If this happens, what should the left think about it? By “the left”, I mean all of us who have a politics that is well to the left of the Democratic Party mainstream, even if we may pragmatically work for or with Democrats. Is it good or bad for our political project if the Republicans retreat into a hermetically sealed cocoon of right wing nuttery?

There’s a certain school of thought on the liberal left that sees this development as a bad thing. The general line of argument is that there will always be an opposition party, and the prospects for progressive policy are better if the opposition is made up of reasonable moderates rather than ideological extremists. And indeed, all things considered it would preferable not to have to do battle with a crypto-fascist mass movement made up of anti-intellectual religious fanatics, which seems to be the direction the GOP is going. And I will note in passing that one very real and scary consequence of this turn is going to be a revival of right-wing domestic terrorism, as we saw in the 1990’s.

But I nvertheless think that the pious liberal wish for a better and more responsible Republican Party is shortsighted. I take a broader view: the way American politics moves to the left is not by having the Republicans become more moderate, but by having the Republican party disintegrate entirely.

Let me elaborate. The desire for “good Republicans” rests on the premise that the existence of the current two-party setup is a permanent and unchangeable feature of American politics. And it’s true that given the way the American political system is set up, there’s a very strong bias toward having only two major parties. However, that doesn’t mean it has to be these two parties. Before the civil war, after all, the two parties were the Democrats and the Whigs. And what happened to the Whigs? Their party disintegrated after it became impossible to reconcile the ideological tensions between different factions. Out of that implosion came the modern Republican party. And the end of the Whigs also set the stage for the most momentous progressive advance in American history: the end of slavery.

Could the Republicans really go the way of the Whigs? For some speculation along those lines, see here. The idea that the Republican party could actually collapse is, admittedly, pretty far-fetched–but then, making socialist politics a plausible orientation is also pretty implausible, as we saw in the absurd waning days of the Presidential campaign.

My dream for the next few years of American politics goes something like this. First, the Republicans continue to Palinize themselves and commit to an increasingly absurd and unpopular right wing politics. This leads to further isolation and electoral losses, as Obama wins a second term and eventually commands a filibuster-proof supermajority in the Senate. Seeing that the GOP is doomed, the remaining moderates jump ship for the Democratic Party, leaving the Republicans as a shrunken rump, a Know-nothing party whose shrinking base is primarily among evangelical Christians and southern Whites.

This would produce a situation where the US was essentially a one-party democracy at the national level. Such an equilibrium is inherently unstable, however, and you would soon see major battles between the left, Bernie Sanders-Russ Feingold-Barbara Lee-etc. wing of the party and the pro-business “Blue Dog” right wing of the party. Which, in my dream, ultimately causes the Democratic party to split apart as well, leading to a new status quo in which the two parties are a social democratic “Progressive” party and a center right party of Blue Dogs and moderate conservatives. In this scenario, the far right that currently dominates the Republican Party would be relegated to something like the same status leftists have now: marginal to electoral politics, and forced to support a party that they find ideologically objectionable.

As I said, this is a far-fetched scenario. But I don’t think it’s impossible, and it seems to me that this is the only way to realize Michael Harrington’s old dream of left-wing “realignment” in the Democratic Party. So I would propose this as a vision of what we as leftists should be aiming for at the level of electoral politics, a vision of where we want to go in the medium- to long-term.

But I am not really a scholar of American Politics, so there are probably good reasons why this imagined future is totally impossible. I look forward to hearing those reasons in the comments.

As a night person on an academic schedule, I don’t mind the extra evening daylight. But starting daylight saving this early means that early risers, children going to school, and people with long commutes have to wake up in the dark in many places. So why the change? According to one of the Democratic legislators who sponsored it, the purpose was to save energy by allowing people to use artificial light less. But it turns out that daylight saving time actually increases energy consumption. The decreased use of light is more than counter-balanced by the increased use of home heating and cooling. See here for a study (in PDF) that demonstrates this, by studying parts of Indiana in the period before and after they started using DST.

