Fluent Essays

The first of the three papers required in this course is due on Wednesday, October 20. Your TA will give you details about handing it in. The Essay Topic: Our course readings from 9/27 to 10/13 come from writers of the center-left and left. How compelling do you find these writers’ arguments concerning freedom and equality? Please write a thesis driven essay on this topic of about 1600 to 2100 words. You should support your thesis with evidence and reasoning, and you should also show an awareness of class sessions, discussion sections, and the full range of readings assigned from 9/27 to 10/13. A Background Note: The themes of freedom (or liberty) and equality have long been prominent in politics. One or both of these themes can be found in all the writings we’ve considered on “The Center-Left and Left.” Yet the themes are tricky. America has solid traditions of support for freedom and equality—but also traditions of resistance to them or the circumvention of them. Our readings from 9/27 to 10/13 encompass ideologies of classical political liberalism (Paine, Locke, etc.), social democracy, socialism, and identity politics (Black politics, feminism). They make different sorts of assertions about freedom and equality and about how they can be maximized in a political community. Some Questions You Might—But Won’t Necessarily—Find Useful as You Develop Evidence: • Did T. H. Green make useful arguments about different kinds of freedom? • Can the Nordic democracies be considered examples of freedom and equality? • Socialists of all kinds hate capitalism—but why do they do so? • How do the writings on identity politics relate to the writings on social democracy? A Note on Required Writing Workshops for POSC 5W: Please don’t forget that you need to register for English 007-004. You should register for a workshop session related to this essay via the English 7 iLearn page; workshops are led by Dylan Rohr. (You can find the course by searching for English 7–Section 4, by searching for course number 23751, or by searching for the instructor’s name, Ray Papica.) For those unsure about how to sign up for the workshops, there’s a tab entitled “Workshop 1 Sign-Ups” in your ENGL 7 eLearn (Canvas) site. This site has the title “WRKSHP: WRITING ACRSS CURRICULUM 007 (004) (Fall 2021).” Also note that there’s an ENGL 7 syllabus posted under the tab “Writing Workshop Syllabus and Attendance Protocols.” Please review the requirements for this course’s mandatory workshop component. The Center-Left and Left: Locke and Green 1 Last time we discussed Paine, the Declaration of Independence, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens, the US Bill of Rights, Kant, and John Stuart Mill. John Locke (1632– 1704) stands behind them all. He stands most conspicuously behind our Declaration of Independence. When Jefferson and others asserted that they had the right to rebel against the British, they didn’t say they were basing their claim on new philosophical principles. They were visibly applying the doctrines of an English philosopher, Locke. 2 Locke’s life wasn’t boring. He lived during the 1600s, a time of intense religious and political conflict in England—among Puritans (later called Dissenters), Anglicans (the Church of England), and Roman Catholics. The English Civil War was fought from 1642 to 1651; the King, Charles I, was executed in 1649. In 1683 Locke came under suspicion for being involved in a plot against Charles II; he escaped to the Netherlands. He stayed there five years, in constant danger of being kidnapped, tried for treason, and executed. His major political work, the Second Treatise of Government (1690), was published anonymously. It wasn’t reprinted much at first, but it was printed in North America in 1773, where its defense of rebellion had resonance. 3 I’ll comment briefly on A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689). In Locke’s era, monarchs chose national churches. Unusually and boldly, Locke argued that churches, which were volun- tary organizations concerned with their members’ souls, couldn’t and shouldn’t be regulated by governments. Yet his tolerance wasn’t unlimited. He distrusted atheists: were they reliable without fear of an afterlife? He also said, “That Church can have no right to be tolerated” when its members “deliver themselves up to the protection and service of another prince.” Who did that? Two conspicuous religious groups—those devoted to the Mufti in Constanti- nople and those devoted to the Pope in Rome. 4 To get a sense of Locke’s influence on the American Revolution, one can consider these words he wrote in his Second Treatise (1690): Revolutions happen not upon every little mismanagement in publick affairs. Great mistakes in the ruling part, many wrong and inconvenient Laws, and all the slips of humane frailty, will be born by the people, without mutiny or murmur. But if a long train of Abuses, Prevarications and Artifices, all tending the same way, make the design visible to the People, and they cannot but feel, what they lie under, and see, whither they are going; ’tis not to be wonder’d, that they should then rouze themselves, and endeavour to put the rule into such hands, which may secure to them the ends for which Government was at first erected. . . (§225). 5 Here’s what Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence (1776): Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. . . 6 Locke’s relevance to a course on political ideologies stems from the fact that he was the first great theorist of the political liberalism of the nineteenth century (when this word was first used in its political sense). Nineteenth century liberalism is the ancestor of the “liberalism” (or “progressivism” or “social democracy”) of America’s Demo- cratic Party, and it’s also the ancestor of the “libertarianism” prevalent in America’s Republican Party. Locke can also be regarded as the first great theorist of limited, constitutional government. Some medieval writers had said that rulers should serve their people, and that the people had a right to rebel against a tyrannical ruler, but Locke systematized and modernized these views. 7 Let’s give some serious attention to Locke’s Second Treatise, which is recognized as one of the great works of political theory. Early in it he defines his subject matter: Political Power then I take to be a Right of making Laws with Penalties of Death, and consequently all less Penalties, for the Regulating and Preserving of Property, and of employing the force of the Community, in the Execution of such Laws, and in the defense of the Common-wealth from Foreign Injury, and all this only for the Publick Good (§3). Note the purpose of laws—to protect property. Locke sometimes used this word in the way people use it today, but he sometimes used it to refer to what is “proper” to a person—including, as he argued, life and liberty. 