurocentrism or reductionism (economic or otherwise). In his work he takes to task Ranajit Guha, Dipesh Chakrabarty and Partha Chatterjee, three scholars who he considers emblematic of postcolonial theory. Thus, the battle was pitched between Chatterjee, who rejects universal discourses, and Chibber, who asserts a nuanced and sophisticated Marxist analysis. Chatterjee laid out the battlefield in his response, suggesting that Chibber implores a "plea for continued faith in the universal values of European Enlightenment." He acknowledges that "the debate between universalism and its critics continues and will not be resolved in a hurry. The choice between the two sides at this time is indeed political." Indeed, while he claims the "greatest strength of the universalist position is the assurance it provides of predictability and control over uncertain outcomes," he argues that the critics of universalism, a category he places himself in, "argue that the outcomes are unknown, indeterminate, and hence unpredictable. They accept the challenge of risky political choices, based on provisional, contingent and corrigible historical knowledge." His main contention, then, is that "the working classes of Europe and North America and their ideologues can no longer act as the designated avant-garde in the struggles of subaltern classes in other parts of the world… Historians of Subaltern Studies have only attempted to interpret a small part of these struggles. And changing the world, needless to say, is a job that cannot be entrusted to historians."[22]

In response, Chibber argues in favor of universalizing categories when applicable, suggesting that the "motivation for my intervention was to examine a common charge that postcolonial theory levels at the Enlightenment tradition, that its universalizing categories obliterate all historical difference. They do so, we are told, because they homogenize the diversity of social experience by subsuming it under highly abstract, one-dimensional categories." Here he cites the example of Marx's concept of abstract labor, which he argues postcolonial theories have simply misunderstood. Therefore, "while it is certainly true that some universalizing categories might be problematic, it is sheer folly to insist that this is a necessary flaw in all such categories. Postcolonial theory's broadside against Enlightenment universalisms is vastly overdrawn." Instead, he argues postcolonial and subaltern studies have been an immense failure both intellectually, in understanding the actual conditions of their subjects, and politically, not only by failing to facilitate radical change in any direction but by actually constraining and enervating radical analysis and transformation of society.

Indeed, Chibber proclaims that "Chatterjee's essay [against Chibber's book] is designed to allay any anxieties that his followers might have about the foundations of their project... It is a palliative, a balm, to soothe their nerves." Not only was this meant to boost morale in the wake of political failure, however, it was also meant to be an attack on the radical Enlightenment tradition, particularly Marxism: "Subaltern Studies was not just supposed to offer a rival framework for interpreting colonial modernity; it was also supposed to have internalized whatever was worth retaining from the Marxian tradition, thereby inheriting the mantle of radical critique. For years, the Subalternists have focused just about everything they have written on the irredeemable flaws of Marxism and the Enlightenment -- how they are implicated in imperialism, their reductionism, essentialism, etc." [23] Thus, the battle between postmodernism, of which postcolonial theory and subaltern studies are intellectual legacies, and modernity are not over. This is particularly true in the realm of history, where the debate between Chatterjee and Chibber is only the most recent manifestation.

For leftists, this battle is of immense importance. The words we utilize, the discourse we construct, and the movements which both manifest from and shape our language are at stake. The political implications of these choices are dire, especially at a time when the forces of reaction are winning everywhere across the world. Yet, there are perhaps few places on Earth where the left is weaker than the first world. This is particularly true where post-modern discourse and post-new left political vocabulary has emerged victorious. Without ignoring the insights of the particular, and without exaggerating the past victories and potential of the universal, it would appear that post-new left political discourse has left our side stranded. It has failed to facilitate growth and shown itself incapable of capturing the masses, all the while forcing us to feed upon ourselves, augmenting isolation and alienation from each other. Perhaps the time for a renegotiation of this development is in order; perhaps the left requires a discourse rooted more in the universal and less in the particular.

Notes

[1] "Human Nature: Justice versus Power, Noam Chomsky debates with Michel Foucault" (1971), accessed March 15, 2014. http://www.chomsky.info/debates/1971xxxx.htm.

[2] Patricia O'Brien, "Michel Foucault's History of Culture," The New Cultural History, ed. Lynn Hunt (Berkeley: Univerisity of California Press, 1989), 34.

[3] O'Brien, "Michel Foucault's History of Culture," 35.

[4] Stephen D'Arcy, The Public Autonomy Project, "The Rise of the Post-New Left Political Vocabulary." Last modified January 27, 2014. Accessed March 15, 2014. http://publicautonomy.org/2014/01/27/the-rise-of-the-post-new-left-political-vocabulary/.

[5] Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob, Telling the Truth About History (New York: W.W. Norton, 1994), 206.

[6] O'Brien, "Michel Foucault's History of Culture," 35.

[7] Daniel Zamora, "Foucault's Responsibility," https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/12/michel-foucault-responsibility-socialist/

[8] Ibid., 44.

[9] Aletta Biersack, "Local Knowledge, Local History: Geertz and Beyond," The New Cultural History, ed. Lynn Hunt (Berkeley: Univerisity of California Press, 1989), 75.

[10] Biersack, "Local Knowledge, Local History," 78.

[11] Ibid., 80.

[12] Steve D'Arcy, "The Rise of Post-New Left Political Discourse." http://publicautonomy.org/2014/01/27/the-rise-of-the-post-new-left-political-vocabulary/

[13] Appleby, Hunt, and Jacob, 201.

[14] Ibid., 202-3.

[15] Ibid., 204.

[16] Ibid., 215.

[17] Ibid., 215.

[18] Ibid., 217.

[19] Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 15.

[20] Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments, 32.

[21] Ibid., 30.

[22] Chatterjee Partha, "Subaltern Studies and Capital," Economic and Political Review Weekly, XLVIII, no. 37 (2013), http://www.epw.in/notes/subaltern-studies-and-capital.html (accessed March 15, 2014).

[23] Vivek Chibber, Verso Books, "Subaltern Studies Revisited: Vivek Chibber's Response to Partha Chatterjee." Last modified February 25, 2014. Accessed March 15, 2014. http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/1529-subaltern-studies-revisited-vivek-chibber-s-response-to-partha-chatterjee.