It’s possible that the sponsors of the DST extension were just too ignorant to understand the consequences of the policy they were proposing. But look below the surface, and it turns out that more nefarious forces are at work. According to the article linked above, two of the key advocates of the change were the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association and the National Association of Convenience Stores. The former is easy enough to understand–people will buy more outdoor goods if they have more daylight time to use them. As for the latter, it turns out that people buy more from convenience stores when it stays light later. And extending DST past October 31st means kids can stay out longer on Halloween, which is why many people believe the extension was pushed by–no joke–the National Confectioners Association.

Now, there are obviously better things to get worked up about than the undue influence of Big Candy on our national legislation. This stuff all seems pretty trivial next to a President who just used the veto power to defend his constitutional prerogative to have people secretly tortured. But I raise it to make a larger point–the influence of Capital and private business over our lives in this country is tremendous, and it extends into all sorts of odd corners, like Daylight Saving Time, that don’t seem to have anything to do with the class struggle. In some ways, capitalist control is the most complete when it comes to these minor issues that no-one else is paying attention to. So the lesson is, never give a politician the benefit of the doubt when they give a high-minded rationale for some policy. You should always look both ways for lobbyists first.

Mainstream U.S. media have consistently portrayed Chavez as a “would-be dictator” and and “authoritarian”. Never mind that he has consistently won elections that outside observers called free and fair. The run-up to the referendum was no different: see here for a New York Times editorial about Chavez’s “plan to become president for life”. Never mind that if you look at the actual referendum, you see that what was being proposed was merely to eliminate term limits for the President. I guess this means that by the standards of the Times, France, which also does not term-limit its Presidents, is a scary emerging dictatorship.

When Chavez lost the referendum, he graciously congratulated his opposition and accepted defeat (which is better than you can say for some recent American elections I could name). This puts his detractors in an odd position: on the one hand they would like to celebrate the defeat as a repudiation of Chavez’s left-wing “Bolivarian revolution”. On the other hand, it’s hard to portray someone as a crazed authoritarian when they are willing to calmly accept electoral defeat. The events surrounding the referendum certainly make people like Times columnist Roger Cohen–who compared Chavez to fascist dictator Francisco Franco–look pretty silly.

I’m generally supportive of Chavez and his Bolivarian movement, although they are certainly not without their flaws. But I’m not enough of an expert to be able to say for sure what the defeat of the referendum means. My impression is that the referendum itself was a mix of some good ideas and some bad ones, and that it was probably a political mistake to mix so many proposals together in a single package. If Chavez and his allies take their defeat as an opportunity to reflect on their mistakes and correct their errors, then the defeat could turn out to be a positive development for them and for the Venezuelan people. In particular, maybe this will move the Bolivarians away from a reliance on Chavez and his personal charismatic leadership, which has always seemed like a weakness of the movement to me.

Anyway, people who are interested in all of this should read some sources who have a better idea what they’re talking about than I do. A few I’d suggest are:

• Venezuela Analysis, a website that provides news and analysis from a pro-Chavista perspective.
• Znet, which has a “country watch” on Venezuela.
• Tariq Ali, who is usually a trustworthy analyst, has an article up about the referendum.
• Robin Hahnel, the left-wing economist, has another take.

That’s just for starters. Anyone with additional sources, please leave them in the comments.

UPDATE: The Nation has a forum on Venezuela up on their site.  The pieces by Weisbrot and Grandin are especially recommended

I’ll explain the weird title of this post in a moment. First, however, let’s take a brief excursion through the history of socialist sub-categorization.

Even Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels felt they needed to brand their particular version of the socialist creed, with the term “scientific socialism”. They didn’t mean (usually) that socialism was a science like physics or biology. But they insisted that if you want to get rid of capitalism, you have to understand it through careful study and research. This was in contrast to the “utopian socialists” who were content to dream up visions of what socialism would be like, without asking how we would make the transition from capitalism to the utopian future, or who would bring about that transition. (You may have noticed that these kinds of people are still around.) Marx and Engels wrote a whole book attacking the utopians (whence comes the title of this little essay) and arguing for a scientific socialism.