8 Locke next considers a condition from which political power is absent. This is “the State of Nature”—the “State all Men are naturally in, and that is, a State of perfect Freedom to order their Actions, and dispose of their Possessions, and Persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the Law of Nature, without asking leave, or depending on the Will of any other Man” (§4). People in this vision are living without government, as if in “the wild woods and uncultivated waste of America” (§37). For “in the beginning all the world was America” (§49). (I’ve visited Machu Picchu and Teotihuacan, and I know the Americas weren’t just wild and uncultivated, but we have to forgive Locke here.) 9 The state of nature was a “State also of Equality, wherein all the Power and Jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another” (§4). Thus in this state, there were (1) free- dom and (2) equality. There was also (3) natural law: “But though this be a State of Liberty, yet it is not a State of Licence. . . The State of Nature has a Law of Nature to govern it, which obliges every one: And Reason, which is that Law, teaches all Mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his Life, Health, Liberty, or Possessions. . .” This is because people derive from “one Omnipotent, and infinitely wise Maker.” They are thereby obligated to try to “preserve the rest of Mankind” (§6). 10 In relation to the state of nature, Locke articulated some- thing he knew to be a “Strange Doctrine.” He said that when someone acted as a “Criminal,” violating “the Law of Nature,” anyone could punish this person who had “transgressed that Law.” Thus “in the State of Nature, every one has the Executive Power of the Law of Nature” (§13). “And thus it is, that every Man in the State of Nature, has a Power to kill a Murderer” (§11). This meant, of course, that the punisher might be a judge in his own case—clearly not a desirable practice. Locke acknowledged that a “Civil Government” was preferable. But it’s important to note that in his state of nature, there was law—and law enforcement. 11 How, in the state of nature, did people live? They had to eat, and so they might gather apples and acorns (§6). In doing such things, they acquired property (in the physical sense): Whatsoever then he removes out of the State that Nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his Labour with, and joyned to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his Property (§27). Thus the Grass my Horse has bit; the Turfs my Servant has cut; and the Ore I have dig’d in any place where I have a right to them in common with others, become my Property, without the assignation or consent of any body (§28). In the first of these quotations, Locke became an early figure to articulate a “labor theory of value.” 12 How much could a person gather? To Locke, As much as any one can make use of to any advantage of life before it spoils, so much he may by his labour fix a Property in. Whatever is beyond this, is more than his share, and belongs to others (§31). Locke made another relevant statement: As Justice gives every Man a Title to the product of his honest Industry, and the fair Acquisitions of his Ancestors descended to him, so Charity gives every Man a Title to so much out of another’s Plenty as will keep him from extream want, where he has no means to subsist otherwise (First Treatise §42). Locke acknowledged the general need for taxes (§140). Quite possibly he wouldn’t have opposed the use of tax money to relieve poverty and homelessness. 13 The American Declaration of Independence asserts that people “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It’s a justly celebrated triad. There’s another triad in the Fifth Amendment (echoed in the Fourteenth), which says that a person cannot be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Locke said that a man “hath by Nature a Power . . . to preserve his Property, that is, his Life, Liberty and Estate, against the Injuries and Attempts of other Men” (§87). Jefferson’s triad sounds best. Locke’s is interesting, though, as is his view of life and liberty as part of what is “proper” to a person. 14 Locke’s is a theory of politics, not a theory of the state of nature, and so he envisions people leaving it to live under a government. They choose this—they are not forced to do so by a conqueror. But why might they do so? IF Man in the State of Nature be so free, as has been said; If he be absolute Lord of his own Person and Possessions, equal to the greatest, and subject to no Body, why will he part with his Freedom? Why will he give up this Empire, and subject himself to the Dominion and Controul of any other Power? To which ’tis obvious to Answer, that though in the state of Nature he hath such a right, yet the Enjoyment of it is very uncertain, and constantly exposed to the Invasion of others. For all being Kings as much as he, every Man his Equal, and the greater part no strict Observers of Equity and Justice, the enjoyment of the property he has in this state is very unsafe, very unsecure (§123). 15 This makes him willing to quit this Condition, which however free, is full of fears and continual dangers: And ’tis not without reason, that he seeks out, and is willing to joyn in Society with others who are already united, or have a mind to unite for the mutual Preservation of their Lives, Liberties and Estates, which I call by the general Name, Property (§123). The great and chief end therefore, of Mens uniting into Commonwealths, and putting themselves under Government, is the Preservation of their Property. (§124). Locke then cites three particular defects of the state of nature. First, there’s no “establish’d, settled, known Law”; second, there’s no “known and indifferent Judge”; and third, there’s often no “Power” to carry out sentences. A law of nature, privately enforced, isn’t ideal (§124–26). 16 But though Men when they enter into Society, give up the Equality, Liberty, and Executive Power they had in the State of Nature, into the hands of the Society, to be so far disposed of by the Legislative, as the good of the Society shall require; yet it being only with an intention in every one the better to preserve himself his Liberty and Property; (For no rational Creature can be supposed to change his condition with an intention to be worse) the power of the Society, or Legislative constituted by them, can never be suppos’d to extend farther than the common good; but is obliged to secure every ones Property by providing against those three defects above mentioned, that made the State of Nature so unsafe and uneasie (§131). Thus, as Locke goes on to say, the government that’s set up is expected to have “indifferent and upright Judges”— “indifferent” in the sense of being unbiased. 17 Note that when people leave the state of nature, they go through a two-stage process. It was indicated in the quota- tion from §124, which speaks “of Mens uniting into Com- monwealths, and putting themselves under Government.” The first stage consists of “uniting into Commonwealths.” By “Commonwealth,” as he makes clear in §133, he means an “Independent Community”—and another of his terms for this is “Political Society” (§87). The second stage consists of people’s “putting themselves under Government.” This completes a process by which people “enter into Society to make one People one Body Politick under one Supreme Government” (§89). 