Post Empire Survival Guide by Sam Smith
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Sam Smith is one of my favorite thinkers and commentators. He has been editing the Progressive Review since 1964. Every Monday he is on the Mark Thompson radio show on Sirius Left. Each Monday he comes up with original ways of looking at the week's events and has a generous and positive way of criticizing the Democrats as well as Republicans. He can put down Obama with such grace and sweetness that he does not get the blow back that Glen Ford gets when he does the same thing on Wednesdays. (Glen is another favorite of mine and speaks truth in a powerful voice.)
Sam has published a Post Empire Survival Guide for our troubling times and I find his ideas compelling and worth our time her at Corrente. He says that the First American Republic is over and it's time to start acting like it is. Are you a reformer or a rebel?
There is a recurring theme throughout this Survival Guide of emphasis on the local and moving energy and organization away from the Federal Government. For example:
Work around it - If a hurricane comes to your neighborhood, you don't just sit around the kitchen table complaining about it; you do things to help your survival. The same is true of the great storm of American disintegration. We have clearly lost what we have lost. We can give up our futile efforts to preserve the illusion and turn our energies instead to the construction of a new time. It is this willingness to walk away from the seductive power of the present that first divides the mere reformer from the rebel -- the courage to emigrate from one's own ways in order to meet the future not as an entitlement but as a frontier.Make the local about far more than lettuce: Because of the foregoing, the role of the local in American life has assumed an enormous yet still largely unrecognized role. It is no longer just about sensible communities, friends or wise buying habits. It is our major bastion against the bastards. Sadly, liberal Americans become increasingly federocentric, assuming that those speaking of states or local rights are just right wing nuts. This ignores the history of every important progressive movement in America: from the abolitionists, to the populists, labor unions, environmentalists, and the advocates of civil rights. In each case, success was based not on playing the elite's game but through mass decentralized organizing and pressure. Few things scare national politicians more than people getting organized.
Read about movements that worked, particularly the populists, the 1960s anti-war and civil rights movements, the gay and women's rights efforts. And don't forget the Beats. They were the warm-up band for one of the biggest eras of change in our history.
He has suggested a platform of his own and encourages us to do the same. Again he emphasizes "government carried out at the lowest possible level":
Come up with a progressive platform, preferably one that can be written on a single side of a sheet of paper. Here are some samples:
- Economic programs aimed at doing the most for the most and an end to Wall Street bailouts, including instead major direct help for endangered homowners and a single digit limit on credit card rates.
- An end to colonial occupation and wars in foreign lands.
- The restoration of democracy and constitutional government in the U.S.
- Single payer health care
- A safe and clean natural environment
- Electoral reform including instant runoff voting, an end to corporate personhood and public campaign financing.
- Government carried out at the lowest practical level
If you don't like that list, then write your own.
The paragraph about elites designing jobs for other elites rings true to me. I get hit up by it seems hundreds of organizations aka lobbying groups who want money for their causes. They hire consultants. But we really need to cut out a lot of the middle men and women. In our little town, ladies got together to create a nature trails park. In order to get "a grant" or more money, they were told they needed "a study" and "a master plan". So they spent $40,000 to hire consultants who hired consultants to come up with "a master plan". Too bad they just didn't use the $40,000 for the park. It created a huge controversy in the town. So one woman's sincere progressive consultant is another woman's interfering liberal crony.
No more stimulus packages for grad school liberals. Use fewer experts from the Ivy League and more from Iowa. For example, in Clinton's first adminstration, one third of the top positions were held by Harvard and/or Yale graduations. End the grad school politics that favors those that collect data, assess and legalize issue over those who actually do something. No more 2,000 pages of legislation. One of the things many people don't like about traditional liberals is how federally oriented they are. This is due in no small part to an elite class that designs jobs for itself in Washington.
An example of this:
a study of Milwaukee County in 1988 found government agencies spending more than $1 billion annually on fighting poverty. If this money had been given in cash to the poor, it would have meant more than $33,000 for each low income family -- well above the poverty level.
Lots to talk about in this guide. I think Sam is right. We need to meet in groups and ask ourselves what our vision for a community is. If the only thing we might agree on is that we are in a lot of trouble, well then, that's a place to start.
