The Long Sixties: “Lefty” Hooligan, “What’s Left?”, September 2023

The Sixties, henceforth designated the Long Sixties, are a touchstone for me. I make a lot of “coming late to the party” as I became aware of politics only in 1968 at age 16. And so I return to this period of my life obsessively in my writing. This piece treats the historical period as crucially intertwined with the history of the United States. To understand what I’m hoping to accomplish, consider that from one perspective the Vietnam War (1946-1975) was a war for national liberation—part of the decolonization wave of Africa, Asia and Latin America—that saw the defeat of first France and then the United States, and inspired similar armed struggles around the globe. But from another perspective America’s initial involvement in the Vietnam War—when the US first shipped military aid to the French colonial administration in 1950 and Eisenhower first sent military advisors to train the South Vietnamese Army in 1955—was crucial to the historical impact of the Long Sixties through the numerous movements I detail below. Because so much happened in these two decades, I’m necessarily selective about what I’m including in this synopsis. Instead of my regular column, I’m fashioning this as a type of “CliffsNotes,” a shorthand attempt to summarize the Long Sixties every time I drop the term. Expect this to be periodically updated in future installments as I expound and expand on it.

THE LONG SIXTIES: 1955-1975:
Contours Of U.S. History:

Colonial origins, continental expansion (Manifest Destiny) with displacement of the native population, and hemispheric hegemony (Monroe Doctrine). Capitalist individualism and entrepreneurialism alongside Black plantation slavery, Civil War, failed Reconstruction, codification of Jim Crow racial segregation reinforced by white supremacist terrorism. Beginnings of empire and imperialist interventionism, robber baron capitalism mythologizing laissez-faire while creating monopoly, US entry onto international stage with first World War. Assumption of two-camp capitalist/socialist global division around 1917 Russian Revolution, economic crisis in world capitalism, Great Depression, beginning of US welfare state with FDR/New Deal. Second World War between fascist Axis powers and US/USSR allies of convenience, US supersedes British imperial reach. Post-war consolidation of American corporate state and Pax Americana.

Elements Of The Long Sixties:

• American Way Of Life: American Liberalism’s welfare state, as constructed by Franklin D. Roosevelt (New Deal), Harry Truman (Square Deal), John F. Kennedy (New Frontier), and Lyndon Johnson (Great Society), integrated with the team cooperation, bureaucratic management, and multinational scope of Monopoly Capitalism. The individual subsumed to the organization. This required worker-management cooperation to guarantee labor peace through a liberal corporatist consensus. The American Way of Life defined a time of suburbanization, consumerism, material surplus and affluence; “the world’s highest standard of living.”

• The Cold War: The post-second World War division of the world into two contending power blocs, the US-dominated “Free World” and the USSR-dominated “Communist bloc.” Instead of direct military conflicts between the two superpowers, proxy or brush wars were fought indirectly between their spheres of influence, often in nations on the periphery (Korea, Vietnam). Anti-imperialist wars of national liberation often relied on asymmetrical guerrilla warfare to achieve decolonization, national self-determination and putative socialism. The rise of China (PRC) and the Third World further fractured and complicated the Cold War internationally. A bipartisan Cold War consensus about the means and ends of American foreign policy against the Soviet threat was considered to have prevailed domestically

• Rock Music/Youth Culture: The cross-pollination of rhythm-and-blues and gospel music from American Black culture with country/western music to create rock-and-roll, a cross fertilization of ethnic and regional styles that included the trend toward inter-racial bands. Rock Music/Youth Culture emphasized the importance of youth trends, tastes, and consumption and spread almost immediately to Britain, then to Western Europe, and finally to the rest of the world. A number of distinct rock-and-roll sub genres emerged by the late 1960s (blues rock, folk rock, country rock, psychedelic rock, jazz/rock fusion, progressive rock, heavy metal, etc). Dovetailing with the Beat Generation’s nihilism, youthful rebellion became social discontent that, when combined with quasi-sacramental drug use and liberated sexuality, formed the “turn on, tune in, drop out” freethinking communalist Hippie Counterculture/Youth Movement. Large, multi-day music festivals and intentional communities were hallmarks of the movement. The collective organizing, urban cooperatives and back-to-the-land rural communes of the San Francisco Diggers, Merry Pranksters, Good Earth, Hog Farm, White Panther Party, UATW-MF, etc. attempted to establish a practical alternative society on the ground and had decidedly anarchistic sensibilities.

