Re: <nettime> what exactly is breaking?

[Brian Holmes <bhcontinentaldrift@gmail.com>]

On Sun, May 31, 2020 at 5:26 PM Kurtz, Steven <sjkurtz@buffalo.edu> wrote:


> Is anything breaking? No, nothing is breaking. The structure is
> safe in spite of this uprising being more multi-racial and class
> diverse than any I have ever seen. The two systems of law will stay
> in place. The law will be biased in favor of the rich and biased
> against the poor and minorities. At best, what these uprisings
> produce is reforms and campaign rhetoric.


Of course, nothing has changed in America in our lifetimes, so it's
reasonable to doubt that it will now. But doesn't that foreclose any
chance of something new arising? How can it arise if even people like
us don't push for it?

All liberals see Trump as an existential threat. He clearly aims to
remake this country into a distinctly non-liberal, nationalist kind
of society. If reelected, he will durably transform the United States
into an unalloyed version of its worst image. That means climate
change will accelerate to become a near-term cascade of disasters
with not even a hope of stopping it. Liberals cannot stand that
perspective. And yet they see it clearly in the near future.

To beat Trump, the Democratic party needs black, brown and progressive
white votes. These now form a single bloc. For sure, getting those
votes also means changing liberal America. It's gonna require massive
redistribution as well as deep changes in the law and the concrete
behavior of the police. Otherwise black, brown and progressive people
won't go out to vote. This combination - an existential threat to
liberalism and the need to capture a racially defined voting bloc - is
new. Something like it did happen during the Great Depression. But at
that time the electorate was not so deeply divided by racial issues.

Biden's first reaction to the protest was a remarkable appeal to
Blacks. OK, that's campaign rhetoric. But the Washington Post
underlined the novelty: no appeal to white liberals fearing for
their property. Instead, he asked them to imagine something they
can't imagine: being at the bottom of the racial hierarchy. That's a
strategy. And it is the right one. The question is whether he and the
Dems can stick to it. Or maybe more accurately, whether we can force
them to stick to it.

Like every other country, the US is now facing economic dislocation
on an unprecedented scale. To overcome it will require massive state
investment. Trump will do it through the military, the national
extractive industries and the border police. Again this is unbearable
for liberals, because they know that such policies, which they could
and did accept in the past, are now the guarantee that nothing will be
done about climate change. What the black-brown-progressive bloc is
demanding from liberals is for the newly created federal money to be
invested in a job-creating Green New Deal based on criteria of racial
justice, in order to create what is called a "just transition" away
from fossil fuels.

Without such a program, we will go on living in hell. And it will get
much hotter, fast. With all hearfelt respect, Steve, this is not the
time to say that things will never change. From my perspective, this
is the last chance to create substantial change. We have to build what
Gramsci calls a historic bloc. That means a social formation that is
able to turn itself into a hegemonic force and shift the very basis of
power in society. All the materials are there for this. But that's no
guarantee it will happen.

all the best, Brian



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