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Comments
Smith and Robin could both be right
Just for different stages of the process.
That's a good take on this
The process will involve rethinking so it could include a strong center but first trying to make it leaner and easier to turn around. My take on Smith is that he sees in terms of a federal structure, but would like to remind us that we have made that federal structure more responsive and more in tune with the states and towns in the past and need to look at trying for more local say. I think that we have gone overboard in having all power concentrated in and around D.C. Too top heavy. Too Versailles in being walled off from the rest of the country. Gotta have more balance.
Do you know what he means by a House of Representatives with "mixed proportional and district representation like Germany"?
“a strong national state that promotes localization!”
Isn't that how someone put it? There is something to that here:
Just for different stages of the process.
I don't know if that's for different “stages” of the process or just for different aspects. Ideally, a strong national government sets (or can set) the “floor” for all sorts of standards and can prevent all sorts of social dilemmas arising from groups acting in their own best interests. (I'm not sure how anarchist theory handles that but I'd suppose it does.) Corey Robin is careful to note that he is in favor not of a strong national state but “a strong national state in alliance with a democratic social movements.” (That implies to me a far more truly democratic, responsive national state.)
One of my favorite snippets from Sam
"We have lost much of what was gained in the 1960s and 1970s because we traded in our passion, our energy, our magic and our music for the rational, technocratic and media ways of our leaders. We will not overcome the current crisis solely with political logic. We need living rooms like those in which women once discovered they were not alone. The freedom schools of SNCC. The politics of the folk guitar. The plays of Vaclav Havel. The pain of James Baldwin. The laughter of Abbie Hoffman. The strategy of Gandhi and King. Unexpected gatherings and unpredicted coalitions. People coming together because they disagree on every subject save one: the need to preserve the human. Savage satire and gentle poetry. Boisterous revival and silent meditation. Grand assemblies and simple suppers." ~Sam Smith
That is one of my favorite Sam Smithisms too
I almost included it, but the post was getting too long and I thought I could include it in the comment section. "Boisterous and silent". "Grand and simple". "
Subversive fun
I have to say that's one thing (among many) I like about David Graeber (and, by extension, the anarchists): there seems to be an emphasis on the purely human/relationship aspects of what's going on—it's not just “political” (in terms of power, oppression, dominance) or “economic” (transactional) but the “social” (often, just “being”).
And Graeber gets a kick out of “subversive fun” also (see the joy he takes in Robert Graves's interpretation of the Iliad as “obviously a satire”). In fact, the whole of anarchism seems brilliantly subversive—it isn't about overthrowing the system so much as not engaging with it. From that perspective (as well as others), the lack of demands from Occupy makes perfect sense.
I think it is hard to
I think it is hard to organize creatively when you are ground down. It's why an explosion is more likely than a movement of positive change. It's important to realize that our elites are never going to negotiate with us, at least not in good faith. So we really aren't talking about pressuring them so much as removing them. And they are not going to go quietly.
I would just add to the list in the post an end to wealth inequality. It is really from that that everything else flows.
Government bad!!!
Poverty is one problem that you can solve by throwing money at it. A major strength of Social Security and Medicare is that they have very low administrative costs. But somehow the notion that you can hand out $33,000 without program design, audits, or other administrative costs does not strike me as realistic. Nor is it accurate to argue that the programs' purposes are to provide jobs for the liberals.
The call for common sense solutions instead of government bullshit produces some very counterproductive policies in everything from education to environment to economics. I like studies that show, for example, where pesticides end up, rather than just saying, "Hey, just spray the bugs." Even if the studies are done by people with degrees.
I want a decent society for all and a decent life for myself. I don't see where spending time whether all services ought to be public or privatised, whether government ought to be bigger or smaller, or whether it should be more or less local really gets at a decent society for all. If you look at the sample progressive platform near the end, you note that virtually all the actions really must be federal. So what's his argument with the dreaded liberals?
Obviously, I find this irritating, like the DLC, Third Way, and the rest, who argue that liberals ought to give up on liberalism and jump into right wing frames. The era of big government is over. Let's join hands with Grover Norquist and sing Kumbaya.