• Civil Rights Movement: Starting with Brown vs Board of Education, the NAACP, and desegregation the rise of Black protest, nonviolent civil disobedience and various tactics (marches, boycotts, sit-ins, etc) through ML King, SCLC, SNCC and CORE. The move away from moderate incrementalism and nonviolent civil disobedience led to the Black Power Movement as enunciated by Stokely Carmichael and embodied by the Black Panther Party (BPP) for Self Defense. Both revolutionary Black nationalist and socialist, the BPP was influenced by one of the legacies of slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction—Black Nationalism—specifically Marcus Garvey (Back to Africa) and the Nation of Islam (Black separatism) both of which emphasized cultural and economic autonomy. The BPP monitored the Oakland Police with armed patrols and ran a Free Breakfast for Children Program. In turn, Black Power led to Brown Power (Brown Berets, Young Lords Party), Yellow Power (Red Guard, I Wor Kuen), and Red Power (American Indian Movement). The Black Student Union and Third World Liberation Front at San Francisco State College led a successful 3-month-long strike demanding ethnic studies in 1968, and AIM occupied the island of Alcatraz for nearly 19 months (1969-1971).

• New Left: Students for a Democratic Society, founded in 1962, and the sit-in occupation at UC Berkeley in 1964-65 known as the Free Speech Movement represented an ever-widening student rebellion that consciously set itself apart from the party-oriented/class-oriented Old Left of the Socialist Party (social democratic), Communist Party USA (Marxist-Leninist), and Socialist Workers Party (Trotskyist). The New Left’s sit-ins, teach-ins, occupations, demonstrations and strikes in colleges and universities across the country cross-pollinated with the Hippie Counterculture and the Anti-Vietnam War Movement, sometimes producing hybrids like the Yippies. SDS continued with university and community/neighborhood organizing, shifting to anti-draft/anti-war work as the 60s went on. The attempt by the anti-revisionist Maoist Progressive Labor Party-Worker/Student Alliance to take over SDS led to sectarianism, factional infighting and splintering, and eventual dissolution. An ever-increasingly fractious landscape of multiplying groupuscules known as the New Communist Movement roughly polarized between a clandestine armed struggle tendency [Weatherman/Weather Underground Organization, May 19th Communist Organization, Black Liberation Army, Symbionese Liberation Army, et al] and a vanguard party-building tendency [October League/Communist Party (Marxist–Leninist), Revolutionary Union/Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, Organization for Revolutionary Unity, League of Revolutionary Struggle, Communist Workers Party, Sojourner Truth Organization, Venceremos Organization, ad nauseam] The NCM’s ideological hodgepodge of anti-revisionism, anti-imperialism, anti-racism, anti-sexism, support for Cuba, Vietnam, national liberation struggles generally and various Third World ideologies, Maoism, Stalinism, Hoxhaism, etc., never congealed into a single coherent organization. Its endless wrangling over the “correct line,” macho posturing, overt homophobia, and support for genocidal Third World movements (Khmer Rouge, Shining Path) were notable negatives. A notable positive was the turn to rank-and-file labor organizing (Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement, Miners for Democracy, Teamsters for a Democratic Union, etc) emphasized in the Long Seventies (1965-1981). Other tendencies survived the collapse of SDS with a revival of anarchism, a Gramscian/socialist-feminist New American Movement etc. And the NCM was paralleled by a bewildering proliferation of Trotskyist groupuscules (International Socialists, Revolutionary Socialist League, Freedom Socialist Party, etc,) [Precursor Revolutionary Labor Movements: The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) with its emphasis on direct action and use of free speech fights. The Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO, later Congress of Industrial Organizations) with its stress on collective bargaining and use of the sit-down tactic. Both deployed various labor actions (strikes, boycotts, slowdowns, sabotage, etc) culminating in the all-encompassing General Strike.]