In more recent years, it’s become popular to preface “socialist” with “democratic”. Here in YDS, we liked that one so much that we put it in the name of the organization. The point here, of course, is to emphasize that socialism must be a grassroots mass movement, built from the bottom up, and supported by a majority of the people. This is in contrast to the elitist, un-democratic socialisms that we learned about in school (or learned about firsthand, for those who grew up in Communist countries.)

That’s all well and good, as far as it goes. Democracy is certainly important, but it doesn’t capture all the things about authoritarian socialism that we want to avoid. There’s also the separate issue of civil liberties and individual rights.

All socialists agree that some things should be determined collectively, and that it’s OK to force people to obey these decisions as long as they are democratically decided. So, for example, it’s OK to make people pay taxes that go to providing education and health care for everybody. Just because you’re young and healthy, or don’t have kids, you don’t have the right to opt out. But at the same time, most socialists would agree that the government shouldn’t routinely listen in on your phone calls or tell you who you can marry, even if the government is socialist and the policies were voted on democratically. To capture that sentiment, some people (Noam Chomsky, for example) have started calling themselves “libertarian socialists”.

Again, this is OK as far as it goes, although the term can be a little bit confusing. For one thing, “libertarian” also refers to another, militantly pro-capitalist philosophy. For another, some people use “libertarian socialist” to mean the same thing as “anarchist”, while other libertarian socialists accept that the state can sometimes be useful to have around. Still, the sentiment behind calling oneself a libertarian socialist is an admirable one.

But there’s another distinction between socialists that I don’t think really has an accepted name. This one has to do with what we think of the individualism and hedonism that are so characteristic of our age.

I think most socialists are at least a bit disgusted with the excesses of the rich, but there are two different reasons to be disgusted. For some, it’s the fact that a life of individualism and materialism (in an everyday, not a philosophical sense) is only available to the rich, and that us regular folks will never have a chance of living like Paris Hilton or Dennis Koslowski. In other words, it’s the inequality that’s the issue, not the behavior itself. But other people think that there’s something inherently wrong with a life of self-centered consumption, and that we’d be better people (and a better society) if everyone stopped shopping, lived simply and acted for others rather than for themselves.

The renunciation of worldly pleasures in pursuit of some higher goal is generally referred to as “asceticism”, so I call the anti-hedonist tendency I’ve just described “ascetic socialism”. In contrast, I’ll use “epicurean socialism” to refer to a politics that thinks that the individual pursuit of sensual pleasure is one of the finest things there is; the problem with capitalism is that it restricts this pursuit to a privileged few, while imprisoning the working class in endless toil.

These days, the word “epicurean” refers to any philosophy that privileges the pursuit of pleasure. But the word originally comes from the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus, who advocated that people pursue life’s small pleasures, because “It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and honorably and justly, and it is impossible to live wisely and honorably and justly without living pleasantly.” The idea that we should voluntarily deprive ourselves of pleasant things (which many anti-consumerist activists seem to suggest) would have been anathema to him.

It turns out that there is already a link to Epicurus in the socialist tradition: he was the subject of Karl Marx’s little-known doctoral dissertation. Although Marx wrote about Epicurus’ philosophy of nature, he was evidently an epicure in other ways as well. As Francis Wheen recounts in his biography, Marx and Engels were not averse to a good night of drinking and carousing in the pubs of London.

But if there is a poster boy for epicurean socialism, surely it is Oscar Wilde. Although he is now remembered mostly as a gay icon and a flamboyant and witty socialite (follow that last link to get the idea), Wilde considered himself a socialist. He wrote an essay, “The Soul of Man Under Socialism”, which opens with the declaration that “the chief advantage that would result from the establishment of Socialism is, undoubtedly, the fact that Socialism would relieve us from that sordid necessity of living for others which, in the present condition of things, presses so hardly upon almost everybody.” Wilde goes on to argue that abolishing private property would bring about, not collectivism, but the truest kind of individualism!

