Où est "l'intelligentsia de gauche" d'antan? Qu'est-ce que cela veut dire être pasteur noir célèbre, et en même temps, porte-parole publique d'une "gauche américaine" qui se veut toujours socialiste et démocrate? Aujourd'hui être "intello de gauche" et croyant chrétien, ne serait-ce pas une combinaison trop contradictoire (pour ne pas dire dépassée) pour se maintenir?

1. Cornel West: A Christian Socialist in America's Culture Wars

What then, are we to make of Cornel West.. the "public intellectual" who juxtaposes radical cultural criticism with social democratic politics, and ties both to a new version of the "social gospel" of the Protestant Progressives? And how can it be that West, a national media "celebrity," continues to espouse an "American socialism," even as Newt Gingrich and the Republicans in Congress are busily "disinventing" the national government; demolishing the Welfare State, and reversing many of the gains of "affirmative action"? Should we say that Cornel West is just too "soft-minded" to adapt to the hard-edged zeitgeist of "no more compassion" which characterizes Post-Affirmative Action America? Or rather is he just too stubborn? Or is it simply, as Leon Weiseltier of The New Republic would have it, that West is "a Socialist Divine, come to lift the spirits of progressives¹" in their hour of darkness?

One can easily picture what Weiseltier has in mind: the image of a lanky Cornel West striding forward - heads and shoulders above the crowd - at yet another Socialist Scholars Conference, come to rally its tired band of leftist graduate students and middle aged college teachers. Year in year out, Cornel fires them up with his own special brand of political oratory which is driven by the rolling cadences of the Black pulpit - a rhetorical wave that lifts and soars, allowing his dispirited audience a glimpse of an American Commonwealth reborn, and a Socialist movement restored to youth and innocence. West, the public figure - as opposed, perhaps, to West, the essayist - is best understood as one of the most powerful orators on the Left, a "man of words," who lives in the spoken tradition of the Black Church, even as he thinks in the intellectual tradition of the great American Pragmatists - Waldo Emerson, Thomas Dewey and Richard Rorty.

These two traditions lie very much at the heart of his public message as well as of his rhetorical style. West proposes a "politics of conversion" for Black America and the broader society beyond, which accepts the moral insights of the Conservative critics of a "culture of poverty," but which identifies the ultimate sources of our public squalor and moral nihilism as located within the commercial dynamism of American Capitalism, and its market driven systems of culture and politics². This may make him, as Weiseltier says, a "homiletical figure" - a teller of moral fables - but it hardly follows that "from such notions, the nasty world has nothing to fear³."

It is no surprise that the evangelical overtones of West's "prophetic politics" put critics like Weiseltier ill at ease, or that the echoes of the pulpit sometimes alienate his New York audiences. The culture of the American academy is profoundly "secular," shaped by the conventions of a rationalist "culture of disbelief" far removed from the religious values which characterize the diverse "faith communities" where most Americans live out their lives⁴. When we recall that nearly one half of all Americans attend Church services on Sunday (or at least claim to), and that more Americans profess to believe in the power of Angels (72%) and the malevolent work of Satan (65%) than in Darwin's theory of Evolution(11%)⁵, it becomes evident that "premodern," traditionalist beliefs have found safe havens in many corners of contemporary America. The secular rationalism of American intellectual elites remains a "minority" culture which is increasingly contested in the schoolrooms and on the airwaves by fundamentalist activists engaged in a kulturkampf against the authority of "modernity." This cultural battle might well be lost, were it not for the fact that its principal battlefield lies within America's churches themselves. The main battleline falls between the conservative traditionalists waging a cultural crusade for the "soul" of their traditions, and the "progressive" reformers striving to force orthodox moral teachings on the family, women and sexuality into conformity with the prevailing notions of "political correctness" promoted by "liberal" opinion-makers⁶. The "social gospel" preached by Cornel West is located firmly within the "progressive camp" at one end of the cultural spectrum within "organized religion." Equally to the point, this cultural tension between an agnostic academy and religious authority exists as much within the American Left as outside it⁷. While most leaders of the Democratic Left share the profile of the secular minority who populate America's cultural and media elites⁸, the rank and file members of left wing social movements in the United States are most often "believers." Indeed the typical social activist is a middle aged woman who belongs to church congregation⁹. Viewed from the outside, the American Left often appears sectarian and self-righteous because its draws its spiritual force more from the Chapel than the workplace or lecture hall. To critics the tendency of grassroots activists to moralize about public issues from pornography or gay rights to Bosnia seems intolerable. Especially now, given the new political conjuncture where the American party system is increasingly polarized between competing "value coalitions" defined by "orthodox" and "progressive" visions of the country's core principles - both of them religiously inspired and equally absolutist in tone¹⁰. But the link between religious radicalism and protest movements of the Left or Right is not new - the correlation between religious revivalism and political crisis is as old as the country itself¹¹.

2. Cornel West: "A Man of the Left"?

Despite its brief electoral success before and during World War One, American Socialism has survived for most of this century more as a loose movement than an organized party. It has been represented by leaders who have often addressed the larger society as moral authorities and criticized the abuses of Corporate power from a standpoint which was as much ethical as strategic. Eugene Debs; Norman Thomas, and Michael Harrington were all honored in their lifetimes as "public voices" - American "social critics" - who were celebrated because they raised concerns for the poor, the disadvantaged, and the excluded that went beyond the narrow limits of "interest-group liberalism." Of course, their visibility as spokesmen for "protest movements" was conditioned by the marginality of both the men and their political message¹². But at the same time, one can suggest that it was this critical distance from the centers of institutionalized power which allowed their appeals for "social justice" to resonate in an American imagination which is rooted as much in a protestantized version of the "Judeo-Christian ethic¹³" as in the "spirit" of transnational Capitalism.