• The Women’s Liberation Movement had its roots in Women’s Suffrage, with the goal of complete social equality for women, ending the patriarchy, and ultimately abolishing all sexual and social hierarchies in a realization of full human intersectionality. Feminist organizations included NOW (liberal), New American Movement (socialist), Bread and Roses (anarchist), and Redstockings (radical). Because homosexuality was illegal until recently, the Gay Liberation Movement relied on secret social clubs—Mattachine Society for gay men, Daughters of Bilitis for lesbian women—to organize. The San Francisco Compton’s Cafeteria Riot in 1966 and the New York Stonewall Riot in 1969 propelled the Movement into the public eye.

• Ecology Movement: The first pictures of the whole earth from space inspired both Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog and the environmental movement, which celebrated the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970. Environmental organizations range from liberal (Sierra Club) to radical (Earth First!). Without the planet there were no sixties, long or otherwise.

• GI/Veterans Movement: Whereas Black Americans constituted just 12% of the population, they occupied 31% of the ground combat positions in Vietnam and suffered 24% of the casualties. Martin Luther King called Vietnam a white man’s war but a Black man’s fight. It was also a rich man’s war but a poor man’s fight, in that high school grads had to go off to fight in Vietnam while the children of the educated got college deferments. After the Tet Offensive the US was losing the war although few citizens realized it and almost none admitted it. There were nearly a half million American troops in-country by 1967. Drug use among the troops—from marijuana to heroin—was rampant, as was racial unrest. What followed was the near-collapse of the US Military with murder, riot, beatings, arson and mass refusal to deploy or follow orders. Troop casualties rose annually, reaching nearly 17,000 in 1968, at which time Nixon’s combined strategy of Vietnamization and expanding the air war across Southeast Asia went into effect. A growing number of US military bases in this country and abroad were host to anti-war GI coffee houses off base where propaganda and organizing was available. And veterans were returning to the burgeoning mass Anti-Vietnam War Movement in the streets spearheading creative protests like Operation Dewey Canyon III in 1971 where Vietnam Veterans Against the War threw back their medals, awards, ribbons and commendations onto the US Capitol building. Early anti-conscription, civil disobedience and anti-war organizing came from traditional peace groups (Quakers, War Resisters League) and took hold among students facing the draft. The Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party formed the New Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (New Mobe) in 1966 and organized ever larger national marches and rallies, a mass demonstration strategy demanding “immediate withdrawal” as opposed to “negotiated peace.” Replaced by the SWP-dominated National Peace Action Coalition after acrimonious splits in 1970, other anti-war organizations and strategies arose (MayDay Tribe with mass civil disobedience, People’s Coalition for Peace and Justice with a “People’s Peace Treaty”). Divisiveness weakened the anti-war movement, causing a lull in protests and demonstrations. The largest protest against the Vietnam War occurred on April 24, 1971 in Washington, DC where upwards of half a million participated, with another 150,000 marching in San Francisco, CA. The National Chicano Moratorium Committee Against The Vietnam War reached its peak on August 29, 1970 with a march of 30,000 in East Los Angeles.

 

Buy my books here.

DIY socialism: “Lefty” Hooligan, “What’s Left?”, August 2023

We were challenged with a peace-time choice between the American system of rugged individualism and a European philosophy of diametrically opposed doctrines—doctrines of paternalism and state socialism.
Herbert Hoover, Inaugural Address, 3-4-1929

Herbert Hoover coined that threadbare phrase “rugged individualism” as his presidency teetered on the brink of the 1929 Wall Street crash and subsequent decade plus Great Depression. Rugged individualism means the individual who is independent and self-reliant, standing alone without assistance from the state or government. At its most extreme however the term refers to the man (and it’s usually a man) who makes his own way in life, self-sufficient, without help from any larger collective entity, be that a business enterprise, local community, or even an extended family.