This claim isn’t as wacky as it looks at first. We have all been taught that capitalism is all about personal freedom and individualism. But how free are most people, when they are compelled to work at some demeaning job in order to pay the rent, or pay off their student loans, or keep their health insurance? If we used our great social wealth to free people from need, and to reduce the length of the work-week, people could dedicate themselves to the things that truly fulfill them. For some people, that might be socially useful things like working in a community garden or writing free software programs. For others, it might be drinking margaritas and watching television. A good epicure would say that it doesn’t matter, however—the point is to give people as much time as possible to pursue any or all of those things if they so choose.

By now it’s probably clear that I fall firmly on the epicurean side of this debate, so I won’t try to give a fair defense of the ascetic position. I should emphasize, however, that no honest epicurean socialist would deny that in practice, unlimited consumption and hedonism are impossible. Somebody has to do the dirty work, whether it’s changing diapers or mining coal. And environmental concerns make it necessary to place limits on consumption. The epicurean position accepts all this, but insists that in principle, there is nothing wrong with enjoying material things. Therefore, socialists should work to increase people’s access to leisure time and pleasurable things.

And of course, individualism isn’t incompatible with collectivism. Anyone with even a somewhat optimistic view of human nature would acknowledge that many people would freely choose to do things for others rather than simply gratify themselves. We are, after all, social animals.

I’m not sure if there is anyone who would actually answer to the label “ascetic socialist”. Maybe it’s a straw person. But at the very least, it’s out there in the public’s perception of socialists. I’m reminded of an episode of “Seinfeld”, where Elaine knows her new boyfriend is a communist because of his “drab, olive-colored clothing”. So consider this a small attempt to correct the record, and to insist that—for this socialist, at least—socialism doesn’t have to be drab or deprived, because, as the saying goes, “nothing’s too good for the working class”.

UPDATE: Inspired by Adrian in the comments, here’s a great image to accompany the argument:

Love the image, although it looks like an ascetic socialist snuck in there with that “work for all” banner…

Klein notes that Americans get a lot less vacation time than Europeans. Indeed, this is one of the only countries in the world that doesn’t require employers to give their workers some vacation time. He could have pointed out that Americans work longer hours, too.

I’ve always thought that reducing the length of the working day was one of the most important things for socialists to advocate. Maybe it’s because I agree with Karl Marx’s son-in-law, Paul LaFargue, who advocated “the right to be lazy”. Of course, it was old Karl himself who said that socialism was about reducing the “realm of necessity” in which we must work to live, and expanding the “realm of freedom” dedicated to the development of our creative capacities. Freedom begins where necessity ends, and “the shortening of the working-day is its basic prerequisite”. I’ve always thought that what socialism was about was not fundamentally higher wages or better working conditions (although of course we fight for those things). For me, it’s about time. As the 19th century labor movement put it, “eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what we will.” I want to expand the “what we will”.

And it’s odd, historically, that the canonical work week has been stuck at 40 hours for so long. Once upon a time, the labor movement struggled to achieve the ten hour day, and then the eight hour day. The great economist John Maynard Keynes thought this pattern would continue: he predicted that technological change would free us from work.

Instead, we keep working longer for less. I tend to agree with left liberals like Ezra Klein that it would be good to use public policy to reduce working time. But this argument tends to bring up a predictable libertarian objection: if people are working so much, it must be because they prefer more money to more leisure. And who are we to obstruct their preferences? This is what a smart libertarian like Julian Sanchez basically says about the issue.

(A digression: engaging with libertarian arguments is something I recommend for leftists. Yes, the premises behind their beliefs are morally repugnant. And they are totally marginal to American public opinion. But unlike many conservatives, their positions are rational and logically coherent. And arguing with them will make you a sharper thinker. But more on that in a future post.)