18 What is the form of this government? Locke is remarkably permissive: he says it can be a democracy, an oligarchy, a monarchy, or a mixture of the three (§132). Yet unlike some writers he speaks positively—and influenti- ally, though not very analytically—about majority rule: For when any number of Men have, by the consent of every individual, made a Community, they have thereby made that Community one Body, with a Power to Act as one Body, which is only by the will and determination of the majority. For that which acts any Community, being only the consent of the individuals of it, and it being necessary to that which is one body to move one way; it is necessary the Body should move that way whither the greater force carries it, which is the consent of the majority. . . . (§96) 19 Locke regarded “the Legislative” as “the Supream power in every Common-wealth” (§135). But (with influence on the US presidency) he believed that an executive power, if separate, should have great freedom to act in crisis: Many things there are, which the Law can by no means provide for, and those must necessarily be left to the discretion of him that has the Executive Power in his hands, to be ordered by him, as the publick good and advantage shall require: nay, ’tis fit that the Laws themselves should in some Cases give way to the Executive Power, or rather to this Fundamental Law of Nature and Government, viz. That as much as may be, all the Members of the Society are to be preserved. For since many accidents may happen, wherein a strict and rigid observation of the Laws may do harm; (as not to pull down an innocent Man’s House to stop the Fire, when the next to it is burning). . . (§159) 20 An important Lockean theme is consent. Leaving the state of nature, people give consent to the society and the govern- ment that they form. Furthermore: There is a common distinction of an express and a tacit consent, which will concern our present Case. No body doubts but an express Consent, of any Man entring into any Society, makes him a perfect Member of that Society, a Subject of that Government. The difficulty is, what ought to be look’d upon as a tacit Consent, and how far it binds, i.e. how far any one shall be looked on to have consented, and thereby submitted to any Government, where he has made no Expressions of it at all. And to this I say, that every Man, that hath any Possessions, or Enjoyment, of any part of the Dominions of any Government, doth thereby give his tacit Consent, and is as far forth obliged to Obedience to the Laws of that government, during such Enjoyment, as anyone under it (§119). 21 Another important Lockean theme is limited government. In effect, he says that people must obey their government because rational individuals, in a state of nature, would set it up. (And by living under it, they’re giving it tacit consent.) But to him, the state of nature isn’t so terribly bad. Rational individuals would only give it up because it will more fairly and more effectively protect their property. Therefore it “is not, nor can possibly be absolutely Aribtrary over the Lives and Fortunes of the People.” Its power “is limited to the publick good of the Society. It is a Power, that hath no other end but preservation, and therefore can never have a right to destroy, enslave, or designedly to impoverish the Subjects” (§119). 22 Locke’s famous right of revolution derives from this judgment that government can’t be arbitrary. If it threatens the lives, liberties, and estates that it’s supposed to protect, it forfeits the loyalties of the people. Whenever the Legislators endeavour to take away, and destroy the Property of the People, or to reduce them to Slavery under Arbitrary Power, they put themselves in a state of War with the People, who are thereupon absolved from any farther Obedience, and are left to the common Refuge, which God hath provided for all Men, against Force and Violence (§222). . . . In all States and Conditions the true remedy of Force without Authority, is to oppose Force to it. The use of force without Authority, always puts him that uses it into a state of War, as the Aggressor, and renders him liable to be treated accordingly (§155). 23 It’s hard on T. H. Green (1836– 82) to be put in a class with Locke. He didn’t even live as long; he died of blood poisoning at age 45. Yet it’s said that over 2,000 people attended his funeral: he was a philosopher with strong ethical convictions and many followers. If you read Locke, you don’t get a strong sense of moralism. Locke did stress charity, but he evoked a world of individuals who were protecting themselves and their property. Green helped make the ideology of liberalism moralistic. 24 Green’s great contribution to liberalism—though a controversial one—was the argument that there are two kinds of liberty or freedom. One was “freedom from restraint or compulsion”—the “freedom to do as we like.” The other was “a positive power or capacity of doing something or enjoying something.” People who live in homeless tents can’t do or enjoy very much. “The ideal of true freedom is the maximum of power for all members of human society alike to make the best of themselves.” People speak of “negative freedom” and “positive freedom.” (Green’s critics say there’s only “negative freedom.”) Nega- tive freedom is freedom from the oppressions of the state. Positive freedom is the freedom to be able to do things. 25 Green observed that there was no unlimited right of contract: people couldn’t sell themselves into slavery. Should someone be allowed to sign a contract for a job “under conditions fatal to health, in an unventilated factory”? No, because Every injury to the health of an individual is, so far as it goes, a public injury. It is an impediment to the general freedom; so much deduction from our power, as members of society, to make the best of ourselves. Society is, therefore, plainly within its right when it limits freedom of contract for the sale of labor, so far as is done by our laws for the sanitary regulations of factories, workshops, and mines. It is equally within its right in prohibiting the labor of women and young persons beyond certain hours. Issues like these remain embedded in our discourse. 26 In his 1941 State of the Union address, Franklin D. Roosevelt named Four Freedoms, which should exist “everywhere in the world.” Besides our “negative” First Amendment freedoms of speech and worship, he stressed “positive” freedoms from want and fear. Today, “progressive” Democrats see freedom in roughly the way FDR—and Green—did. They believe that government shouldn’t just keep taxes low; it should give people health and education and child care—and these things will make them more free. 27 The Center-Left and Left: Black Lives 1 In our course so far, we’ve emphasized ideologies that speak about the good of all—or nearly all—the members of a political community. Libertarians and social democrats (and democratic socialists) disagree on a lot but they believe that their way of doing things is right for just about everybody. Yet arguments for African American or Black liberation— or for feminism—refer to specific categories of individuals. It’s held that they’ve been oppressed for distinctive historical reasons, and that people should understand these things and make changes. The appeal is typically to a sense of simple justice—to the good that comes from living in a just society. There’s usually a call either to open up or to transform institutions. 2 We’ll begin, as does our text, with the theme of race, expecially but not exclusively in the US. Familiarly, the US had “chattel slavery” of an ugly kind—based on race and featuring auctions that often separated families. 3 Europe was generally free of chattel slavery by the modern era—it ended in Britain after 1066—though Europeans had serfs and engaged actively in the slave trade. Brazil, which was a laggard in the New World, ended slavery (without a war) in 1888. In the US, slavery ended in 1865, after four year of a Civil War. Racism persisted, and after the “compromise of 1876,” the Southern states where slavery had existed began to reimpose white dominance. “Jim Crow laws” enforced racial separation or “segregation.” (Note that while slavery involved oppression in the private sector, Jim Crow laws derived from legislatures, in states where nearly all voting came to be by whites.) 