The Resurgent Right?

 

Since the Crash of 2008 we have witnessed the resurgence of free-market libertarianism on the American Right. The bailouts of the banks may have kept the cogs turning in the capitalist system, but it was a violation of everything held most often by free-market libertarians. It didn’t take long and the Tea Party movement emerged as the basis for a renewed Republican opposition to the Obama administration. Backed by Fox News and associated nut-hatch Republicans the Tea Parties flourished at city halls where they fought for health-care to remain privately run for profit and not on the basis of need. It seemed peculiar for liberals and radicals that the conservatives had managed to mobilise protests across the crisis-riddled body of America. Even for conservative Republicans it was an odd sight, right-wingers taking to the streets like anti-war protestors. The parallels reached an apogee of high farce with Glenn Beck leading demonstrators to Washington in an obscene satire on the March for Jobs and Freedom. In a way these farcical scenes are nothing new.

 

It may be a surprise for some, but there is a long history of this on the American Right. It was Christian rightist Paul Weyrich who infiltrated the activist circles of the New Left in the 1970s. He would set out to use these same methods to mobilise the conservative evangelical community as an electoral bloc for the Republican Party. The right-wing televangelists were easily organised once it looked like the churches might lose their tax-exempt status. The spiritual leader of a hippie commune Francis Shaeffer snapped at the landmark decision of Roe v Wade on abortion. He had been a figure of the 1960s cultural revolution and yet Shaeffer flipped and became a major fundamentalist leader on the issue of abortion. He would lobby the Ford administration and even advocate terrorism as a necessary method in the battle to defend the sacred foetus and its right to life. By the time Shaeffer died the Moral Majority had taken over with much more reactionary agenda of rolling back advances in women’s rights and gay rights (causes that he had actually supported).

 

Developments on the Right are not to be separated from the circumstances of the time. The revival of a Protestant Right came in the 1980s in reaction to the dramatic cultural changes of the 1960s when a greater sphere of freedom was attained for African-Americans, as well as homosexuals and women. Feminism had emerged from the failure of the Commune movement in its descent into patriarchal forms of domination. The increased accessibility to contraceptives and abortion had liberated individuals from the old sexual morays of the past. There was a burgeoning opening for civil liberties and rights, as well as some economic opportunities, for African-Americans. The Right did not need so much an economic reaction as a cultural reaction to try and slow these developments. And so the Christian Right swooped in to elect Ronald Reagan in a coalition with the anti-Communists, the neoconservatives and the libertarians.

 

We find the same when we look into the history of the anti-Communist Right. The cause of anti-Communism had belonged to the liberal wing of the Democratic Party in the 1940s originally before it was absorbed by the Republican Party with the demagoguery of Joe McCarthy and the ‘Red Scare’ of the 50s. The best way to support a rightward shift in the Democrats was to co-opt the means by which the Truman administration had sought to justify the military-industrial complex.  The Republicans had found a way to outmuscle the Democrats. This was later made further evident by the Democratic administrations which launched the war in Vietnam. The Republican administration of Nixon intensified the war to win not just one term but two terms in office. So anti-Communism became a solid pillar of American conservatism until 1989 when the Berlin Wall, unexpectedly, collapsed when faced with the might of the German people.

 

After that the anti-Communist Right largely lost its purpose as its mission seemed to have been fulfilled, and not by American hegemony but by forces endogenous to the Soviet system. Significantly, old Cold War conservatives such as Pat Buchanan have moved to a non-interventionist position on foreign policy since the Berlin Wall fell. The CIA agent Chalmers Johnson and army man Lawrence Wilkerson have made similar ideological shifts. It is consistent because if one believes that the American hegemon was necessary to safeguard the free world from the tentacles of the Soviet conspiracy for world domination then once the threat is gone the US should retreat and become a normal country. This has opened up a space for other rival tendencies on the American Right: such as the neoconservatives who updated the rational for American military aggression. Yet it also created greater space for scepticism of the military establishment from such sectors as the free-market libertarian Right.