Are these programs available only on Sirius?
And online access without monthly subscriptions?
Only available by subscription
Sirius Left is now mostly Sirius Democrat except for the one hour of Sam Smith on Mondays on Mark's show and one hour of Glen Ford or Bruce Dixon on the last hour of Mark's show on Wednesday. There is also three hours of Mike Feder on Saturdays who is very left and probably won't last because he hates Obama. (They got rid of the great Lynn Samuels (she couldn't stand Obama from the getgo) and stuck her on the weekends on another channel. I think it broke her heart literally. She died a few weeks ago. So those 3 hours are gone.) Dave Marsh has a left show on Sundays for 3 hours. He has on the great Kevin Alexander Grey and the labor activist Frank Joyce every week. They focus on movements not electoral politics. Sirius does not have free recordings. However, listeners have recorded the shows themselves. On the lynnsamuels.com site, former listeners have put up old recordings of her shows. So maybe somewhere people have done the same for Glen and Sam. I should get one of those radio recorder things.
Used to be $10 a month. Now it's $14.49 per month for internet or with a radio. Sometimes they give free radios with a subscription.
The New Federalism?
I subscribe to Sam Smith's pieces and read this a few days ago. I liked the way he endorsed the decentralization movement. But after reading some of Corey Robin's pieces, I have a better understanding of the limitations of the decentralization movement too. Liberals, for the most part, seem to reject that movement, favoring federal intervention instead. I think that may well be why so many liberals are so upset with the candidacy of Ron Paul, for they equate Ron Paul with a "states' rights" movement that would erase all of the gains of the New Deal and the achievements of other liberal/progressive saints. I'd say that both Robin and Smith are right, but how do we get there from here? How do we have governments that are more accountable to those they govern? I'd like to see a lot more Second Vermont Republic movements, but they don't seem to be popping up anywhere. Whenever the phrase "states' rights" appears, it is always in the context of Rick Perry's ridiculous ideas for Texas or Ron Paul's libertarian ideas. Why is that? Is the federal government our only savior? Why are Americans so enervated politically that they cannot participate at a local level and instead invest all of their hopes and dreams in a savior at the federal level? Why can't we have responsive government at a lower level, like Smith wants? I think the complicated answer must lie somewhere in the character of individual-rights seeking Americans. Is it possible that by focusing so intensely on individual rights that Americans have left the door open for the situation we now find ourselves in? If corporations are individuals and they have free speech rights, isn't that just our personal situation writ large? I'm rambling here, but I'm still looking for answers, too. I think our political system is badly broken but I also think we all need to look at the role that worshiping at the altar of individualism plays in this country. Maybe a comparison with other countries would be useful - I think Morris Berman touches on this in his books.
Jerry Fresia does a great job describing localism
Thanks for recommending "Towards an American Revolution: Exposing the Constitution and Other Illusions." He divides left movement political action that we have right now as divided into two camps, Congressional Technocrats who think things can be fixed through legislative work in the system and Abstract Spiritualists who think things can be fixed through individual commitments to spiritual renewal, peace, justice, etc. He says neither camps take on global capitalism that runs our politics. Neither is radical.
He recommends going back and looking at the values of mutual cooperation that the majority of early Americans practiced before their way of life and their ideas were squelched by the elitist Framers who were large merchants and large landholders who felt they needed a constitution that promoted economic freedom and protection of property over people's real social needs.
It's kind of fun to go back and see how the elites then and now define "freedom" as "freedom FROM others" and freedom to pursue property as opposed to freedom to pursue happiness and live in harmony with our neighbors and the earth.
In the early days, a blacksmith might make a hammer if somebody needed one. He would not make hundreds of hammers to sell for profit. This is actually the way it works, by and large, in my small town. We still borrow machinery to harvest the oats. If we need more hay than what we can raise, we buy it from our neighbor. We help at somebody's branding and then they help at ours. If there are non-ranchers we make sure we give them a steak dinner and pay the high schoolers who aren't ranch kids some money. I traded a old washing machine for a week's worth of house cleaning.