West is a Christian "marxist" who stands within this peculiar tradition of American Socialism. As Baptist Pastor he is active with the Black Churches, and as a "public intellectual" he represents an important "asset" for the Black political and organizational elites, but we should remember that West's rise to national prominence was in large part due to his close relations with the editors of Irving Howe's journal, Dissent, who themselves are social democratic in politics and predominantly Jewish in ethnic makeup. His heavy involvement with other institutions of the "White" Left, such as the Socialist Scholars Conference, and the Democratic Socialists of America, (DSA - the unified socialist association founded by the late Michael Harrington), were also instrumental in gaining him a national audience among America's liberal elites. And now West's new found celebrity as national media "star," permits him in turn to promote the programmatic ideas and social analysis of his intellectual comrades and political allies on the Democratic Left. West's commitments, then, are practical as well as intellectual. As one of DSA's five Chairs, West crisscrosses the country bringing his particular reading of the linkages between racial caste status and social class position in American society to a national audience. More importantly, West is the principal spokesperson and sponsor for DSA's community action program, "The Breaking Bread Project," which seeks to open a dialogue between grassroots associations, local churches and Jewish synagogues, and by reaching across the barriers between the different racial and ethnic "communities" which confront each other daily in our major cities, to engage them in common political action projects. Cornel West is something more than a "Black intellectual" who only addresses the issues of his "own community." He is a spokesman for a transracial coalition which is fighting a difficult battle for survival in the face of the rise of the Republican Right and of the multi-cultural "identity movements" on the left which threaten to fracture American society along the lines of its conflicting "tribal" loyalties and traditional dogmas.

In this sense West is attempting to assume the role of national "ideological spokesman" for the Democratic Left that formerly was filled by Michael Harrington and which has remained vacant since Harrington's death in 1989. But given the recent conservative triumphs at the polls and in Congress, we might well ask not only whether West is equal to the task, but more to the point, what possible relevance picking up Harrington's mantle could have at a time when much of his political legacy lies in tatters? In raising Socialism's fallen standard is West being anything other than hopelessly anarchronistic? The answer depends, of course, on the importance one gives to the place held by Michael Harrington in late 20th century American politics.

3. Michael Harrington and the "Realignment Strategy."

Abroad Michael Harrington was recognized within the leadership of the Socialist International as one of the leading theoreticians of Democratic Socialism of his day¹⁴. At home, however, Harrington was better known as a prolific writer and social analyst, whose description of the "country of the poor" in The Other America, helped launch the "War on Poverty" in the 1960's, and provided the rationale for the dramatic expansion of the American Welfare State which occurred under Lyndon Johnson¹⁵. Harrington's moment of "celebrity" coincided with the heyday of the Civil Rights Coalition of the early Sixties. The Southern Black movement was focal point of an inter-regional alliance bringing together the Black Baptists of Martin Luther King's SCLC (The Southern Christian Leadership Council), with the "liberal" clergy of the northern National Council of Christian and Jews; the "progressive" industrial unions (such as Walter Ruther's UAW) and the pro-labor "Hubert Humphery" wing of Democratic Party. Of all the northern "white" players, the industrial unions played a key role by bringing money and organizational muscle to the coalition - in the hope that "Negro Civil Rights" would be the "wedge issue" that would break open the "Solid South," and allow them finally to organize "runaway" non-union industries¹⁶. Along with well known Black Socialists such as A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin, Harrington played a critical "liason" function between the Black Churches, the Unions and the liberal intelligentsia belonging to the coalition. But the hour of the "Great Society" reforms which opened with the passage the Voting Rights Bill in 1965, soon closed as the rising toll of the Vietnam War divided the liberal reform coalition against itself and undermined popular support for the Johnson Administration¹⁷. By 1967 the second reform era after the New Deal was definitely over, and the national influence of its leading personalities in eclipse. What followed was a three way split within the "White" Democratic Left: On one side, there were the anti-communist, "Cold War" social democrats from the AFL-CIO leadership and the New York intelligentsia, who rallied to the Johnson Administration and the war effort in Vietnam - many of them ending up in the neo-conservative camp and later in the Nixon and Reagan Administrations¹⁸. On the other, there were the anti-war activists who followed "the New Left" out of the Democratic Party, and promptly succumbed to the romance of the Cuban Revolution, the Viet-Cong and the Maoist "Red Guards." This "revolutionary youth" movement soon imploded in the wake of a brief fling with political terrorism at the end of the Sixties, but left a poisonous legacy for the post-war generation in its rejection of party politics; its infatuation with cultural radicalism, and finally its "libertarian" critique of the liberal "welfare" state. Elements of this quasi-anarchist "mix" of generalized "anti-authoritarianism" and radical individualism¹⁹ have been endlessly recycled by the commerical "rock and youth cultures" ever since, making its own perverse contribution to the legitimacy crisis of American state institutions²⁰. Lastly there were Harrington and other Socialists who had joined the Vietnam opposition after 1968, who were left within the Democratic Party as an isolated progressive "rump" - now faced with the daunting task of reconstructing the national reform coalition²¹. In the early seventies, as the American Socialists recovered from their bitter divisions over the Vietnam War, a new organization, the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, (DSOC), was formed under Harrington's leadership to implement his national strategy of "political realignment." In 1974 several hundred DSOC activists entered reform clubs of the Democratic Party where they pursued a policy of "recentering" the Party around a labor-led coalition of progressive social movements - a strategy which also aimed at excluding the Party's conservative wing of white Southern Congressmen from positions of influence²². Despite Harrington's early involvement in the "civil rights" and poverty issues, his new coalition would seek to build a new popular majority around a program of "growth through justice" which demanded a truly universal welfare state; full employment policies, and an expansion of social rights for all working Americans and their families²³.