4 “Segregation” lasted till the Civil Rights Acts of 1964. 5 Our text begins its section on “Liberation Ideologies and the Politics of Identity” with Frederick Douglass (1818–95). Born a slave, his father maybe the white master, he was able to learn to read, to escape to freedom, and to gain much fame as a writer and orator. Late in life he became the US envoy to Haiti—“minister resident” and consul-general. Over the years he was a prominent supporter of women’s suffrage; Susan B. Anthony spoke at his funeral. 6 Douglass wrote three autobiographies, giving vivid accounts of the life of a slave: There was a whisper, that my master was my father; yet it was only a whisper, and I cannot say that I ever gave it credence. . . . The fact remains, in all its glaring odiousness, that, by the laws of slavery, children, in all cases, are reduced to the condition of their mothers. . . . One might imagine, that the children of such connections, would fare better, in the hands of their masters, than the slaves. The rule is quite the other way; and a very little reflection will satisfy the reader that such is the case. A man who will enslave his own blood, may not be safely relied on for magnanimity. Men do not love those who remind them of their sins. . . What is still worse, perhaps, such a child is a constant offense to the wife. She hates its very presence, and when a slaveholding woman hates, she wants not means to give that hate telling effect (Library of America 156). 7 Later, in another household, The frequent hearing of my mistress reading the bible—for she often read aloud when her husband was absent—soon awakened my curiosity in respect to this mystery of reading and roused in me the desire to learn. Having no fear of my kind mistress . . . I frankly asked her to teach me to read; and, without hesitation, the dear woman began the task, and very soon, by her assistance, I was master of the alphabet, and could spell words of three or four letters. . . . Master Hugh was amazed at the simplicity of his spouse, and, probably for the first time, he unfolded to her the true philosophy of slavery, and the peculiar rules necessary to be observed by masters and mistresses, in the management of their human chattels. Mr. Auld promptly forbade the continuance of her instruction (Lib. of Am. 216–17). 8 Still later, when Douglass was about 15, Mr. Covey entered the stable with a long rope. . . and was about tying me. As soon as I found what he was up to, I gave a sudden spring, and as I did so, he holding to my legs, I was brought sprawling on the stable floor. Mr. Covey seemed now to think he had me, and could do what he pleased; but at this moment—from whence came the spirit I don’t know—I resolved to fight, and, suiting my action to the resolution, I seized Covey hard by the throat; and as I did so, I rose. He held on to me, and I to him. My resistance was so entirely unexpected, that Covey seemed taken all aback. He trembled like a leaf. . . . The battle with Mr. Covey was the turning-point in my career as a slave. It rekindled the few expiring embers of freedom, and revived within me a sense of my own manhood. . . . The white man who expected to succeed in whipping, must also succeed in killing me. (Lib. of Am. 64–65). 9 In our assigned reading Douglass asks, “What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July?” He was speaking in 1852 and asking for the extension of a “boasted liberty.” To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour. 10 Is it not astonishing that, while we are ploughing, planting, and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver and gold; that, while we are reading, writing and ciphering, acting as clerks, merchants and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators and teachers; that, while we are engaged in all manner of enterprises common to other men, digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hillside, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives and children, and, above all, confessing and worshipping the Christian’s God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave, we are called upon to prove that we are men! 11 Beyond the US, Europeans engaged in extensive colonial conquest, especially in Asia and Africa. 12 The British conquest of India, in the 1600s and 1700s and beyond, was momentous. It was also achieved by a corporation—the East India Company, which looted the country and hired local soldiers. The Company even had its own flag, beginning in the 1600s. This took a pattern of red and white stripes from the flag of the Majapahit Empire in Southeast Asia. In 1700, India had 24.4\% of the world’s GDP; Western Europe and North America had 22.0\%. By 1950, these figures were 4.2\% and 53.5\%. 13 Europeans especially plundered Africa. The slave trade extended from 1528 to the 1800s. An estimated 12–13 million West or Central Africans were shipped across the Atlantic, with roughly 2 mil- lion dying en route and millions more dying afterward. Slavery was lucrative, as was some of the direct colonization of Africa. Belgium’s King Leopold II ruled the Congo from 1885 to 1908, not for the Belgians but as his personal project. Workers in rubber plantations—men, women, and children—had to meet quotas; their hands were amputated when they didn’t. Six to eight to ten million died. 14 Colonialism in India ended in 1947; colonialism elsewhere in Asia was nearly all gone by the 1950s; and colonialism in Africa mostly ended around 1960. As late as 1994, though, South Africa had effective rule by its white population, then around 10\%. A system called apartheid—“apart- hood”—gave Africans citizenship in newly created pseudonational “Bantustans.” 15 South Africa’s era of apartheid, from about 1948 to 1994, featured signs like those of the pre–1964 US South, though they might include a Dutch- based or an African language. 16 //upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/12/ApartheidSignEnglishAfrikaans.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DurbanSign1989.jpg In all colonized countries, voices were raised against colonialism; the yearning for national freedom is always strong. In Africa and the Caribbean, there emerged a Black consciousness movement called Négritude. Aimé Césaire (1913–2008), a Francophone poet and politician in Martinique, was among its founders. Well aware that Africa had had surgeons and architects, long before colonial conquest, he wrote, ironically: Hooray for those who have never invented anything Hooray for those who have never explored anything for those who have never subdued anything for those who open themselves up, enraptured, to the essence of things 17 What is the best method of resisting colonialism and other forms of racial oppression? An obvious method is to counter the violence of oppression with a violent rebellion. Arguably there are positive psychological consequences of standing up to and fighting an oppressor, as Frederick Douglass learned. Frantz Fanon (1925–61), a psychiatrist from Martinique who died of leukemia, made this argument in The Wretched of the Earth (1961): 18 Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) famously developed nonviolent techniques (initially in South Africa). These were especially effective when an oppressor had superior weapons but was open to moral suasion. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–68) spent five weeks in India in 1959, learning from Gandhians. 