The country’s founding ideology was a particular subset of eighteenth century liberal enlightenment thought that emphasized both individual rights and the general welfare—both self-interest and the common good. Compared to reactionary medieval Christianity and monarchism, America’s brand of liberal enlightenment was eminently progressive. And this particular mix of individualism and communitarianism has been part of the warp and weft of the country’s society and politics for centuries. Despite the claim that rugged individualism has its origins in the American frontier experience, the modern invention of the term suggests that it’s a product of propaganda more than history.[1]

Americans, true Americans, supposedly eschew any form of charity as a demeaning handout. This is notwithstanding a rich history of “pioneer” mutual aid and decentralized communitarianism in the colonial era and during our extended frontier development. There are ample instances of collective and communal work—barn raisings, working bees and workers cooperatives—in native American, slave and free Black, religious (Amish, Mennonite, Mormon), original Anglo-Saxon/Scotch-Irish, and immigrant Scandinavian, German, Italian, and Jewish communities. The self-activity and self-organization of the American working class after the Civil War produced labor unions and federations, associations of trade and industrial workers based on class solidarity and mutual aid to protect and advance their rights, interests and power. The bloody struggle for the eight-hour day, the wildcat Industrial Workers of the World, and the militant Committee for Industrial Organization were highlights of this period. While the individualism of the American experience remains a constant throughout this history, the rugged aspects of it are far less accurate.

Which brings us to the long 1960s (1955-1975). The rise of the Civil Rights and the Black Power movements revived Black cooperatives and mutual aid societies. The hippie counterculture was characterized by its urban cooperatives and back-to-the-land communes. The New Left exploded with cooperatives, collectives, councils, and a militant wave of labor organizing. The goal of the movements in the long 1960’s was self-emancipation for workers, women, gay people and racial/ethnic minorities. Part of that involved reinvigorating an American do-it-yourself culture and its transformation from an individualistic emphasis to collective practice.

I started driving my parents’ VW Beetle in 1968 when I got my first driver’s permit at 16, the same year I became a social anarchist. At 17 I bought a used 1958 off-white VW bug with a canvas sunroof, the year when Volkswagen changed from the oval back window to the enlarged rectangular one. And in 1969 I purchased my first copy of John Muir’s classic wire-bound manual How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive; A Manual of Step-By-Step Procedures for the Compleat Idiot.

I began buying tools to do my own car maintenance almost immediately, first to change my own oil and spark plugs, and then gradually to repair almost everything else. While attending UC Santa Cruz I lent my car to a friend who blew out a piston. So during the summer, home for a job, I rented an apartment and took apart my engine in my small combined living/dining room. Not the most pleasant experience living and eating with the smell of oil, grease and gasoline, but I did successfully repair my VW using Muir’s Compleat Idiot book. In all, I have owned three VW bugs and two buses.

The Volkswagen—literally the “People’s Car” designed and manufactured for “the masses” under the Nazi Party’s German Labor Front—rose to prominence as a symbol for post-war West German capitalist regeneration, and became a default people’s car symbolic of a generation of hip white youth in North America and Europe. The VW’s simple styling and usefulness for home, work and play combined practicality with free expression. VWs could handily haul people and goods cross country, were easy to operate and maintain, proved uncomplicated and fun to customize, and became the statement of an entire generation bent on collective self-reliant DIY activism. Owning a VW was a form of protest both against Detroit’s oversized, overpowered and overpriced cars and the “country’s role as a nuclear superpower and its reliance on commercialism to feed a voracious appetite for more, more, more.” The Beetle’s cute curves and the Microbus’s boxy appearance—“so unlike anything the major auto manufacturers in Detroit were producing—became a symbol for counterculture types, who wanted to stand out from the rest of crowd.”[a] Some VW owners painted peace signs, flowers and psychedelic art on their vehicles to further the “turn on, tune in and drop out” connection between car and counterculture.

The sterling example of all of this was Muir’s book. John Muir was a structural engineer who collaborated with the artist Peter Aschwanden to design the authoritative manual for Volkswagen owners, with handwritten lettering and intricate and often humorous hand-drawn illustrations. The exploded views of various aspects of the VW were spectacular works of art in their own right. (Tosh Gregg updated and appended material for subsequent editions.) An iconic 60s manual for an iconic 60s vehicle, the Compleat Idiot was entirely self-published and self-promoted, selling over two million copies and becoming one of the most successful independent author published and financed books in history.

