In the fall of 1979 I was in Boston for a time and wanted to take in things a city like Boston had to offer a young college educated New Brunswicker. One of the noticeable things Boston seemed to offer, to me at least, was firsthand exposure to American left wing politics that had seeped onto many Canadian university campuses during the sixties and early seventies. After the Vietnam War, many who had engaged in radical politics were now seriously committing to working for political change through electoral politics.
During my first week in Boston, I attended a Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee meeting. The organization had been started by the famous American socialist author Michael Harrington who had written the immensely popular book The Other America, which is credited as having convinced the Kennedy’s that poverty and inequality in America was still a serious issue that needed to be addressed. The Committee was loosely affiliated with the margins of the Democratic Party and remains an important element in the history of American democratic socialism that also is said to be an important part of Democratic Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders political formation.
Sanders is a self-avowed socialist whose success so far as a presidential candidate is viewed as incredible by many. It is also indicative of a significant trend in American politics. So many Americans are tired and even sickened by the increasing social inequality and the policies that support and aggravate this inequality. For nearly a half century the US was leading the way in efforts to reduce inequality. During this period the US rate of tax on the highest income earners, those earning $1million per year, ranged from 70% to as high as 90%. In France and Germany, by comparison, the rate was 30% to 40%. With the rising influence of the US financial elites in the 1980s, the rate dropped to 28% and is now at about 40%. Sanders in stark contrast is committed to restoring a much more progressive tax regime, raising the minimum wage, and implementing free healthcare and higher education.
Back in that fall of 1979, the guest speaker at the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC) Boston meeting was a young Swedish sociologist, a Professor Anderson. His topic was an analysis of effective socialist strategies for social change in the face of the “mounting crisis of the capitalist welfare state”. Any workable strategy, he was to argue, had to be realistic and efficient in what it was asking people to spend their energy on.
Professor Anderson was a tanned blond good looking young man who seemed to have a certain presence about him that made him easily recognized as a leader, at least among students. A young woman wearing work pants acted as the meeting’s moderator. She spoke clearly and in a self-assured manner. She was to introduce Professor Anderson and before the meeting began she came up to him as he sat beside the isle near the front. She knelt beside him making strong gestures as she talked. As the meeting was about to begin, several people in the front rows spent an inordinate amount of time standing squinting into the lights as they stared back into the small crowd that had gathered in the large Harvard University auditorium. There were several opening speeches by young students at the meeting. Several of the speakers apologized for the meeting’s formality and the disproportionate size of the huge auditorium for the modest audience, explaining that it was the only one available for the evening’s event and that usually DSOC meetings were less formal.
Professor Anderson seemed nervous and was anxious to look one more time at his hand written yellow note papers which he quickly shuffled and reshuffled. As he began his talk he exhibited a controlled passion that grew more attractive as he became relaxed with his audience. During the question and answer period he displayed warmth and modesty that appealed to those gathered. Though his talk was no more than forty-five minutes, he demonstrated a command of his topic which gained him the respect of even the most searching questioner.
Capitalism’s weakness, he proposed, was in its inability to sustain democracy. It can permit pseudo participation but not participation with real power. It is precisely at this point of weakness that socialists should direct their energies. He saw, for example, the immense sums of capital tied up in pension funds as a source of real power for workers. These pension funds are worker owned capital, he argued, and efforts need to concentrate on realizing real legal control over these funds through collective worker management. This he believed could be a serious vehicle for negotiating basic economic improvements in the methods of production and distribution in America.
One person at the very back, on several occasions broke in on Professor Anderson’s address with inaudible comments. Though interrupting, he seemed soft spoken and even in basic accord with the purposes of DSOC meeting but for some unknown reason was oblivious to the proprieties of the forum. When he spoke he gave no consideration to who also was still speaking, whether or not it was his turn, or whether he would be even listened or responded to. He did this several times to the point where some people began muttering – “Who is this guy?” “Why don’t you shut up?” Eventually he was ignored and treated as part of the background noise of the large auditorium, like the faint hum of the air circulation fans.
When speaking of the structure of control over this worker owned capital, the young Swedish sociologist continued, it must be collective. It shouldn’t be individualistic because then control can fall prey to the divisive and diffusing influences of the capitalist system. Individual workers would end up taking their money out of the fund as personal desires and demands dictated. Such desires and demands, he speculated, would be under the influence of the existing capitalist and consumerist economic and cultural forces.
In this part of his argument there were definite assumptions at work that needed more careful examination, I thought to myself. First, there is the assumption that the struggle against capitalism must be a collective struggle that subordinates the tendencies and vagaries of private individual investment to the democratic control of the majority. Second, there is the assumption that individual workers and citizens will be prepared to commit themselves to a form of collective self-discipline.
My insistent question and challenge that I was unable to ask at the time and only could clearly formulate sometime afterwards, was whether the first assumption can become a feasible strategy for democratic change under majority rule with only a materialist vision of society sustaining it? This question needed asking, I thought, because this struggle being advocated is pitted against such a great practical and ideological adversary – capitalism, the material evils of which have been described by socialists with great ingenuity and passion for several centuries. However, any vision for the building of a new or alternative society, I was beginning to realize from personal experience, only could be sustained over such a long term struggle if it carries within its spiritual resources the promise of making us more human.
This promise, as the perceptive Jewish socialist and religious philosopher Martin Buber has maintained, simply could not be a materialist vision alone no matter how high its moral aspirations, but had to be connected in its essence to some deeper religious source and vision. If socialist collectivization can be characterized in practice as a genuinely human venture, then it must be a living vision. But if it brings with it dehumanization, as is attributed to capitalism, then it will not be supported or sustained by the people over the long term. Our mysterious humanness is disclosed to us in this ongoing creative interplay between our social life together and our lives as separate persons with individual aspirations. If one side takes pre-eminence over the other, eclipsing one side for the sake of the other, our efforts to become fully human are undermined and we remain at odds with ourselves both collectively and individually. So it seemed to me at the time as it still does today.
After the Boston meeting I perused the literature table for more answers and found myself standing next to “this annoying guy” who had quietly interrupted the proceedings from the back of the hall. He was a large dark complexioned fellow with thick black hair and a slightly greying black beard. He carried a large tan leather walking bag and was elaborating on some point he had made earlier about it being irrelevant “whether the Washington Post and New York Times were leftwing or rightwing papers. The point is that they are fair papers. So many people write for them, it is hard to tell where they stand. I happen to think they are good papers.” I asked him if he was a member of DSOC? “No,” he answered … and then added, “I worked with Students for a Democratic Society for a long time” as he slowly walked off down the isle towards the exit.
The chairman of the local DSOC closed the meeting by talking briefly of the J.P. Stevens strike and boycott well underway in the fall of 1979, and how the Textile Workers’ Union had been using their pension funds with some success to pressure the company, evidently showing how Professor Anderson’s ideas possibly could work.