 

By the end of the first decade of the 21^st Century the prevailing forces of reaction would have largely discredited themselves and opened up a space for the Tea Party movement. The Bush administration was a lot like the Reagan administration in that it was an alliance of the Christian Right with the neoconservatives. Bush had posed as a ‘compassionate conservative’ pledging a prudent foreign policy of staying out of other peoples’ business. Before the election of 2000 was successfully stolen Bush had found an ally in Dick Cheney, a hawk of unbelievable proportions. Once in office the Bushites jumped at the opportunity to crackdown on civil liberties and engage in multiple wars. The Protestant and Catholic Right were mobilised to support the Bush administration in its support for abstinence promotion in Africa, its opposition to abortion, gay marriage, as well as euthanasia and stem-cell research. The neoconservatives moved in to provide the rationalisation for the bloodbath in Iraq. By the election of 2008 both the Christian Right and the neoconservatives were left largely discredited just by association with the crimes of Bush.

 

With the incoming Obama administration the Republicans had to open up a new front as Obama was following a more hawkish position in foreign affairs than Bush. The prospect of economic reform had to be fought because the country was in a deep recession and the Left might win greater ground in such desperate times. What is called ‘Obama-care’ really comes out of the conservative searches for an alternative to serious health-care reform in the 1990s. It was supported by Newt Gingrich. The individual mandate was a means to safeguarding the state of affairs which denies the American citizen a fundamental right to adequate health-care. Reform is somewhat inevitable given the role that the health system has played in bankrupting American industry. But at the other end the pharmaceutical and health insurance industry will be pushing hard to make sure their interests are covered. As if this situation weren’t bad enough the Koch brothers moved in to finance a surge in libertarian protest. Faced with this the Obama administration had no reason to establish a national health service. Once again, serious and much needed reform was offset and America would remain the only advanced capitalist society – other than South Africa – without universal health-care.

So the space had been opened up for a resurgence of interest in Ron Paul, the Austrian economists and even the fiction of Ayn Rand. The paranoid rambling clown Glenn Beck rose to stardom. Significantly Mitt Romney picked Paul Ryan, a member of the Ayn Rand cult, as his running mate. It was a necessary front opened up by the bailouts of banks under Bush and Obama. The agenda of shrinking the state had newfound support given the new mission was austerity to destroy what little of the New Deal had survived the decades of erosion by Republican and Democratic administrations. It should also be noted that the space has been opened up to paleoconservatives who have positioned themselves against the military adventurism of the neoconservatives. Yet it has been the libertarians who have been able to muster a position in mainstream American politics. The Tea Party movement succeeded in providing the basis for a Republican victory in the midterm elections of 2010 and Ron Paul made it into the debate at the 2012 election. Even still this is more so a symptom of chaos on the American Right – to be compared with Barry Goldwater’s winning the Republican ticket in 1964 – than an emergent platform to see take office in 2016 or even 2020.

 

This article was originally written and posted at the Third Estate on September 12th 2013.

No Values Left.

 

 It is often assumed that the conservative Right has the monopoly over social values, culture, tradition and the family. Like the liberal pretension to a monopoly on free-speech, democracy, human rights and civil liberties, it should not go unchallenged. This will come as a shock to Americans, the politics of whom may be described as an oscillation between liberal and conservative positions. On the battlefield of the culture wars it may seem curious to postulate that the Left can challenge the Right on its own turf. For it was none other than Leon Trotsky who put forward the claim that we leftists have always lived in tradition. It's just a difference of which traditions the Left values (such as the right to vote, honouring the struggles of the past) over right-wing fetishes for fox-hunting and the Queen. Broadly, the radical Left aim to challenge the economic forces which dominate and shape life in all sorts of ways. Conservatives aim to preserve tradition and culture in the midst of the very same economic forces, which they themselves defend.