“The legend of John Muir, 60s counter culture auto mechanic, runs something along these lines; a distant relative of the namesake American naturalist, he worked in the American defense industry during the Fail Safe/Dr. Strangelove days of the Cold War, until he’d had enough of it and decided to drop out. In the late 1960s, he moved to Taos, New Mexico and became a VW mechanic.”[b]

As a DIY VW mechanic I belonged to a couple of enthusiastic shadetree mechanic collectives who performed car repairs with minimum tools and equipment in our home garages, backyards or driveways. This included jerry rigging, basic maintenance, DIY upgrades, and more sophisticated repairs and customization. One of these was associated with the William James Work Company. Founded in 1973 by Page Smith and Paul Lee in Santa Cruz, the project organized unemployed or marginally employed people to enable them to find jobs. The pragmatic 19th-20th century philosopher William James proposed what came to be called “work service” as a substitute for military service and as such the Work Company dovetailed nicely with the counterculture.[2] The San Francisco Diggers laid out a utopian scheme for the post-competitive, comparative game of a Free City based on the idea that “[E]very brother and sister should have what they need to do whatever needs to be done.”

“Each service” in the Free City “should be performed by a tight gang of brothers and sisters whose commitment should enable them to handle an overload of work with ability and enthusiasm. ‘Tripsters’ soon get bored, hopefully before they cause an economic strain.” Under Free City Garage and Mechanics, the Diggers proposed:

[T]o repair and maintain all vehicles used in the various services. The responsibility for the necessary tools and parts needed in their work is entirely theirs and usually available by maintaining friendly relations with junkyards, giant automotive schools, and generally scrounging around those areas where auto equipment is easily obtained. The garage should be large enough and free of tripsters who only create more work for the earnest mechanics.[c]

This DIY culture was an extension of the larger mech culture of the 1950s, typified by magazines like Popular Mechanics and Mechanix Illustrated which provided their readers a way to keep up-to-date on useful practical skills, techniques, tools, and materials. Since many of those readers lived in rural or semi-rural areas, this was a part of the even larger make-do culture on farms and small towns that still constituted the vast majority of the country. In the long 1960s this included everything from artists rebelling against mass production and mass culture with self-made crafts, artisanal cooks and brewers, farmers going organic, back-to-the-land homesteading, home improvement and smaller construction projects to build-your-own ham/crystal radio, telescope, robotic and computer projects. A recent outgrowth of this has been the “fair repair/right to repair” movement that seeks to mandate access to repair tools. “If you own something, you should be able to repair it yourself or take it to a technician of your choice.”[d]

You might have noticed the “hyphenated self” throughout this column. Self-reliance, self-sufficiency, and self-interest often have a right-wing, individualistic focus. In turn self-activity, self-organization and self-emancipation have a left-wing, collectivist emphasis. As with self-defense, all of these “hyphenated self” terms can be seen in both individual and collective aspects. There are two sides—an individual and a collective side—to the self.

SOURCES:
Personal recollections
Books/Pamphlets:
A Moral Equivalent of War by William James (1910)
History of the Labor Movement in the United States, 10 volumes, by Philip S. Foner (1947-1994)
The Other America: Poverty in the United States (1962) and Socialism: Past and Future (1989) by Michael Harrington
The Digger Papers (1968) www.diggers.org[c]
How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive; A Manual of Step-By-Step Procedures for the Compleat Idiot by John Muir and Tosh Gregg. Illustrated by Peter Aschwanden. (1969)
Communalism, From It’s Origins to the Twentieth Century by Kenneth Rexroth (1974)
A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn (1980)
Women, Race & Class (1981) and The Meaning of Freedom (2012) by Angela Y. Davis
Socialism and America by Irving Howe (1985)
Marxism in the United States: A History of the American Left by Paul Buhle (1987)
Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice by Jessica Gordon Nembhard (2014)
Communalism, a Liberatory Alternative by Marcus Amargi & Stephanie Armagi (2016)
Articles/Essays:
“Socialism, American style” by “Lefty” Hooligan (“What’s Left?” 9-2012, MRR #352)
“Forward Into The Past With John Muir’s ‘Idiot’s Guide’” by Samuel John Klein (The Zehnkatzen Times, 6-10-2016)[b]
“What Is Socialism? A History of the Word Used as a Scare Tactic in American Politics” by Jeremy Hobson and Serena McMahon (WBUR, 3-7-2019)
“How Socialism Made America Great” by Jack Schwartz (Daily Beast, 7-1-2019)
“The myth of the rugged individual” by Robert Reich (Salon, 8-11-2019)
“How the Volkswagen Bus Became a Symbol of Counterculture” David Kindy (Smithsonian Magazine, 3-6-2020)[a]
“What You Should Know About Right to Repair” by Thorin Klosowski (New York Times, Wirecutter; 7-15-2021)[d]
“American socialism revisited” by “Lefty” Hooligan (“What’s Left?” 10-2021)