So anyway, I think the libertarian argument is half right. The kind of policies I would like to see enacted would discriminate against workaholics. But the present state of affairs discriminates against people like me, who want to minimize the amount of time they have to spend working for wages. I, for one, am perfectly happy to make the normative claim that a society in which we work less and buy less would be preferable to one in which we work more and buy more.

Aside from the intrinsic value of leisure, there are a number of arguments one could make on behalf of this position. One is that more working hours doesn’t necessarily mean a more productive economy–”better fewer but better”, as Lenin said in a very different context. And in any case, maybe a less productive economy would be a good idea for ecological reasons. Finally, let’s not forget that non-work time doesn’t have to mean unproductive time. People already do lots of things in their spare time that are useful even if they aren’t “valuable” in an economic sense–everything from taking care of kids to writing music to coding software. Maybe people would do more of these things if they spent less time working. This is a possibility Jason hints at in one of his posts.

So how do we liberate our time? Well, universal health care would be a start, actually, since it would remove the need for people to be constantly employed (and employed full time) in order to have health care. And then on down the road, maybe we could try something a little more daring [PDF]…

This is why, long ago in 2000, a faction of progressives supported the candidacy of Ralph Nader for president. The Democratic Party, it was argued, took its left and liberal constituency for granted, because it knew they had no place else to go; the party, led by Bill Clinton and the Democratic Leadership Council, spent all its time looking for ways to move to the right and pick up moderate voters. The only way to pull the Democrats back to the left, it was argued, was to defect and support a third party candidacy.

The question of whether to support or oppose Nader provoked a passionate and sometimes vicious debate on the left. Those were difficult times for the left, for YDS, and for me personally, so I wouldn’t revisit them without cause. (The statement we issued in 2000 is still available on our website, for anyone who wants to see where we ultimately came out on the question. All I’ll say is that the statement can’t convey the difficulty of the political battles YDS fought over the question of Nader, in chapters and in the national leadership.) But I bring it up because I think we’re going to see some people revisiting this issue in the near future. And that’s because something similar to the Nader dynamic–but on a much larger scale–is happening to the Republican party.

Where the disaffected constituency in the Democratic Party is leftists, in the Republican Party it is religious conservatives. This may seem like an odd thing to say, as it seems like religious conservatives get plenty of love from the GOP. But it has long been argued–by Thomas Frank, for example–that the Republicans actually deliver a lot less than they promise when it comes to repressing gays, promoting state-sponsored religion, forcing women to have unwanted children, and so on. I’m not entirely sure I buy this. But the argument is that while the Republicans do, of course, support all kinds of policies along religious right lines, the party’s number one priority is, and always has been, redistributing money from working people to the ultra-rich. That, and bombing people.*

Which brings us to Rudy Giuliani, current leader in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. Rudy is, in some ways, the personification of the Republican id–the authoritarian, tax cutting, liberal-ass-kicking, Muslim-bombing Jack Bauer that a portion of the GOP base seems to want so badly. The trouble is, he is also on record as being pro-choice, and what’s more, it’s even possible that he doesn’t hate the gays.

In consequence of which, key leaders of the religious right are seriously threatening to support a third party candidate if Rudy is the nominee. James Dobson, president of Focus on the Family and a key religious right leader, wrote an editorial stating that he “cannot, and will not, vote for Rudy Giuliani in 2008″.** A short time later, Dobson met with other far-right leaders, and the group concluded that they would consider a third party effort if Giuliani was nominated. Most recently, Randall Terry, Operation Rescue founder and apologist for anti-abortion terrorism, said something truly shocking (for a far-right nut): “we must deny [Giuliani] the White House at all costs – even if it means Hillary becomes President.”

There’s been a lot of discussion about this in the liberal blogosphere. The basic point of debate is: would the right be nuts to do this, or does it make political sense? The right is arguing that they may have to break with Republicans, in order to avoid being taken for granted–the same argument the Naderites made in 2000. Could they be right?