 

 The culture wars are merely the externalisation of the conflict internal to conservatism: social control versus economic freedom. It's worth noting that the socialist movement, itself a tradition, was born out of Christianity as well as a conservative disposition towards the horrifying consequences of industrialisation. The Left was defined early on by its conflict with liberalism, in a way which conservatives have yet to really get over - mainly because it's fundamental to their constitution. Take note of Rousseau's scorn for the market society favoured by such classical liberals as John Locke. The leading fetish of liberals is for the market, whether it is embodied in the arenas of culture, ideas or economics. The nihilist writer Michel Houellebecq writes about the dating scene as a sexual marketplace where all sorts of pleasures and relations are readily available. It then follows that the primary exit from the precarity of the market is monogamy and marriage. Those who scorn marriage as a social construct forget that everyone except for John Zorn buys into social constructs.

 

 The founding fathers of Marxism contributed plentifully to left-wing criticism of the family as a social unit with its own structural tendencies towards oppression. Though it could be said that Karl Marx in his critique of capitalism really left feminism for Engels to engage. In his mammoth magnum opus Marx notes that the family as a social unit has the capacity to hold property in common. Though the wise dialectician notes this in the same breathe that he notes this characteristic can also be found in the primitive epoch of feudalism. It's worth noting that the dialectical current that runs through the Left from Hegel. In this sense socialism should be a more radical advance on the advancements of bourgeois society, its legacy of human rights and civil liberties. Capitalism is an obvious advance on feudalism and slavery, while socialism takes the best of capitalism - its material surplus and social freedom - as its origin. This is worth keeping in mind with the points we'll explore next.

 

 The late Christopher Hitchens articulated his own brand of left-wing humanist arguments for limiting the right to an abortion. It boils down to a pragmatic balance of conflicting values, life and choice. If we first accept that there is such a concept as an 'unborn child' then we can debate at which point a cluster of cells becomes a person. It then follows that that person has rights, specifically to its own bodily integrity. This is the point of the whole debate over how long the window should remain open for an abortion to remain optional. There used to be much more of a division on this question on the Left and among feminists than there is today. It's not so much anti-feminist as non-feminist. The Right definitely has no monopoly over this position, often cultural reactionaries undermine themselves in their opposition to contraception. The left-wing proponents of limited abortion rights are often much more consistent and thorough-going when it comes to women's liberation. By contrast, self-proclaimed 'pro-lifers' are seldom concerned with women's oppression.

 

 As for same-sex marriage it really comes down to the question of equality. If we're talking about an equality of 'sameness' then it follows that the homosexual couple should enjoy all the social possibilities as the heterosexual couple. The best argument against same-sex marriage, and by 'best' I mean non-homophobic, is that the 'difference' of homosexuality is worth preserving. It's a case that Philip Blond has caved out. Furthermore, the 'difference' of homosexuality can be defined insofar that the sexual identity of the individual opens up an array of cultural options for them. The gay community hardly has to worry about the less beautious side of marriage, its deathknell of joy and its fragility. Until recently the average gay man has always been free from divorce, child-rearing, shared bank accounts and alimony payments. There are obvious advantages for those who aren't partial to marriage (which doesn't equate to commitment) and adoption.

 

 It's certainly true that the reform of marriage laws to extend religious ceremonies to gay couples is conservative in that it will preserve the institution of marriage - itself something that the Left has criticised plenty. Notice this isn't an argument against homosexuality in terms of moral conduct and human rights. It doesn't even take a side on the rather absurd claims made against homosexuality on 'moral' and 'natural' grounds. Part of this comes out of the same attitude that can be found in the morose works of conservative John Gray when he writes "[Christian] Morality has hardly made us better people; but it has certainly enriched our vices." In this frame of mind the greatest aphrodisiac is moralism, in any case conservatives are the real perverts. You have only to listen to the rants of Rick Santorum to notice that he has been thinking about homosexual relations just a bit too much. Only a real deviant could see the male anus as a gateway to bestiality.

 

 I may not endorse these positions myself, but it can't be said that the Right has the monopoly over these arguments. It's always worth keeping in mind there are a great many overlaps between the Old Left and the conservative Right when it comes to cultural questions. That was well demonstrated in the debate last year between Terry Eagleton and Roger Scruton.

Womb Wars.