Overcoming Democratic fears about "red baiting" by the neo-conservative right, Harrington succeeded in "normalizing" the position of DSOC members within local Democratic clubs and in gaining an audience for his coalition organization, The Democratic Agenda, among leaders of the social movements and unions. By the 1980's, (after DSOC had merged with other groups to form DSA), Five Democratic Congressmen had joined as members, (three from Black minority districts in Oakland, Detroit and New York), along with dozens of state, county and city officials. This was most notably true in New York City where many of the officials and commissioners belonging to Mayor Dinkins' inner circle were former or acutal DSA members - including David Dinkins himself. Harrington's personal prestige also rallied a good number of trade union officers; leaders of women's and minority rights organization, and intellectual personalities, such as Cornel West, in support of his social democratic program. By moving DSA within the Democratic Party umbrella, Harrington managed to win for the Socialists a modest, but real, organizational presence within the national party system for the first time since the twenties, and DSA saw its membership rise to around ten thousand - a number of some significance given the organizational and programmatic vacuum which had developed by then within the Democratic Party²⁴.

This "politics of the possible," however, was only viable as long as three key conditions continued to hold - first that the Democrats remained the dominant "majority" party in the two party system; second, that organized labor retained strength to maintaining the "pluralist" balance of power with Corporate "Business Lobbies," and third, that the Democratic party continued to represent the "popular forces" that the Socialists were trying to reach. By the end of the Carter administration all three assumptions had broken down as the old Democratic, "inter-ethnic" alliance fragmented; as the decline of organized labor translated into falling voter turnouts, and most importantly of all, as new forms of elite decision-making and ideological combat emerged that were disconnected from electoral competition and mass democracy. What did it gain Harrington and his faction to committ themselves heavily to the Democratic party if the Party was being "hollowed out," and the significance of electoral competition was being undermined by a new political regime defined by "politics by other means?²⁵"

4. Race and Class Politics and The Democratic Collapse

The small successes of the Democratic Left in re-establishing its influence within the Democratic Party were quickly overshadowed in the early eighties by a mounting crisis of confidence among white "Middle Americans" in " Statist Liberalism" in general and the Congressional Democrats in particular, which placed both the post-war social contract between Labor and Capital and the gains of the "Civil Rights era" at risk²⁶. Apparently Harrington's Socialists had embraced the Democratic Party at the very moment when its New Deal electoral coalition was breaking up under the impact of the "wedge issues" of Race, Religion and Taxes, and its party apparatus was undergoing a sharp degradation of its capacity to mobilize lower income voters²⁷. Indeed by the late 1970's the Democrats had lost much of their popular base because they could not reconcile their commitment to race-based affirmative action in education and employment with their New Deal heritage of class-based, but exclusionary "for whites only²⁸," welfare statism²⁹.

By the eighties, as Lyndon Johnson himself had forseen in 1964³⁰, it was increasingly difficult to keep white voters together in a common coalition with Blacks and Hispanics. Electoral defeats in the Presidential elections of 1980, '84 and '88 clearly showed that the Democrats could rely only on their partisan voters among urban racial minorites, that is, on Blacks (90% Democratic), Jews (70% Democratic) - and other non-christians such as the Unitarians, Moslims and Agnostics and the "Unchurched" - and Mexican American and Puerto-Rican Hispanic Catholics (60-70% Democratic)³¹. The party loyalty of minority voters, however, could not compensate for historic losses of support among evangelical white protestants in the South states (75% Republican), and white catholic ethnic voters in the Northern suburbs (50%-60% Republican) - "The Reagan Democrats" - who had effectively defected to the Republicans by 1984 in so far as Presidential politics was concerned.

Further by the 1980's the majority of actual voters were to be found in the segregated suburbs (89% white) because turnouts were declining among lower income voters, most whom lived in urban and rural areas, - a demographic reality which only amplified the white surburban "voice" in national politics³².

Since 1968, turnouts in presidential elections have declined over 10%, (since 1900 over 25%), so that voter turnouts of under 55% of the eligible electorate are now considered "normal" in American presidential elections³³ - a rate of abstention which give us a "party of non-voters" which is as large as the electorate of both official parties combined. Political particpation and abstention in the United States have taken a strong "class skew" so that non-voting is disproportionately concentrated among younger, less educated, lower-income groups of all races, while electoral participation is increasingly reserved for older, better educated, higher income whites. This means that while voting patterns are highly polarized along racial status lines - with whites generally voting Republican and non-whites voting Democratic - the best predictor of the likelihood of political participation turns out to be socio-economic class position - with high income groups constituting largest segment of the "likely voters³⁴." The widening gap between the demographic profile of American society at large, and the social profile of the "actual electorate" gives American politics an increasingly "upper-middle" class coloration, a trend which in conjunction with the suburbanization of the white electorate, has strongly favored the Republican Party and worked against the Democrats³⁵.

In addition declines in partisan support for the Democrats, and in voter turnouts generally, were due to several other broad trends: a sharp decline in Union strength outside of the public sector, (by 1994 unions only represent 11% of the private workforce - down from 25% in 1968³⁶); a withering of local mass associations³⁷ which in turn has led Democratic incumbents to depend heavily on wealthy "investors" and private interest groups to finance professional campaign staffs³⁸; and, finally, the shift of American liberalism away from a broad-based economic agenda toward the cultural demands of various minority movements³⁹. In general, these trends underscore the important decline in the capacity of mass organizations to offset the "money power" of political "investors" within the party system, and the eclipse of political participation by ordinary voters by the financial particpation of elite groups⁴⁰. But they also reflect a transition within the Democratic activist base in favor of "New Politics/Reformers," who, although more diverse in terms of race and gender, have much the same sociological profile - higher income, college educated, and suburban - as their ideological competition in the Republican Party.