19 King won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. His speech said, After contemplation, I conclude that this award . . . is a profound recognition that nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral question of our time—the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression. Civilization and violence are antithetical concepts. Negroes of the United States, following the people of India, have demonstrated that nonviolence is not sterile passivity, but a powerful moral force which makes for social transformation. Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. If this is to be achieved, man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love. 20 Lyndon Johnson (1908– 1973), president from 1963 to 1969, did much to get major laws passed, including a Civil Rights Act (1964) and a Voting Rights Act (1965). His administration also introduced Affirmative Action, holding that You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, “you are free to compete with all the others,” and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. 21 Johnson’s domestic achievements were remarkable. He called for a “Great Society” in 1964, in a speech written by Richard Goodwin (1931–2018). “In our time, we have the opportu- nity to move not just toward the rich society or the powerful society, but toward the great society.” Legacies of LBJ include Medicare and Medicaid (in California, Medi-Cal). He also started what he called a War on Poverty. It was largely dismantled after he left office, but its legacies include food stamps (now SNAP) and the Head Start program. The Republican Party from Ronald Reagan through Donald Trump, with a large conservative movement in the background, stands in vigorous opposition to LBJ’s commitments to racial and social equality. 22 Cornel West (1953– ) has tied racial issues to broader “flaws of American society.” As of 1989, he was complaining that 1 percent of the population owned 37 percent of the wealth, and that Republicans were “playing the black, female, and and homophobic cards” to realign voters. A critic of Obama and later a supporter of Bernie Sanders, he called the 2020 election a choice between “disaster” and “catastrophe.” 23 West’s ideological standpoint is not without precedents: 24 Erik Loomis (1974– ), a historian at the University of Rhode Island, has discussed prisoners and the “forced labor the state coerces out of them. Up to 800,000 prisoners a day are put out for work without their choice, usually for extremely paltry compensation that in Louisiana is as low as 4 cents per hour.” As he indicates, the Thirteenth Amendment bans “involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for a crime.” After the Civil War, as he says, “Almost immediately, states, especially in the South, used this to control black labor.” Prisoners aren’t uniform in race, but the process continues. As we Californians know, prisoners, often heroically, combat our all too numerous forest fires. 25 Now we turn to Black Lives Matter (sometimes M4BL), which is prominent and active today. 26 27 28 Black Lives Matter was especially conspicuous in 2020, with the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, among others. Black Lives Matter Plaza is now on the north side of President’s Park, the location of the White House. It is two blocks long. 29 But as a Wikipedia entry says, The popularity of Black Lives Matter has rapidly shifted over time. Whereas public opinion on Black Lives Matter was net negative in 2018, it grew increasingly popular through 2019 and 2020. A June 2020 Pew Research Center poll found that 67\% of adult Americans, across all racial and ethnic groups, expressed some support for the Black Lives Matter movement. A later poll conducted in September 2020 showed that support among American adults had dropped to 55\%, with notable declines among whites and Hispanics. . . Another poll conducted in September 2021 showed that support . . . had not changed since the previous September. America is a polarized country, and movements favoring Blacks or African Americans have never succeeded completely or without a struggle. 30 M4BL asks America to “End the War on Black People.” This includes an end to the “criminalization and dehumanization of Black youth.” It includes prison reform, bail reform, and the abolition of capital punishment. It includes an end to the “mass surveillance of Black communities” and the end of private prisons. M4BL asks, more controversially, for “Reparations.” These would include reparations for wealth transfers from environmental racism, housing discrimination, and the denial of educational opportunities. The latter would include support for free university and college tuition and for free lifetime learning programs. There are references to a guaranteed minimal income. 31 Under the heading “Invest-Divest,” M4BL calls for “investments in the education, health and safety of Black people, instead of investments in the criminalizing, caging, and harming of Black people. We want investments in Black communities, determined by Black communities, and divestment from exploitative forces including prisons, fossil fuels, police, surveillance and exploitative corporations.” A call for “Economic Justice” features tax reform, job programs, and worker protections. A call for “Community Control” focuses on police and public schools. A call for “Political Power” emphasizes full access to the right to vote, the public funding of elections, and “the immediate release of all political prisoners.” 32 As Gallup Poll data for June–July 2019 suggest, cash reparations will be a hard sell. Still, the figure rose from 14\% in 2002 to 29\% in 2019; maybe there’s a trend. (Republicans stood at 5\%, even in 2019; they’ll be hard to move.) Still, there are plenty of other ways of making up, in part, for past wrongs. And much of the Black Lives Matter program is straightforward politics of the left. 33 Critical Race Theory (CRT) emerged in US law schools in the 1970s. It was an offshoot of “Critical Legal Studies” (CLS), a movement that was influenced by the neo-Marxist “critical theory” of the German Frankfurt School. As one of the practitioners of CLS, Robert W. Gordon, said in 1986, critical legal studies sought in part to engage in “ideological unmasking: you take a system of legal rules or practices that pretends to be neutral and even-handed, and simply show that in operation it has been differentially applied with a tilt favoring some interests over others.” There are also “discourses of resistance” against “discourses of necessity”—an insistence that things in general don’t have to be the way they are. 34 Critical Legal Studies typically emphasized class issues, so that it considered such matters as labor law and contract law. Critical Race Theory emphasized racial issues, and so it considered the way laws affected race relations. As the American Bar Association assignment says, “Like proponents of CLS, critical race theorists recognized that the law could be complicit in maintaining an unjust social order. Where critical race theorists departed from CLS was in the recognition of how race and racial inequality were reproduced through the law.” 35 Does class belong at the center of the American national narrative? Or does race? People can answer this question in different ways. In 2019, the New York Times sought to “reframe the country’s history” by giving race and the legacy of slavery a central position. From this standpoint it could gain many insights. Yet as we’ve seen, Martin Luther King Jr. made statements sympathetic to socialism; Cornel West has criticized Barack Obama and spoken for Bernie Sanders. CRT, though, has focused primarily on race. 36 The American Bar Association summarizes several issues clearly, including the purpose of CRT and the Supreme Court case of 1954, Brown v. Board of Education, which ordered school desegregation. Foundational questions that underlie CRT and the law include: How does the law construct race?; How has the law protected racism and upheld racial hierarchies?; How does the law reproduce racial inequality?; and How can the law be used to dismantle race, racism, and racial inequality? The late Harvard Law Professor Derrick Bell, in Brown v. Board of Education and the Interest-Convergence Dilemma, noted that the Fourteenth Amendment alone could not effectively promote racial equality for Black people where such a remedy threatened the superior social status of wealthy white people. 