Since the beginning of 2012 we have heard the usual blather about welfare 'reform' (a most dodgy word in political language) with the defenders of family values reserving a particularly cold place for single-mums. The Conservative Party have pushed for a cap housing benefit at £26,000 on commonsense grounds of "fairness". Of course, this isn't nearly enough for the gutter-press which would like to see the whole benefits system scrapped followed by the swift return of workhouses. It would hit large families hardest even if they have managed to find cheap housing outside of London. There are now pushes in Newham to boot the poor out of London altogether. Clearly the London City-State is just for the ultra-rich to swan around in limousines. The next kick was to single-mothers in a bid to make them pay for trying to get child support from their former partners.

Even though it makes far more sense to cap private rents in London, at least in the short-term, as everyone knows that the rent is too damn high! Of course it isn't enough to cap rents, there needs to be serious public investment in affordable housing. And yet the Conservatives have no time for this discussion. It's just assumed that the problem is that they haven't gone far enough. But there's plenty of ink and phlegm to be wasted on calls for an end to dependency culture. There's even been time to entertain nonsense about morality legislation. We've seen Nadine Dorries, that arch-custodian of the sacred foetus, go after sex education in the wake of failure on her campaign to sledgehammer the right to choose. This is the politics of reaction at work again, it has nothing to do with any moral values. Whenever politicians talk of 'family' you should expect an attack on women to follow.

This is where class and sex converge, where feminism and leftism are conjoined at the hip. Everyone knows the word "proletariat", but not every rascal with a Marxian phrase book know that the term is derivative of the Latin for "offspring". Terry Eagleton reminds us that it referred to those who were too poor to serve the state with anything other than their wombs. Too deprived to contribute to economic life in any other way, these women produced labour power in the form of children. Society demanded reproduction, not production from these women. The proletariat was originally outside the workplace, not within it, just like the single-mother living on benefits. But the work these women endured was a lot more painful than breaking boulders. The average worker is a woman in the world today, as it was in the days of Marx and Engels when Britain was the workshop of the world.

As the workers' movement suffers in this time of regression, so do women. We can see this in America. The Georgia House has passed a 'foetal pain' bill that stipulates women must continue to carry to term a stillborn baby as pigs and cows do. The lot who think its proper that a women should die in back-alley abortion clinics to save a foetus have seen victories recently with 'Let woman die' bills. There are businesses spying on potential employees and judge them in accordance with their use of birth-control. This is the nation partly founded by Aaron Burr who hung a portrait of Mary Wollstonecraft in his office and insisted that his daughter be educated at the same standard as a man. And we expect this of women for no reward. It's not like we recognise motherhood as work, so many of us don't think the raising of children has any worth at all that we support cuts to child benefit. It's just something women do for free, like a lot of wonderful things.

We've seen people like Rick Santorum pop up, an Opus Dei Republican who believes that life begins at erection. The sort of lunatic who is opposed to abortion in cases of rape. This comes from a man with no kind of social conscience at all. He wants to legislate what consenting adults do in the bedroom. The state can intrude into that area, but not emancipate individuals from wage labour. Santorum's rotten mind fixated on the rigidity of hierarchy and the strength of authority. It is no coincidence that Santorum's politics consist of a return to theoconservative values with the state as a nanny for the rich, a bludgeon of the poor and of the foreign. It isn't coincidental, the opposition to the vital freedom, for women, over their rate of reproduction fits neatly into this platform of sadism. It's about making sin fun again for a privileged few in a way.

As noted by Peter Singer if abortion was illegal then it would be poor women who die from botched abortions in droves whereas well-off women can travel to another country in search of the treatment. Think of the number of people who travel to Switzerland in order to commit suicide. Clearly, the value of life only applies to some in the world of Nadine Dorries. The sacred foetus trumps mummy almost every time I'm afraid to say. Of course, when mummy can fly out to another country and hire a doctor to perform the procedure without a coat-hanger then a blind eye will be turned. Furthermore, as women gain greater control over their lives economically then they're less likely to get pregnant. In a society where there are greater opportunities, better education and better pay for women there will be less children born but there will be less abortions too. Primates like Mr Santorum are unable to see this, men like this have no right to claim to be "pro-life".