It is just ingrained in a ranch community to do this. We also try to settle most disputes out of court. People were indignant when a local celebrity sent his lawyers in a fencing dispute rather than "talk it over". Hand shakes still seal the deal.
But then these people are like the Shay rebels and the Massuchusetts Whiskey rebels and the fancy schmancy framers thought little of them. So little that they concocted a document which would always keep them down.
Thanks for the recommendation. If we could get beyond stupid ideology and labels, we might be able to govern locally. But we also need to address the really big elephant, the deference to the big landowners. Here the big dogs still can control the county commissioners just because of this strange deference to money and land. But on a day to day basis, communism is alive and well in rural America.
Fresia & Wolin
I'm glad you enjoyed the book - I've only managed to find the time to read a few pages of Wolin so far - had some computer problems that I had to address. I surely agree with you about labels - I have some rural land and there aren't many Democrats there, that's for sure. Yes, rural America is a very different place, but I do think that my comments about worshiping at the altar of individualism are very clear there. Rural America is a "hand-shake" community and a community where a man's word is his bond. But there is also a hidden "balance sheet", where there is an obligation owed for services rendered, payment accepted in other means than cash. It is largely a networked barter economy. So, no, I'd have to disagree about characterizing rural America as being "communist". I wonder what conclusions you would come to if you looked at that "strange deference to money and land" through the lens of "worshiping at the altar of individualism". Aren't the poor people who live in shabby trailers looked down upon because they just don't work hard enough? Karl Hess famously said, "revolution, like charity, starts at home." There's a lot of wisdom in that statement! That worship of individualism and personal responsibility is why rural America overwhelmingly votes Republican, not realizing that they are empowering those who are making their lives miserable. What rural America defines as "Republican" is not at all like what Washington, D.C. defines as "Republican."
Believe me, this place is conservative
Anti tax Montana Militia types took over the city council. Liberals have actually left the county in the last year. I think about it daily. But in the meantime, Occupy has given me another inch of my foot in the door to even use the word communism in discussions. Showing people graphics of the Wall Street bull's balls being snipped brings grins. I don't converse any more about Republicans or Democrats. Instead I talk about regions. Everyone seems to enjoy that.
Morris Berman's bk "Why America Failed"
Why America Failed
is reviewed by Thomas Naylor on the Second Vermont Republic link you gave. Naylor wrote "Affluenza". Very interesting review about America being now the land of the living dead. Ideas of localism have been squashed since the beginning of this country. They do pop up here in Montana. Brian Schweitzer seems to be itching to secede also, if he could. Have our own health care plan, etc. We would need a port, so we would have to ally ourselves with Washington State or British Columbia. Although I think he'd like to be made King of the new nation.
I often thought it would be a good idea to break into regions. Graeber talks about this too. He said he was teaching at Yale when Bush was elected to a 2nd term. Instead of the subject he was supposed to discuss, he and his students talked about breaking North America into regions.
Naylor says that Berman's most interesting chapter is on the South and how capitalists always want to destroy "traditional" societies and replace them with the machines. Food for thought.
So yes, for all his ickiness, Ron Paul has opened up a discussion of the meaning of localism and that is a good thing. Let us continue to talk about it.
Thomas Naylor
The whole secessionist movement is troublesome, most particularly for liberals who are devotees of the federal government. In the past, Naylor has been accused of supporting the League of the South, with serious repercussions. The problem is that this skein is terribly tangled and anyone who endorses such a program gets skewered by those who are in favor of the status quo. In a rational world, I see no reason why Montana couldn't become an independent country with the ability to forge agreements with Washington state or British Columbia. But we don't live in a rational world - we live in a troubled world where people are wedded to their heuristic models and are completely unwilling to consider new ideas. Thus, all the furor over Paul amongst the liberal class. By extension, that same liberal class gets even more furious when the topic of secession is broached. It's fine to deplore the Droner and the murderous political class in Washington, D.C., but mentioning secession, which would cut off the funding of the federal government so that they could no longer manufacture nuclear weapons and murder millions is greeted with frenzied horror. Like I said, we don't live in a rational world.
And then the nukes are in the hands...