37 The concept of “systemic racism” is often associated with CRT. It’s traceable to a concept of “institutional racism” urged in 1967 in a book called Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America, by Stokely Carmichael (later Kwame Ture) and Charles V. Hamilton. 38 The notion that there is “systemic racism” isn’t hard to grasp. President Biden has said, “Systemic racism is a stain on our nation’s soul.” It may be partly for this reason that the existence of CRT has begun to fade from the media: As an article in the Washington Post for Oct. 6, 2021, says, Fox News mentioned the term 993 times in June and 921 times in July—compared to 132 times in all of 2020. In September 2021, though, it was mentioned only 150 times. 39 In America we resolve many matters through the courts. In 1972, for example, in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, a 5–4 majority of the Supreme Court held that there is no federal right to education, and that school districts based on property taxes (and therefore unequal) are not unconstitutional. In such a country, there is an obvious place for CRT (and CLS, too). Surely we have systemic racism—and also systemic discrimi- nation based on class. And unlike in other democracies, we let our Supreme Court resolve many pressing interests. Inevitably, some people are going to study how the law serves the interests of dominant ethnic and class groups. Those linked to CRT (and CLS) are among them. 40 The Center-Left and Left: Feminism and Beyond 1 We’ll now talk about women, who didn’t get their rights easily. In 1917, they were marching for the right to vote. 2 http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cd/Suffragists_Parade_Down_Fifth_Avenue,_1917.JPG Women’s marches have continued—as on Jan. 21, 2017. 3 Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–97), the wife of the anarchist William Godwin, as well as the mother of the author of Frankenstein, was a brilliant early advocate of women’s rights. A prolific writer before her death after childbirth, she was in France during the Revolution, writing a history of it and writing her Vindication of the Rights of Women in 1792. She both argued and demonstrated that women, given proper education, were intellectual equals of men. 4 In 1848, in Seneca Falls, NY, between Rochester and Syracuse, there was a Convention that drew women from many regions and asserted rights for women. 5 The Convention was mostly female but included some males including Frederick Douglass. It asserted, “When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man to assume among the people of the earth a position different from that which they have hitherto occupied, but one to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind . . .” This is an example of moderate demands, made within an established political framework. Women weren’t asking to feminize American culture in some way; they were asking for rights of voting, property ownership, and the like that men already had. 6 Even the women at Seneca Falls had a sense that the evil of slavery outweighed the evil of the oppression of women. They held back in making demands, and women didn’t get the right to vote until 1920. This was half a century after the Constitution rejected race as a criterion and two more years after the Fourteenth Amendment kept states from limiting the right of “male citizens” to vote—e.g., “for the choice of electors for President.” 7 After the suffragists won in many countries, there was a lag in women’s political activity. In France, the prominent intellectual Simone de Beauvoir wrote an influential book, The Second Sex, in 1949, which dealt with rights, sexuality, and much else. In America, The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan, appeared in 1963, criticizing the view that women were destined to be only housewives and mothers. Later came NOW, the National Organization for Women. There was an Equal Pay Act of 1963 and much litigation in the late 1960s. 8 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mystique.jpg Marilyn Frye (1941– ) has gone even further beyond early demands for the absorption of women into an existing political framework. Understanding Feminism portrays her as someone “known for her radical view that women’s oppression is a result of the institution of compulsory heterosexuality. . . . Frye argues that the reality of patriarchy systematically excludes women, and especially lesbians, from the possibilities of meaning- making in contemporary society. . . . Frye diagnoses women’s complicity in their own subjugation as vital to maintaining this phallocratic reality. . .” 9 To Frye, in a well-known passage extracted in our reader, Consider a birdcage. If you look very closely at one wire in the cage, you cannot see the other wires. . . . There is no physical property of any one wire, nothing that the closest scrutiny could discover, that will reveal how a bird could be inhibited or harmed by it except in the most accidental way. It is only when you step back . . . and take a macroscopic view of the cage, that you can see why the bird does not go anywhere; and then you will see it in a moment. . . . It is perfectly obvious that the bird is surrounded by a network of systematically related barriers, no one of which would be the least hindrance to its flight, but which, by their relations to each other, are as confining as the solid walls of a dungeon. 10 The arresting of vision at a microscopic level yields such common confusion as that about the male door-opening ritual. This ritual . . . puzzles many people, some of whom do and some of whom do not find it offensive. . . . The message of the false helpfulness of male gallantry is female dependence, the invisibility or insignificance of women, and contempt for women. Nipping at one’s heels, always, is the endless pack of little things. If one dresses one way, one is subject to the assumption that one is advertising one’s sexual availability; if one dresses another way, one appears to “not care about oneself” or to be “unfeminine.” Women are oppressed, as women. . . . But men are not oppressed as men. 11 bell hooks is the penname, taken from her great-grandmother, of a woman born in Kentucky in 1952. She graduated from Stanford and got a Ph.D. from UC Santa Cruz. Eventually, after some years in California, she relocated to Kentucky, at Berea College, where she is Distinguished Professor in Residence in Appalachian Studies. Our reading is directed in part to men who “have no idea what it is that feminists want.” It’s also directed to women who’ve gained economic power and forgotten “revolutionary feminist visions” intended to “end sexist oppression.” Some Wikiquotes follow: 12 American women, without exception, are socialized to be racist, classist and sexist, in varying degrees, and . . . we must consciously work to rid ourselves of the legacy of negative socialization. Revolutionary feminism embraces men who are able to change, who are capable of responding mutually in a subject-to-subject encounter where desire and fulfillment are in no way linked to coercive subjugation. This feminist vision of the sexual imaginary is the space few men seem able to enter. Feminism is the struggle to end sexist oppression. Therefore, it is necessarily a struggle to eradicate the ideology of domination that permeates Western culture on various levels, as well as a commitment to reorganizing society so that the self- development of people can take precedence over imperialism, economic expansion, and material desires. 