The decline in traditional party organizations and the industrial unions has mainly hurt those "old-style" politicians who depended on popular mobilization to win election, but has actually helped those members of the political class who represent upper middle class Americans who are capable of organizing themselves. In effect both parties have been "dominated by different segments of the upper middle class" with the Republicans generally representing owners and managers from the private sector, and the Democrats, managers and professionals from the public and "not for profit" service sectors⁴¹. Neither of these groups, nor incumbant Congressmen for that matter, have much interest in seeing the narrow "actual electorate" which they dominated, enlarged to include great numbers of new and "unreliable" voters from the lower income, "popular" strata. As Lowi and Ginzberg, two mainstream American political scientists, put it their recent work, Embattled Democracy: What we are left with is a political process whose class bias is so obvious and egregious, that Americans may have to begin using terms such as "quasi-democratic" to describe a political process in which ordinary voters have as little influence as they do in contemporary America⁴².

5. Immigration, the Racial Spoils System and the New Class War.

Of all these changes, however, the shift toward a "multi-cultural" political agenda was in many ways the most troublesome for the Democrats, because the "racialization" of the "liberal" discourse on society coincided with an alarming jump in overall class inequality which they were reluctant to face head-on. Between 1979 and 1992 hourly wages in non-professional jobs dropped on average by 20%⁴³; full time participation in the labor force among working class men fell to under 75%⁴⁴, and the incomes of the bottom 80% of American households stagnated or declined⁴⁵. At the same time, conservative tax and labor policies produced a strong redistribution of income and wealth "upward," which restored the share of the national income taken by the top 20 % of American households to a level - 56% -that was last seen in the late twenties⁴⁶. As though to confirm this reversal in class bargaining power, the Labor Department reported this June that productivity gains for American Companies rose 2.1% over the past year even as wages and benefits declined by 3%. Labor's share of the national output thus fell below two-thirds while the share going to the owners of Capital exceeded the historical norm of one third for the first time since the Civil War⁴⁷. This means, as Edward Wolff has demonstrated in a recent report to the Twentieth Century Fund, the American rate of inequality in wealth and income is now the highest to be found anywhere in the advanced industrial world⁴⁸. By the early nineties the outlines of a new post-industrial class structure were clearly visible - a three tier society composed of a privileged managerial and professional elite; downgraded middle strata, and a permanently precarious "bottom" made up of the unemployed and unemployable "underclass;" homeless outcasts and illegal immigrant workers⁴⁹.

Worse yet, many of these trends concerning employment and wage levels at the bottom and middle of the American economy were aggravated by the dramatic increase in immigration in the from East Asia, Mexico and Central America and the Caribbean Countries. During the decade of the Eighties over ten million legal immigrants (and millions more illegals) entered the United States in the largest population influx from abroad since early in this century⁵⁰. Largely concentrated on the two coasts, this latest immigration has changed the demographic mix and racial balance in the big population states of California, Texas, Florida and New York, encouraging new ethnic conflicts between American born Blacks and Asian, Caribbean and Asian immigrants, which now partly "overlay" the historic divisions between "old American Whites" and "old African Americans⁵¹. These new conflicts often turn around battles over the "racial spoils" system which developed as a result of affirmative action; minority "set asides" of government contracts and the creation of "majority-minority" election districts. as Asians and Hispanics demand a "proportional share" of the government jobs and power that had been granted to African Americans in the Big Cities⁵². At the same time, the changing racial balance has been accompanied by an internal migration by White "Anglos" which took them away from their suburban enclaves in the East Coast and the Californian urban corridors towards interior sections of the great "American heartland⁵³."

In brief, the legacy of the Reagan years could be summed up as a story of one sided "class warfare," in which a wealthy, and mainly white American "overclass" felt free to help itself to a generous package of class specific tax, labor and investment privileges, and to destabilize the post-war balance of power between Business, Labor and Government. This occured in part due to the declining international bargaining power of Labor, but in large measure because there was little or no effective political opposition from ordinary working people and their representatives⁵⁴. Working class,"Middle America" has been allowed to fragment along a series of racial, cultural and urban/suburban faultlines - which left it in no condition to confront its "betters" in the overclass, but angry enough by 1994 to turn and savage the vulnerable "pariah" groups beneath it⁵⁵.

Throughout this whole period the Democratic leadership failed to address the class bias of these unfavorable social trends for fear of alienating its "political investors" from the business class, the upper income suburban "liberals" and the Hollywood "Glitterati⁵⁶." The Party's silence demonstrated its incapacity to talk honestly about the interconnections between persistent racial segregation in suburban schools systems and housing; rising urban poverty and working class unemployment rates, and the impact of third world immigration. Needless to say the fascination of "liberal" Democrats with the cultural politics of various "identity" movements, and their marked preference for narrowly race and gender based "affirmative action" policies, have also feed the "balkanization" of their Party's working class base into competing racial and ethnic factions, and accelerated the movement of white ethnic voters into the conservative camp. This in turn allowed the Republicans to play the "race and immigrant cards" against them, and build a national "white majority" coalition "from the top down," which united upper and middle income, suburban voters in an "anti-liberal-anti-Black-anti-City" alliance⁵⁷. So it was hardly surprising that when the Democrat's narrow electoral victory brought the Clintons to Washington in 1992 with an ambitious reform agenda, they found themselves deep in enemy territory with few troops in reserve. Equally important the Clintons were confronted by a "legitimacy crisis of state instituions" which was broader than just the political problems effecting their own party. 5. The Clinton Presidency and The "Divided Government" Regime. Elected in 1992 by a minority vote of 43% in a three way race, Bill Clinton began his presidency with a weak hand which has only grown weaker over time. He did enjoy at least one initial advantage because the 1992 election gave the Democrats control of both Congress and the White House, thus ending years of "divided government" - a co-habitation regime where Republican Presidents were balanced by Democratic Congresses⁵⁸. At the time, this was seen a hopeful sign because "divided government" has been faulted by many analysts for allowing the tendency toward "gridlock" inherent in the American Constitution to assert itself - frustrating solutions to the nation's mounting social problems, and making it difficult for voters to hold either party accountable for policy ^failures59. But it turned out that the Democratic Party coalition had already decomposed to a point where party unity was only superficial, and very quickly the Clintons found their social reform program blocked by a coaltion betweeen conservative Republicans and Southern White Democrats, and their neo-liberal free-trade and deficit reduction packages strongly opposed by Northern liberal and Black congressmen. In effect, the 1992 presidential election had decided very little and allowed the deadlock of "divided" government to continue. This "elite dissensus" also reflects broader changes which limit the ability of contemporary Presidents to be policy innovators in the mold of of the great "reform presidents" Johnson and FDR.

