Treating the Symptoms, Not the Disease
The Failure of Liberalism
September 8th, 2010
“I'm glad the commies were thrown out
Of the A.F.L. C.I.O. board
I love Puerto Ricans and Negros
As long as they don't move next door
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal” - Phil Ochs, “Love Me, I'm a Liberal” 1966
Liberalism/progressivism is a fundamentally flawed ideology. By liberalism, I mean an ideology that seeks to enact reforms aimed at reducing inequality and/or protecting the environment without making any fundamental structural or institutional changes. They want more equality and a clean environment but also to maintain the current systems of capitalism and representative government. Exclusively making minor reforms to the prevailing social structure, even when it makes genuine improvements, neglects the underlying root causes of social problems and ends up treating the symptoms, not the disease. Although they think of themselves as promoting some form of equality, liberals often act in the interests of privileged groups and perpetuate prejudice and injustice against less privileged groups. Many single-issue liberal groups have such a narrow focus that they end up promoting one form of oppression in order to undermine a different form of oppression. These problems can be seen in many of the liberal groups and publications active over the last several years, including Beyond Coal, the Right Side of History LGBTQ, and liberal views of US foreign policy.
The Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign exhibits many of the flaws of liberalism. The campaign argues that coal is the worst possible fuel, and that everyone should therefore switch to a different fuel (any fuel) for its energy needs. While coal is a principle cause of global warming, its not necessarily the worst possible fuel. Nuclear power creates radioactive waste that can't easily be disposed of. Solar power requires copper and the mining of copper is extremely destructive to the environment. Using hydro-fracking to extract natural gas from Shale as an alternative to coal poisons our water. Trading global warming for poisoned water is not much of an improvement.
The root of the problem is an economic system, capitalism, based on growth for the sake of growth. An economic system based on infinite growth on a finite planet will inevitably lead to environmental problems regardless of what type of energy it employs. The Sierra Club will not call for the abolition of capitalism because it would alienate many donors (especially wealthy donors) and undermine their ability for their paid staff to continue being paid staff. The world should obviously stop using coal as a major energy source, but by narrowly focusing only on coal Beyond Coal risks trading one environmental problem for another and neglects the root cause of environmental problems.
Far worse than Beyond Coal is The Right Side of History (now called Friendfactor), a business masquerading as a protest movement. Based on what their website called a “proof-of-concept pilot,” their original aim was to amass the largest list of straight supporters of what they call LGBT equality in the country. How amassing this list will advance their cause they did not say. Presumably, such a large list could be used to solicit large amounts of donations or sold to another organization, which could use it for similar purposes. While all non-profits with a paid leadership have a tendency to put making money ahead of their original goal (so that their paid leaders can continue being paid), RSOH's website honestly discusses its “entrepreneurial” goals and openly uses business terminology. Over the summer, they renamed themselves “Friendfactor,” and decided they would become a social networking website. In short, they are going to become a Facebook-like company, using LGBT rights as a hook to get people to use their product. Their new website states they rely on Synthesis Corp. for “go-to-market strategy.”
Until this summer, all of RSOH's paid national leaders were rich white men with a background in management (they added a rich white woman over the summer). RSOH was founded by Brian Elliot, a business leader with a degree in “Social Entrepreneurship” who previously worked at a “venture philanthropy firm, Endeavor Global” and, before that, at Bridgespan, a management consulting firm dressed up as a non-profit. Prior to becoming a RSOH leader, Daniel Heller was a consultant for Infosys, a company that specializes in helping other companies outsource operations from high wage parts of the world to places with lower wages, thereby impoverishing workers. Another leader, Jeff Green, was a Vice President at Citi Smith Barney, a brokerage firm and part of Citigroup. Citigroup received a multi-billion dollar bailout, stole money from its customers, and was involved in the collateralized debt obligations that caused the stock market crash of 2008. The members of RSOH's advisory board are all CEOs and other members of the elite. There are no workers in RSOH national leadership positions.
RSOH has made clear their classist prejudices in the articles they have published. They claim “a coalition of Harvard Business and Kennedy school graduates is the new brainpower behind” their organization and brag that it is led by the people who “run Fortune 500 Companies,” a “goldmine of young professional talent.” This classist rhetoric is prejudiced against workers because it values the involvement of wealthy elites over the involvement of workers. Nor does it seem to bother them that the leaders of Fortune 500 companies wrecked the economy and obtained bailouts in order to enrich themselves. Since most LGBT people are workers, RSOH is actually only advocating the interests of a privileged minority of LGBT people (wealthy LGBT people) while promoting prejudice against the working class majority of LGBT people. The fact that RSOH is releasing classist and militaristic statements says something about its politics.