13 Berea College is in Appalachia, though it’s only forty miles from Lexington, which is horse country and not in the mountains. Berea was founded in 1855 and started right away to admit females and African Americans. It’s a liberal arts college with no tuition. Students do, however, have to work. 14 Josephine Livingstone got a Ph.D. in English from NYU in 2015, and she’s a staff writer at The New Republic. Writing in November 2017 on the #MeToo movement and its successes in exposing sexual harassment, she warns that “this model for gender justice, in which a villain is brought low to give the public their satisfaction, does not eradicate the power imbalances and resulting fear that animate harass- ment.” All the movement is saying is, “Do not abuse.” Issues involving “trans, nonbinary, and non-conforming gender identities have been shunted to the side”—even as transgender people suffer hideous abuse. 15 As comments by Frye and Livingstone suggest, calls for gender justice easily get linked to LGBTQ, or LGBTQ+, issues. In the US, gay rights activism is often traced to the Stonewall rebellion of 1969, which was a response to a police raid at a gay bar in Green- wich Village. Gay Pride marches began in 1970. As late as 1950, a US Senate report had said, “It is generally believed that those who engage in overt acts of perversion lack the emotional stability of normal persons.” As late as 1996, gay marriage was favored by only 27\% of Americans, as recorded in Gallup polls. 16 That’s changed impressively. But the Supreme Court decision that legalized it, Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), was decided by only a 5–4 majority, including the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg. These kinds of struggles go on. 17 And as our reading from Black Lives Matter emphasizes, the struggles we’ve been talking about are intertwined. 18 Protests in America, based on ethnicity, have hardly been limited to Blacks. In California, a farm workers’ movement led by César Chávez (1927–93)—most effectively during the 1960s—was conspicuous. Many bumper stickers then said “UVAS NO” or “NO GRAPES.” 19 Discrimination against Asians has deep roots. Only in 1940 was citizenship extended to people descended from China, India, and the Philippines—with ethnic discrimination in citizenship fully barred in 1952. Legal rights, unfortunately, do not rule out hate crimes or expres- sions of hate. 20 Native Americans have had a disastrous experience. In the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote on America’s “three races,” and he said of them, “their calamities appear irremediable.” Activism occurs, though, as in protests against the Energy Transfer Partners’ Dakota Access Pipeline. Some changes have occurred since Joe Biden’s victory. 21 22 We’re coming to the end of the first major section of our course, dealing with ideologies of the left and center-left. I’m now going to provide some retrospective comments on this set of ideologies, and I’ll begin showing some slides that have already been shown. Most of them come from our first and second classes of the quarter (Ideo1-1 and Ideo2-1). One comes from later (Ideo 2-4). 23 While making various assertions, including about political arrangements, ideologies typically deal in large part with matters of economic distribution. Should a proposed reduction in taxes benefit the rich, the middle class, or the poor? 24 Some people imagine that America has never had “class struggles” between rich and poor. John Adams, however, said (Defence III [1789], 299): In every society where property exists, there will ever be a struggle between rich and poor. He was, in general, on the side of the rich (294): It must be remembered that the rich are people as well as the poor; that they have rights as well as others; that they have as clear and as sacred a right to their large property as others have to theirs which is smaller. . . 25 To James Madison in 1787, in the tenth Federalist paper: A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, in amed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good. An attachment to leaders? People “disposed to vex and oppress each other”? It was a totally different world! 26 But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views. The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the government. 27 Since the French Revolution, people’s ideological stances have been linked with a left-right spectrum. The Right: ● A belief that inequality is justified and should not be opposed. ● Resistance to change that would be innovative. ● Suspicion (usually) of a governmental role in the economy. The Left: ● Advocacy of greater equality. ● Support for change that would be innovative. ● Acceptance (usually) of a governmental role in the economy. 28 Libertarians are economic conservatives (or reactionaries) who want a limited role for government—while also wanting government to avoid social intrusions. Social democrats are the people who, in America, are usually called liberals or progressives. They favor private ownership of the means of production and distribution but also universal health insurance, accessible higher education, poverty relief, and the like. Socialists and Communists oppose capitalism: they advocate the public ownership of the means of production and distribution. Fascists are a rather specialized group on the extreme right, as we’ll see. 29 Is America becoming ideologically polarized? People often say this, and data for Congress bear it out. 30 Where does freedom fit into the world’s ideologies? The ideologies that are prominent in America all claim to uphold it. The word “liberal” derives from the Latin word liber, free, and is of course related to the word “liberty.” This is also true of the word “libertarian,” as well as the word “neoliberalism,” which we’ll discuss as we proceed. Nearly all American profess to believe in freedom. But here’s the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens: “Political liberty consists in the power of doing whatever does not injure another” (p. 104 [in our text]). Injure another? Doesn’t not wearing masks injure others, at least potentially? And not being vaccinated? And what about abortion—does a fetus count? 31 Arthur Cecil Pigou (1877–1959) was an economist at Cambridge University, who in 1920 introduced the concept of an “externality.” The is the effect of a transaction—beneficial or detrimental— on a third party. Build a university in a city, and the restaurant owners will gain. Build an industry that spews smoke into the air, and people nearby will have shortened lives. Pigou favored taxes or regulations for such businesses, which didn’t like appreciate his proposals. But weren’t they exercising a freedom in a way that injured others? And shouldn’t people be free to live out their lives? 