As the first president of the "Post-Cold War Era," Bill Clinton inherited an "imperial presidency" which had lost both its Soviet adversary and central raison d'être. In addition, the rapid eclipse of geo-strategic issues by geo-economic ones also contributed to an erosion of presidential authority which had already begun with the Vietnam War⁶⁰. George Bush, whom the voters turned out of office after one term in 1992, was the fifth American President to fail to serve out two full terms since 1968⁶¹, (Reagan being the only exception). In recent years, American voters have overturned a sitting President twice - once in 1980 and again in 1992. Both times voters didn't endorse the competition so much as they "repudiated" the incumbent and his party program. Just as Jimmy Carter's defeat in 1980 was a repudiation of "interest-group liberalism", Bush's defeat in the 1992 was a censure of "Reaganomics" for failing to bring prosperity to the broad middle classes as it had to the top 20% of American households⁶². The failure of these two recent presidencies amounted to a "crash" of a party system which had almost exhausted its menu of programmatic ideas by the time of Bill Clinton's election⁶³.

Further, the regime of "divided government" has not only been characterized by "voter repudiation" and on-going "party decomposition," as already discussed. It has also been strongly identified with the rise of "the conduct of politics by other means," an elitist system of political combat which tends to "trivialize" the significance of national elections and their outcomes⁶⁴. As George Schultz, Reagan's Secretary of State, once remarked, "nothing ever gets settled in this town... (ie. Washington)." This is true in large measure because institutional changes in the Judiciary and national media now allow the losers in national contests to overturn electoral outcomes by non-electoral strategies. Many of these strategies involve using the Federal judiciary to by-pass the legislative process, this strategy was pioneered by Black "Civil Rights" lawyers, but it now being used by conservative groups seeking to overturn the liberal policy legacy of the Sixties and Seventies. Another strategy involves the use of the Crinimal Justice System to undo the presidential power of appointment, or to reverse the other side's election victories. Over the past twenty years, for instance, the number of high federal officials who have been indicted and convicted of major crimes has increased ten fold from under one hundred in 1970 to over twelve hundred in 1990. While this is due in part to the corruption of the political process caused by the increased reliance of elected officials upon the "political investor" class mentioned earlier, it also reflects a change in approach by the political opposition. Using a strategy known as "R.I.P. or Revelation, Investigation, and Prosecution," it is now commonplace for the political opposition to the party in power to block presidential appointments, or drive powerful officials from office, by a judicious combination of media revelations about their private lives; demands for Congressional hearings to investigate the charges, and ultimately indictment and prosecution by Federal Grand Juries or "independent prosecutors⁶⁵." Pioneered by Congressional Democrats during the "Watergate" hearings," and frequently used by them to keep the Reagan administration off-balance in the late Eighties during the "Iran/Contra Affair", this weapon has now been adopted by the Republicans who have used the "Whitewater" scandal, among others, to destabilize the Clinton adminstration with great success. All of these strategic innovations move the decisive confrontations away from the electoral arena towards the Courts - both weakening the ability of elected officials to actually govern and strengthening the hand of elite "veto groups" made up of actors who are perhaps well educated, but not elected.

Moreover, the structural disadvantages inherent in the "divided government" regime, have been compounded by weaknesses in Clinton's own leadership style. Incapable of sticking to any single course of action for more than a week, Clinton apparently can't choose sides in a policy battle without reversing himself the moment strong opposition shows itself. The result has been a unending series of policy reversals as Clinton continually tacks between competing teams of "liberal" and centrist advisers. This has led to the wide-spread impression at home and abroad of Presidency which is adrift. The popular perception of Presidential weakness has further reinforced the cynicism of the middle class electorate about the efficacy of national political institutions, and only served to legitimize both the critique of the Welfare State and anti-federalist political program offered by the radical conservative wing of the Republican Party⁶⁶.

6. Newt Gingrich: the New Conservative Demiurge

Last November's "mid-term" elections gave the Republicans control of both Houses of Congress⁶⁷. The election of a Republican majority ended forty-five years of Democratic legislative dominance, and added the American Democratic Party to the list of major post-war parties such as the Liberal Democrats in Japan and the Christian Democrats in Italy, which have been swept aside by rebellions at the polls. More than a simple legislative defeat, the November elections marked the emergence of a Republican majority in the House of Representatives which was united around a radical conservative core which acts under the tight discipline of Newt Gingrich of Georgia, the new House "Speaker." Since January Gingrich and his House faction have enjoyed unusual success in passing most of the major lanks of the conservative ideological program, The Contract with America, that they proposed to the voters in last November's Congressional election⁶⁸.