... of a bunch of Christianist loons at the Air Force Academy..., Not so easy.
True Decentralism
And how would the Air Force Academy be funded? By the state of Colorado? With what funds? Would Colorado create a funding alliance with other states? To achieve what ends? When the end of the Empire arrives, it arrives.
See What I Mean?
I missed this about Naylor when I was composing my first response to your comment. I've read some rather ill-tempered comments about the SLPC, but I'm beginning to wonder if there isn't some truth to those comments.
“it would be a good idea to break into regions”
This book American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America gives reason to believe that the US just might do that. The author Colin Woodward is not optimistic:
The Deep South, Tidewater Appalachia, Yankeedom, New Netherland, the Midlands and the Left Coast are some of the eleven regional cultures. (The book strikes me as sort of a combo of Joel Garreau's Nine Nations of North America here and David Hackett Fischer's Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America here. Garreau's names for his “nations,” e.g., Mexamerica, Ecotopia, Dixie, the Foundry, were somewhat more evocative but you might not like his name for the region that corresponds roughly to Woodard's Far West: “the Empty Quarter.”)
Thanks for the books on American regions
I had read about these books awhile back and was intrigued, but never got around to reading them.
My idea would have been to make a separate nation of the Louisiana Purchase. There were three or more ports for that region. They could share The Mississippi and New Orleans with the original colonies. And they would also have Seattle and Portland.
Don' t like the idea of dividing along cultural lines, but rather on geographic lines. Diversity or at least the tolerance of diversity makes for a good place to live. I miss the diversity of New York City. Here it's primarily Northern Europeans. I like the Southern European and tropical elements to slow down the work obsessed Northerners who don't get that they are basically indentured servants.
From my reading of the expansion of the Homestead Act into places like Montana, this region should have stayed kind of empty. They lay down a lot of rail track here in Montana. Most of it is gone along with the homesteaders, the "honyockers". The ground here is not made for farming. It is grazing land. My husband (3rd generation on this ranch and 5th generation cattle ranching-his people came from the sand hills of Nebraska) does not agree. He sees this place as hospitable. But we are where two rivers come together so there is to me a false sense of richness.
Regional Breakup
The likelihood of the United States breaking up into smaller countries is about the same as Ron Paul being elected president. Still, I think it is important to bring up the topic. People are so wedded to the idea of the "United States of America" that they react with fury to any ideas presented by the secessionists, labeling them Jew-haters, KKK-lovers, and white supremacists. There is no doubt that those kinds of people are represented amongst the secessionists, but I'd wager that those kinds of people are also represented amongst the America: Love it or Leave it Crowd. What I'd like to see is a reasonable discussion about the scale of political entities, as Thomas Naylor has written about. That discussion is not possible because people get their underwear in a knot when their beliefs are challenged. The furor over Ron Paul is a perfect example.
Whenever the Tenth Amendment crowd is mentioned, those on the Left inevitably link it to the militia types and again just shows how empty and useless the Left is in this country. A real Left, a Left that was interested in workers co-ops or the environment would recognize that the Tenth Amendment movement is in their best interests. But since that movement is already occupied by "crazies", we can't go there. The idea that those who are shouting about the tenth amendment might just have something worthwhile to think about is dismissed and thrown out of the room. Impossible, say those on the Left - we can't dirty ourselves by associating with those racists and white supremacists. We don't have to: we should read up on what those people are doing and trying to achieve and adopt those ideas as our own. We don't have to associate with them, just as we don't have to endorse Ron Paul. But we do have to come up with a plan, which the Left does not have, other than to mouth the empty phrase of a calling for a working class revolution.
It's a lot easier for liberals and pwogwessives to wail and gnash their teeth about Ron Paul than it is to come up with a plan for action.
Link didn't work
I tried to click on the Guide and the link didn't work. Here it is for those so inclined: http://prorev.com/postempire.htm
I'm so glad to see you posting again Montana; you always bring good suff to the table.
Thanks gb, I fixed link.
And thank you for the kind words. The muse is fickle. She comes, she goes. Poster Alcuin has guided me into interesting alleys lately as have many posters here. I thank you all.