Scott Lemieux thinks Dobson is bluffing. Matt Yglesias isn’t so sure. Yglesias argues that breaking with the party over Giuliani is the only way for the anti-abortion crowd to maintain their power in the party–by showing that they have the power to throw the election to the Democrats if they aren’t propitiated.

I think this is right–and I also came down against Nader’s candidacy in 2000. But there’s a difference here. The general argument for breaking with the Democrats wasn’t–and isn’t–a bad one. The problem was that the Nader forces didn’t represent any of the key progressive constituencies that would have to support a left-wing breakaway, such as people of color and union members. Dobson and company, on the other hand, really do represent a big chunk of evangelical voters. So if they do decide to make a break, I think they can make it work.

In any case, I really hope they are serious about this. Not just because it would guarantee a Democratic president in the event Rudy is nominated, although that would be nice. But more specifically because one way or another, it will keep Rudy Giuliani out of the White House, whether by sinking him in the primaries or in the general. That, to me, is more important than whether the Democrats win. This post is already too long, so I can’t go into all the reasons why I am so terrified of Rudy Giuliani. So let me just say this. Imagine a President who is totally ignorant, totally arrogant, in love with war, and happy to shred the constitution and violate the rights of Americans in the name of “national security.”

OK, never mind. You don’t have to imagine it. So imagine, if you can, a President with all of George W. Bush’s bad qualities, but worse than Bush. That’s Rudy. For further reading on the idiocy and insanity of Rudy Giuliani, I suggest you start here. And be afraid. Very afraid.

So…Godspeed, Dr. Dobson!

* Just so we’re clear–I completely accept that having Republicans in office is really bad for the interests of women, gays, and other oppressed minorities, and that it’s important to keep them out of office for that reason. The point is that it isn’t *as* bad for them as the right-wing wackos would prefer.

**Apropos of nothing: take a look at this picture of Dobson. Doesn’t he look an awful lot like Larry Craig?

The one they turned up was David Vitter (R-LA). As so often seems to be the case with these kinds of scandals, Vitter is a social conservative who was an enthusiastic proponent of impeaching Bill Clinton over a blow job. And now he says he has “sinned” but refuses to resign over the scandal.

In cases like this, it’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture in the interest of scoring cheap political points. The temptation for Democratic partisans is to accuse Vitter of hypocrisy, call him a criminal, and demand his resignation. Unfortunately, this impulse reveals that many on the left have no coherent politics around sex work.

We’ve been down this road recently with the Ted Haggard and Jeff Gannon scandals. In the former case, a prominent evangelical leader was caught patronizing a male escort. In the latter case, a conservative operative was revealed to have worked as an escort. Both of these situations were opportunities to argue that 1) sex work is something that is much more pervasive than we acknowledge and 2) it would be good for sex workers and good for our society if we stopped stigmatizing sex work so much (which would mean, first off, that prostitution shouldn’t be illegal).

Instead, all too many people were eager to use the stigma against sex work to bash Republicans. See for example, this thread at DailyKos, where the author calls for Vitter’s prosecution and ridicules the idea that a madam could be a “character witness”. This kind of stuff is unprincipled, and in the long run it’s not good for the left. What we can and should say is that while David Vitter did nothing wrong (aside from mislead his wife), it’s hypocritical for Republicans to defend him while still upholding the same anti-sex positions. If Vitter’s behavior is truly, as he says, “a private matter”, then it stands to reason that the same should be true of prostitution in general, and so we should stop persecuting sex workers.

Most of the people reading this probably know someone who either is a sex worker, or patronizes sex workers. And many of you probably don’t know it. The fact that sex work is kept secret and not talked about makes it easier for people to openly stigmatize sex workers. And that, in turn, keeps sex work in the dark. It would be better for everyone if this stuff was legal and out in the open.