In the name of deficit reduction, this conservative "social contract" aims at reducing dramatically the share of GNP which goes to the public sector by cutting federal taxes, and "zeroing out" funding for many longstanding federal programs, agencies and Cabinet Departments. Everything from Department of Education and the Agency for International Development to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is currently on the chopping block. Another key plank of the conservative program is a "Welfare Reform" which will amalgamate and radically cut back all federal programs serving the very poor. It will also sharply curtail benefits going to legal resident aliens, and terminate the "entitlement" status of federal welfare benefits - which would mean that citizens would no longer be automatically guaranteed aid from the national government "as a matter of right" in cases of personal emergency, or in times of general economic crisis⁶⁹. At the same time, the Republicans have attempted to satisfy a broad range of industrial firms; mining and timber companies, and agri-buisness and ranching interests, by launching a general offensive against government regulatory agencies. This threatens to weaken most federal consumer and environmental regulations, and to compromise federal authority over the public lands in Western States⁷⁰. In taking this "slash and burn" approach to shrinking federal spending on domestic programs, (they propose to reduce federal domestic expenditures by 1.4 trillion dollars over the next seven years), what conservatives actually seek is to return America to a "pre-New Deal" regime, where the States would play the principal role in defining social policy; raising taxes and managing social problems⁷¹.

The scope of the conservative assault on the Welfare State has been enlarged by a sudden surge in "judicial activism" by the conservative majority of the Supreme Court in the wake of the Republican triumph last Fall. More radical in action than "conservative," the Court has overturned existing precedents with abandon revisiting everything from affirmative action programs for women and minorities, to court mandated school desegregation and school prayer issues⁷². Equally important but much less visible, was their recent decision in the case, "The United States versus Lopez," to invalidate a federal law prohibiting the possession of guns near schools. With this decision, the Court placed constitutional limits on the power of Congress to regulate interstate Commerce for the first time since the New Deal. It thereby weakened the key constitutional principle upon which much of the regulatory oversight by the federal agencies over state economic, educational and environmental policies rests⁷³. The emergence of an activist right majority on the Supreme Court means that the conservatives in Congress have little to fear, and liberals little to hope for, in terms of judicial opposition to the current campaign to radically down-size federal authority. In this sense, the Supreme Court has clearly moved into a "post-civil-rights era" which is uncannily reminiscent of the "post-reconstruction" period of the late 1890's which saw the Supreme Court extend constitutional protection to racial segregation laws in the Southern States of the old Confederacy⁷⁴.

In the American regime of "divided government," one could logically expect the White House to become the "counter-vailing" pole of opposition to the sudden expansion of Mr. Gingrich legislative influence, and the power of the office of "Speaker of the House." However Mr. Clinton has shown himself to be allergic to the use of his veto power, and apparently has too much to fear from his Republican presidential rivals in the Senate to think of cooperating with them in an effort to slow Mr Gingrich's ascent. Indeed, following a public meeting with Gingrich in New Hampshire this June, Clinton has apparently abandoned his remaining Democratic allies in Congress and their effort to block the Republican legislative program, and struck a strategic bargain with the Republican leadership in the House. In an effort to catch the anti-government train before its leaves the station, he has offered his own program for reducing the deficit, which modifies some cuts but endorses the basic project of radically "downsizing" the Federal government. True to his "conciliatory" instincts, Mr Clinton strives to capture the political "center" even as it shifts toward the Right end of the ideological spectrum⁷⁵. There is little reason to hope that Clinton can or will, lead the opposition to the dismantling of state programs and federal protections.

7. The Conservative Realignment and the "Great Reversal"

Today American politics has undergone a major "realignment" of domestic voter blocs, and Harrington's political strategy has achieved an ironic and bitter fulfillment in the wholesale defection of white Southern Democratic voters and officials to the Republican Party in last November's Congressional and state elections. With the Republican electoral victory in 1994, American politics seemingly has entered a period of a "great reversal" in national political and cultural outlooks, which authorizes the new majority to pursue social policies which are closer to a "War on Compassion" than a "War on Poverty." Harrington's larger strategic aims as well as his social democratic policy goals have been overtaken by events, and with hindsight, one can suggest that the main effect of his realignment strategy has been to bind the left social movements to the centrist, and somewhat corrupt leadership of the Democratic Party. This leaves them hostage to the policy failures and hesitations of the Clinton Presidency. Harrington's "realist" policy of "entrism" has turned into an institutional trap which is now difficult to escape.

But we should bear in mind that last Fall's upheaval in the US remains a peculiarly American affair given the fact that the new conservative majority was carried into office by a revolt limited to the privileged top third of the American population. The new Republican majority rests on a minority of the "potential electorate" - actually one eligible voter out of five - which makes its recent victories seem more like a legislative "coup d'état" than a solid mandate for change. The emergence of a new class system and a new regime of elite politics should remind us that the Socialist tradition as it was redefined by Harrington and others has made some contributions worth saving. Firstly, they insisted on the centrality of class/race nexus for understanding America's ongoing social dilemma. As Cornel West's work demonstrates, the effort to rework the categories of class and caste is analytically valuable and needs pursuing. Secondly, Harrington always stressed the importance of Labor to any broad based, coalition politics. He was correct to insist that the revival of organized labor is essential, if we are ever to restore the bargaining power of ordinary Americans in the workplace, or reconnect them with the political process. Lastly, Harrington's hopes for the Democratic Party did not blind him to the strategic need to bypass the current electorate in order to mobilize the bottom two-thirds of American society which goes unorganized and under represented in the current system.

In any case, it is difficult to imagine that America's unilateral "class war" can continue to drive down wage levels and living standards indefinitely without triggering an inevitable - and potentially terrible - response from the "Middle American" majority. The questions of how that majority will define itself, and whether it will take the form of a broad-based mobilization in favor of national reconstruction, or a series of destructive and fratricidal social explosions instead, are ones that democratic intellectuals like Cornel West are struggling to answer. And answer quickly, for as the bombing in Oklahoma City should remind us, time is short and the price of failure could be intolerably high.