32 A very famous example of an externality is, of course, climate change. It’s been called “the externality to end all externalities.” (Another term for externalities is “neigh- borhood effects.” Climate change is a gigantic neighbor- hood effect.) Fossil fuel industries don’t like taxes and regulations, and one fossil fuel executive, Charles Koch (1935– ) of Koch Industries, who’s maybe the 20th richest person in the world, is a devoted libertarian who’s spent vast money on lobbyists and university professorships. He almost single- handedly kept America from getting major legislation in 2010, as described in a book called Kochland. 33 It’s easy to see someone like Charles Koch as an example of capitalism, and many environmentalists have become opponents of capitalism. To be fair, however, China isn’t capitalist and burns lots and lots of coal. American political parties don’t want to slow development to save the planet and thereby lose votes; the Chinese Communist Party doesn’t want to do this and thereby lose support. Maybe the true ideology of the world, at the moment, is developmentalism—and transcends all the other things we’ve been talking about. 34 Inequality has grown dramatically in some parts of the world, including ours, since 1980. 35 36 37 38 A sign of change in the American economy is the decline of private sector unionization. In the 1950s (when America was great?) this rate was over one third. The figure for 2020 was 6.3\%. What happened? Part of it stemmed from globalization (the transfer of jobs to China) and from technology (robotics etc.) But another important source was corporate practices and laws (federal and especially state) advocated by business interests. 39 Wisconsin has shown the effectiveness of laws hindering labor unions. Scott Walker in Wisconsin, as governor from 2011 to 2019, acted effectively against them, especially by getting a “right-to- work” law passed in 2015. 40 Political power in the US (and other countries) has much to do with economic power. Today many people talk about the economic power of billionaires; few people talk about the economic power of labor (with the slight exception of public sector unions, such as those of teachers and police). In the heyday of the US car industry, GM and Ford had strong labor unions. Walmart and Amazon aren’t unionized—and both have fought furiously and successfully against efforts to change this. It isn’t the same in many European countries, as the graph in the next slide shows (for private and public sector rates of unionization). 41 42 Social democracy tends to be strongest in countries with high rates of unionization. Scandinavia is an example; the gap between the US and Canada is relevant. This week (Sept. 26 to Oct. 2, 2021) progressive Demo- crats are trying to pass a $3.5 trillion infrastructure bill, on top of a $1.2 trillion bipartisan bill, which would include money for public housing, clean energy, a tax cut for working families, a lowered price for prescription drugs, universal pre-K education for 3- and 4-year-olds, tuition free community colleges, funding for historically black colleges and universities, expanded Pell Grants, “lawful permanent status for qualified immigrants,” and some other things. The bill is in doubt. 43 The bill is in doubt in large part because we’re a country with low unionization. Progressives lack the political base that’s traditionally supported social democratic programs. Yet Americans do, according to polls, broadly support the proposals in the $3.5 trillion infrastructure bill. Another barrier is that the Democrats have extremely narrow margins in the House and Senate, and some of their members are definite moderates. If the bill were to pass in its current form, the US would move substantially toward social democracy. Yet it would still not have universal health insurance, as other economically advanced countries do. 44 In the next slide (the last one taken from earlier classes), I address the old question, “Why Is There No Socialism in the United States.” Please bear in mind that a closely related question is also valid: “Why Is There So Little Social Democracy in the United States?” It’s true that since 2010 we’ve had the Affordable Care Act, which extends health insurance to millions of people who weren’t covered before. But we still have millions of people who aren’t covered—and things are very different in, for example, Canada and Britain and Germany (not to mention the Nordic countries). 45 In the United States, few people call themselves socialists. In 1906 a German scholar, Werner Sombart published a book whose title asked a question: Warum gibt es in den Vereinigten Staaten keinen Sozialismus? Even Karl Marx and his col- laborator Friedrich Engels wondered about this. One answer is that America has fragmented ethnic groups, because of race and immigration. Another answer is that the frontier once provided vast opportunities. A third answer is that America developed habits of controlling labor in the era of slavery. 46 To me, the main answer is the first one I gave—that America has fragmented ethnic groups, because race and immigration. This has made it difficult for disadvantaged groups to organize effectively. In a way James Madison anticipated this, when he spoke of large countries in the tenth Federalist paper of 1787: Extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will . . . discover their own strength, and . . . act in unison with each other. When Madison was envisioning majorities, he was envisioning the poor in contrast to the wealthy few. He was focusing on demands for economic equality—and suggesting that in a fragmented country, the poor would tend not to make them. 47 Mark Lilla, a professor at Columbia, stirred up controversy when he blamed the Democrats’ defeat in 2016 on their “identity politics.” In a New York Times article, he said, It is a truism that America has become a more diverse country. It is also a beautiful thing to watch. . . . But how should this diversity shape our politics? The standard liberal answer for nearly a generation now has been that we should become aware of and “celebrate” our differences. Which is a splendid principle of moral pedagogy — but disastrous as a foundation for democratic politics in our ideological age. In recent years American liberalism has slipped into a kind of moral panic about racial, gender and sexual identity that has distorted liberalism’s message and prevented it from becoming a unifying force capable of governing. By “liberalism,” of course, he mean what I’m usually calling social democracy. 48 https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/opinion/sunday/the-end-of-identity-liberalism.html In my view, America needs the Movement for Black Lives, and it needs feminists of several different sorts. We’re a country that had slavery and later discrimination, and that long denied women the basic right to vote. The right “to petition the Government for a redress of grievances” continues to be applicable. But while “identity politics” is here to stay, it means that the “left”—understood as the group of people who favor equality—has people with different commitments. Sometimes these commitments clash, or they direct people’s energies in different directions. “Divide and rule” is an ancient formula. In part because the left is so divided, their opponents tend to rule on many matters, and we have both economic inequality and a continuing need for M4BL and much else. 49