My belief is that sex workers–from strippers to porn stars to escorts–are first and foremost workers, and that socialists should stand in solidarity with them. The fact that some sex work is currently illegal shouldn’t stand in the way of our solidarity, any more than the fact that some immigrants are working illegally keeps us from supporting them. While we should obviously support the elimination of involuntary trafficking of people for sex work, that shouldn’t used as a pretext for targeting people who do sex work of their own free will.

This is far from an uncontroversial position. There many leftists and feminists who believe that sex work is inherently degrading to women, and that it should therefore be illegal under all circumstances. There are probably folks in YDS who take this position, and maybe one of them will write a rebuttal to me. But for more on the pro-sex worker position, I encourage folks to check out the excellent $pread Magazine.

It’s unlikely that the amendment will pass, and even if it does Bush will veto it. But this fight is still important: for the first time, the Democrats are putting Republicans on the spot about their intransigent support of Bush and the war. The majority of Americans want to end the war, so escalating the political confrontations over the war in congress are to the anti-war movement’s benefit.

United for Peace and Justice is asking people to call their Senators to demand withdrawal. You can see their call here.

The UFPJ call makes an important point: passing Levin-Reed would be nice, but it doesn’t go nearly far enough. It’s not a total withdrawal, which is the only thing that makes any sense at this point. As long U.S. soldiers are in Iraq, they are just exacerbating a civil war, whipping up anti-American rage, and provoking terrorism. The best thing for Americans and Iraqis is to bring all the troops home, now. And not just the troops, but also the military contractors, who now make up half the total U.S. presence in Iraq.
For a summary of the case for immediate withdrawal from Iraq, check out the website for the excellent anti-war organizers at War Times.

And if you want catch Filibuster Fever, the excitement is all live on c-span.

Now, I don’t care how much John Edwards or Mitt Romney paid for their haircuts. In my socialist utopia, we would all get $400 haircuts. As Big Bill Haywood supposedly said, “nothing’s too good for the working class”. But this is a good opportunity for some serious political reflection: which socialists had the best and worst hair? (more…)

But it’s not enough to just upset people. This is a common mistake made by leftists—middle class white ones especially. They think that people will rise up if they find out how much they are being screwed. But it turns out that many people are perfectly aware that they are being screwed; they just don’t think there’s anything they can do about it. So after you get people riled up, it’s vitally important that you show them how things could be different.
And that’s where SiCKO really shines. Health care was really a brilliant choice of subject. Not just because, as many reviewers have pointed out, insurance companies make an excellent villain. The genius of it is that when it comes to our awful health care system, things not only can be better, they are better in every other rich country in the world. The strongest part of the movie was the parts talking about the Canadian, British, and French systems, which guarantee free health care to everyone. It really is that simple—just rip off the French!

Maybe that’s why Moore’s message is finding such a receptive audience. Even Oprah waxed social democratic after seeing it. Boing Boing (via TPM Café) reports that even in Texas, the movie can inspire spontaneous organizing. Meanwhile, the movie has apparently scared the crap out of the health insurance industry. And on right-wing TV, they’re reduced to arguing that universal healthcare causes terrorism. Unfortunately, SiCKO has not yet inspired any of the leading Democratic candidates to come out in favor of true single-payer universal coverage instead of some partial compromise position (Dennis Kucinich does support single payer Medicare-for-all, however).

It’s also worth noting that this movie is about a lot more than health care. Some of the more perceptive critics have noticed that Moore is just using health care as an entry point to a much broader social democratic vision. He wants to promote a vision of the country in which people look out for each other—and the government looks out for them—rather than our current ethos of ultra-individualism. That’s why Matt Yglesias—who is no socialist—suggests that the reaction to the movie is a sign of the “anti-capitalist folk instincts” of many Americans. “The crux of the matter”, he argues, “is that ordinary people think that if there’s a sick person, and you’re in a position to help the sick person, that you ought to help the sick person. This is what us socialists might call the principle of solidarity.

Is this right? Do Americans have “anti-capitalist folk instincts”? And if so, how do we tap into them and direct them toward political action?