Notes

1. Leon Weiseltier, "The Decline of the Black Intellectual", The New Republic, le 6 Mars, 1995, page 36.
2. See West's essay, "Nihilism in Black America," Race Matters, Beacon Press, Boston, 1993, pps 13-18.
3. Weiseltier, op cit.
4. See the recent national survey of American religious beliefs and communities carried out Barry Kosmin and Seymour P. Lachman for a good description of America's religious exceptionalism in One Nation Under God, Harmony Books, New York, 1993, pps 8-17.
5. The intensity of American religiosity is truly exceptional among the advanced industrial countries, and the distinctly pre-modern flavor of American beliefs gives the religious profile of a third world country. See some of the recent poll data reported in "The Counter-Attack of God," The Economist, le 8 Juillet, 1995, p 19.
6. See James Davison Hunter, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America, Basic Books, 1991, pps 31-52.
7. See "The Counter Attack of God," The Economist, ibid, pps 19-21.
8. See the survey of "likely voters," "The American Electorate '88", Times/Mirror Company, Los Angeles, 1988. For a discussion of the wide cultural gap concerning moral issues that had emerged between the liberal cultural elites in Hollywood, Academia, and media and " Middle America," see John Kerenth White, The New Politics of Old Values, University Press of New England, Hanover, 1988, pps 40-42.
9. Time/Mirror Survey, 1988, op cit.
10. See James Davison Hunter, Culture Wars, op cit, and also his analysis of the militant anti-abortion movements, Before The Shooting Begins: Searching for Democracy in America's Culture War, The Free Press, New York, 1994, pps 3-14 & 190-214.
11. See Kevin Phillips, Post-Conservative America, Random House, 1982, pps 88-102.
12. See Irving Howe, Socialism and America, Harcourt Brace Janovich, New York, `1985, pps 132-39 & 42-43.
13. See Kosmin and Lachman on the convergence of the opinions of most American Catholics andf Jews towards the mainstream "protestant" norm , ibid, pps 10-14.
14. See Harrington's own description of his relationship with the Socialist troika of Palme, Mitterrand and Brandt, in his autobiography, The Long Distance Runner, Henry Holt & Co, 1988, pps 148-60. For a summary of Harrington's analysis of the prospects for the Socialist project following the exhaustion of its three recent historical incarnations, Kautsky's social democracy, the authoritarian collectivism of Lenin and the neo-corporatist welfare state, see Socialism Past & Future, Little Brown & Co., New York, 1989, pps 44-154.
15. At the time Harrington first wrote in the 1962 about a quarter of the American population were living in poverty households. Today the official estimate is closer to 15% or about 40 million people including one out five children under the age of eighteen.
16. See the description of the failure in 1946 of the CIO's massive Union organizing Drive, "Operation Dixie," and its political aftermath for the Democratic Party, in the American Social History Project's, Who Built America Vol II, Pantheon Books, New York, 1992, pps 493-97.
17. See for instance, Who Built America, ibid, pps 551-582.
18. See Peter Steinfel's description of this political transition in The Neo-Conservatives, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1979 pps. 44-48.
19. See the introduction to Robert Bellat et al, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Committment in American Life Berkley, University of California Press, 1985.
20. The current populist form of the "politics of rage" associated with the right-wing "militia movment" has its roots in an anti-establishment paranoia that is shared by fringe movments of the left as well. Left and Right conspiracy theories are nourished by common "libertarian" youth culture inherited by both from the sixties counter-culture. See Michael Kelly, "The Road to Paranoia," The New Yorker, June 19, 1995, pps 62-65.
21. See Harrington's description of the post-1968 situation in his autobiography, The Long-Distance Runner, ibid, pps 14-15.
22. Harrington, The Long Distance Runner, pps 15-18 & 114-117.
23. See Harrington's statement of his program, "Growth through Justice," which both embraces and moves beyond Welfare statism in The Next Left: A History of the Future, Henry Holt & Co., New York, 1988., pps 144-78.
24. Harrington, op cit.
25. See Theodore Lowi & Benjamin Ginsberg, Embattled Democracy: Politics and Policy in the Clinton Era, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1995 pps 43-53.
26. See the analysis of the disaffection of white working class voters in Macoomb County outside of Detroit offered by Stanley Greenberg, Clinton's principal pollster, in his Middle Class Dreams, Times Books, 1995, pps 23-54.
27. See the pessimistic analysis of the impact of racial divisions on the Democratic coalition offered by Mary and Thomas Edsall in Chain Reaction: The impact of Race, Rights and Taxes on American Politics, W.W. Norton Company & Co, New York, 1991, pps 3-31.
28. See for instance, the description of the role of Federal Housing agencies in consolidating racial segregation by residential neighborhood during the New Deal in Douglas Massey & Nancy Denton, American Apartheid, Segregation and the Making of the Underclass, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1993, pps 42-57.
29. See Theodore Lowi's discussion of the New Deal accommodation of Southern racial and cultural conservatism in The End of the Republican Era, University of Oklahoma Press, 1995, pps 130-35.
30. Thomas and Mary Edsall, Chain Reaction, ibid, pps 37-38.
31. See Kosmin and Lachman, ibid, pps 181-185 & 199-205.
32. See William Schneider, "The Suburban Century Begins," The Atlantic Monthly, July 1992, pps 33-38.
33. Lowi & Ginzberg, ibid, page 45.
34. See Francis Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, Why Americans Don't Vote, Pantheon Books, New York, 1988, pps 15-25 & 160-75.