The handful of tiny rallies they organized against the military's “Don't Ask, Don't Tell” policy are additional examples of RSOH advocating the interests of privileged LGBTs at the expense of the majority of queers, who are not wealthy, white, or American. Although focused on DADT, their events were de-facto warmonger pro-military rallies. Their ads repeat the myth that by trying to join the military one is "standing up for our rights and freedoms" - a standard militaristic line. The U.S. military does not protect anyone's freedoms. In fact, it is a threat to freedom because it is directly used against domestic dissidents (like at the 2008 RNC), exports methods of repression to the police (like they did at the G20 in Pittsburgh), and props up oppressive dictatorships in other countries (like Afghanistan). The war in Afghanistan killed more people than 9-11, so the "solution" is worse than the problem. Furthermore, more people die of suicide every year than died in 9-11. The threat of terrorism is over-hyped. Iran or Iraq getting weapons of mass destruction is no worse than the U.S. having more nukes than anyone else. If you take the U.S. government's logic seriously, it implies that its okay to attack the U.S. (like on 9-11) because the U.S. has WMDs.
RSOH has argued that lifting DADT will increase the number of recruits. That argument is premised on the assumption that increasing the number of recruits is a good thing. Increasing the number of recruits in the military objectively aids war by making it easier to for the military to attack other countries. They should ban straights from military service, too. That way there would be fewer people in the military, and it'd be harder for the U.S. to murder Afghans, Iraqis, etc. If you support the military-industrial complex, or the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, then this is an organization for you. Militarism wrapped in "gay rights" rhetoric is still militarism.
Like many other liberals, this "Right Side of History" group focuses so narrowly on a single form of oppression that it ends up reinforcing other forms of oppression. If they achieved everything they want we would end up with a situation where rich gays exploit poor gays, gay soldiers kill gay third-worlders, etc. By focusing on the inclusion of LGBT people in the military they are actually harming the majority of LGBT people around the world. Most LGBT people are not American and are more likely to be killed by the American military than to try to join it. Increasing the number of recruits in the U.S. military harms most LGBT people around the world because it makes it easier for the military to kill them. Equal participation in the extermination of other peoples isn't the kind of equality we should be striving for.
RSOH purports to be “this generation's civil rights movement” yet their actions and ideology have little in common with the actual Civil Rights Movement. The Civil Rights Movement was largely led by socialists and black nationalists, not liberals/progressives. Most liberals of the sixties denounced the Civil Rights Movement for not being “pragmatic” and demanding “freedom now” rather than slow change. A hundred years of liberal's slow, gradual change failed to end overt segregation; had Civil Rights activists lined up behind liberal gradualism overt segregation would still be around today. The Civil Rights Movement marched in middle of the street, repeatedly broke laws, and intentionally increased tensions around racial issues. They spoke a language of justice, not entrepreneurship. RSOH does none of this.
Unlike RSOH, Civil Rights activists also organized around issues of class and militarism, rather than sweeping them under the rug. When he was murdered Martin Luther King Jr. was organizing a “poor people's campaign” to fight economic inequality. He was assassinated while supporting a strike of sanitation workers in Memphis. King also denounced militarism, advocated U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, and called the U.S. government the “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” RSOH's claim to be “this generation's civil rights movement” is just a marketing slogan.
Related to RSOH's militarism is the analysis of U.S. foreign policy often advanced by liberals. Their argument against the Bush' administration’s foreign policy was that torture and invasions by the United States fuel what they call “extremism” or “terrorism” and should therefore be stopped in order to halt the spread of “extremism.” In practice, they equate retaliation against the U.S. for its aggression against other countries with “extremism” or “terrorism” but when the United States is violent towards other countries, they do not label that “extremism” or “terrorism.” Liberals generally continue to make this argument today, even though Obama has continued the wars launched by his predecessor.
The liberal argument implies that torture and imperialism would be okay if they didn't result in resentment and retaliation against the United States. It is basically an immoral argument: the United States shouldn't engage in torture, conquest, and mass murder not because those things are unethical but because the costs are too high. Liberals complain that these policies promote the United States not in the image of democracy-builder, but, instead, as an imperialist force that seeks to violently press its way of life on another people at the expense of human life, but the United States is an imperialist force that seeks to violently press its way of life on other peoples at the expense of human life. The torture and wars they complain of prove this to be the case. Liberals’ goal is basically the same as conservatives; they both advance the interests of U.S. imperial hegemony. Liberals merely wants to use different methods to achieve the same imperialist goal, like using education (instead of bullets) to convince people in other countries not to resist U.S. aggression.
Whether coming from the Sierra Club, corporate LGBT groups, or any other source liberalism/progressivism is a fundamentally flawed ideology. At best liberals miss the root cause of the ills they complain of. At worst they promote the interests of the wealthy, perpetuate racism, promote imperialism, and support one form of oppression in order to weaken another form of oppression. What is needed, and what is truly practical, is not the minor cosmetic changes liberals propose but a radical restructuring of society along non-hierarchical lines. A kinder, gentler oppression is still oppression.