35. See Thomas Edsall, The New Politics of Inequality, W.W. Norton & Co, New York, 1984, pps 179-99.
36. The story of the decline of the "House of Labor" has been told often, but for a good account see Edsall, The New Politics Of Inequality, ibid, pps 141-78.
37. Robert Putnam, "Bowling Alone," Journal of Democracy, January 1995, Vol VI, No 11, pages 65-78.
38. See for example W. Lance Bennett, The Governing Crisis: Media, Money and Marketing in American Elections, St Martin's Press, New York, pps 84-114.
39. See Harold Meyerson, "Clinton at an impasse," Dissent, Fall 1994, pps 452-56.
40. For a discussion of the role of "political investors," the wealthy class of individuals and industrial lobbies who play a central role in financing for highly expensive, re-election campaigns of incumbant Congressmen in the 1984 Presidential primaries, see Thomas Ferguson and Joel Rogers, Right Turn: the Decline of the Democrats, Hill & Wang, 1986, pps 162-193.
41. See Lowi and Ginzberg, Embattled Democracy, ibid, pps 56-57.
42. Lowi & Ginzberg, Embattled Democracy, ibid, page 57.
43. See Robert Reich's discussion of the impact of economic globalization and job relocation on American wage trends in The Work of Nations, Random House, New York, 1992, pps 209-215.
44. See "More Men in Prime Not Working," The New York Times, December 1, 1994, page D15.
45. See Edward Wolff's article summarizing the findings of his report concerning income and wealth inequality to the Twentieth Century Fund, Top Heavy, "How the Pie is Sliced," The American Prospect, No 22, Summer 1995, pps 58-61.
46. See Kevin Phillips for his discussion of the impact of tax "reform" on income distribution, The Politics of Rich and Poor, Random House, 1990, pps 76-86.
47. See Keith Bradsher, "Productivity is All, But it Doesn't Pay Well," The New York Times, Sunday Week in Review, June 25, 1995, page 4.
48. See Edward N. wolff, Top Heavy: A Study of Increasing Inequality of Wealth in America, The Twentieth Century Fund Press, New York, 1995, pps 21-27.
49. See for instance, Michael Harrington's description of the new class system in The Next Left, ibid, pps 80-95.
50. See Antonio Daniel's article on the changing demography of the American population, " The Dynamic Racial Composition of the United States," in Daedalus, Vol 124, No 1, Winter 1995, pps. 183-89.
51. See Jack Miles description of new system of ethnic conflict devloping in Southern California in "Blacks Versus Browns: Immigration and the New American Dilemma," The Atlantic, October, 1992, pps 44-68.
52. See Michael Lind's sharp attack on the perverse ideological impact of upper-middle class feminism and multi-culturalism in The Next American Nation, Times Books, 1995, pps 160-80.
53. As reported in the 1990 United States Census.
54. This is certainly how Michael Lind, for one, tells the story of America's "third republic," in The Next American Nation, Times Books, 1995, pps 126-56.
55. "Defections Among Men to G.O.P. Helped Insure Rout of Democrats," New York Times, November 11, 1994 p. 23. See also, Greenberg, op cit.
56. See William Greider's analysis of the role of financial investors in shaping Democratic party candidates and programs in his, Who Will Tell the People, Simon & Schuster, 1992, pps 105-23 & 245-70.
57. See Thomas and Mary Edsall's chapter on "White Suburbs and a Divided Black Community," in Chain Reaction, ibid, pps 215-55.
58. See Walter Dean Burnham's "Slouching Toward Realignment," The American Prospect, Winter 1993, pps 23-24.
59. See William Hudson, American Democracy in Peril, Chatham House Publishers, 1995, pps 39-51.
60. See my discussion of the crisis of the imperial Presidency and the post-war l'état de guerre/l'état providence" dans "Le Désalignement du Consensus Stratégique Américain", Cahiers d'études stratégiques, No 18, CIRPES/EHESS, Septembre 1995, parties 1.4-7 & 3.4-5.
61. Walter Dean Burnham, "Slouching Toward Realignment," The American Prospect, Winter 1993, pps 25-26.
62. Burnham, ibid, p. 25 & pps 29-31. See also Barry Bluestone, "The Inequality Express," The American Prospect, Winter 1995, No 20. pps 81-93.
63. Stanley Greenberg, Middle Class Dreams, Times Books/Random House, 1995, pps 3-19.
64. See Lowi & Ginzberg, op cit.
65. See Lowi & Ginzberg, ibid, pps 46-51.
66. See the introduction by George Laveau in Theodore Lowi, " Avant le Conservatisme et au déla des idéologies et la vie politique américaine dans les années 1990," Revue Française de Science Politique, 40, No. 5, 1990, pps. 669-98.
67. The Republicans gained 9 seats in the Senate for a majority of 53, 50 seats in the House of a majority of 228, and 10 governorships for a majority of 30.
68. See Newt Gingrich et al, The Contract With America, Times Books, New York, December 1994.
69. See Robert Pear, "House backs the Undoing of Decades of Welfare Policy," The New York Times, March 25, 1995, page 1. See also my discussion of the social impacts of the proposed welfare reforms in "Un Crise de Gouvernement," RAMSES 96, IFRI, 1995, Chapitre II.1.
70. See John Cushman's articles "The GOP's Plan for Environment," The New York Times, July 17, 1995 page 1 and "Democrats Force GOP to Pull Anti-Regulation Bill," The New York Times, July 19, 1995. page 1.
71. See my discussion in "Le Désalignement du Consensus Stratégique Américain," Cahiers d'études stratégiques, CIRPES, partie 4, op cit.
72. See Linda Greenhouse summary of the Supreme Court's recent decisions, "Farewell to the Old Order in the Court," The New York Times, Sunday Week in Review Section, July 2, 1995, page 1.
73. See Linda Greenhouse, "Blowing the Dust off the Constitution That Was," The New York Times, Sunday Week in Review Section, May 28, 1995, Section 4 page 1.
74. See the recent editorial, "The End of Affirmative Action," in The New Republic, July 3, 1995, page 7.
75. See Robert Kuttner's editorial, "A Pile of Vetoes," The American Prospect, No 22, Summer 1995, pps 6-10.

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