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Herbert Hoover’s former Secretary of the Interior and long-time Stanford University president, Ray Lyman Wilbur, wrote in defense of the concept of “rugged individualism”: “It is common talk that every individual is entitled to economic security. The only animals and birds I know that have economic security are those that have been domesticated—and the economic security they have is controlled by the barbed-wire fence, the butcher’s knife and the desire of others. They are milked, skinned, egged or eaten up by their protectors.”

Now compare this to a quote from the famous anarchist-communist Peter Kropotkin who wrote in Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution that reveals the newspeak in the Hoover/Wilbur concept of “rugged individualism”: “In The Descent of Man [Charles Darwin] gave some powerful pages to illustrate its proper, wide sense. He pointed out how, in numberless animal societies, the struggle between separate individuals for the means of existence disappears, how struggle is replaced by co-operation, and how that substitution results in the development of intellectual and moral faculties which secure to the species the best conditions for survival. He intimated that in such cases the fittest are not the physically strongest, nor the cunningest, but those who learn to combine so as mutually to support each other, strong and weak alike, for the welfare of the community.”

Other relevant quotes from Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid abound: “[I]n the long run the practice of solidarity proves much more advantageous to the species than the development of individuals endowed with predatory inclinations.” “[U]nder any circumstances sociability is the greatest advantage in the struggle for life.” “Practicing mutual aid is the surest means for giving each other and to all the greatest safety, the best guarantee of existence and progress, bodily, intellectual and moral.” and “The mutual-aid tendency in man has so remote an origin, and is so deeply interwoven with all the past evolution of the human race, that is has been maintained by mankind up to the present time, notwithstanding all vicissitudes of history.”

 

[2] The Work Company was subsumed into the William James Association.

 

Buy my books here.

 

Proletarian: “Lefty” Hooligan, “What’s Left?”, August 2022

I sat at Nati’s Restaurant in Ocean Beach for a late brunch on a Sunday afternoon. It was 1986. I was on my third Negra Modelo when the waitress served up my heaping plate of Machaca con Huevos with dolloped sour cream, refried beans, Spanish rice, escabeche, pico de gallo, and a stack of corn tortillas. I had high tolerances in those days so I wasn’t even buzzed as I dripped Tapatío hot sauce on my aromatic food.

I had a few drinking routines when I was gainfully employed and living in San Diego. Weekdays after working as a typesetter I bought 16-oz cans of Schlitz malt liquor and drank in the privacy my Pacific Beach apartment. I occasionally went to shows on Friday and Saturday nights. Whether at bars like the Casbah or Spirit Club, or larger venues like the Pacific Palisades or Adams Avenue Theater, I drank my crap malt liquor before the show in my parked car. I didn’t want to be buying expensive, watered-down drinks at some punk dive bar. I’d do a little day drinking some Saturdays and Sundays starting at Nati’s before hitting the Pacific Shore Lounge, then the Beachcomber in Mission Beach and ending up at the West End or the Silver Fox in Pacific Beach at night. The idea was cheap drinks and happy hours, and if I got too wasted by the time I got round to Pacific Beach I could always park my car and walk home.

Class power: “Lefty” Hooligan, “What’s Left?”, November 2021

Two blasts of the two-tone metal whistle sounded most early afternoons in the 1960s, announcing the Helms Bakery man’s arrival in our San Bernardino neighborhood. He drove a bright yellow and blue Chevy panel truck emblazoned with the company logo and slogan “Daily to your Door.” The kids and housewives swarmed the truck on hearing the whistle and the driver stopped to open the double back doors to reveal long wooden and glass-fronted drawers redolent with the smells of yeast, flour, and sugar. Those drawers were stocked with freshly baked cookies, glazed and jelly donuts, cream puffs and pastries, while the center section carried dozens of loaves of bread and assorted cakes. Many were still warm from the oven.

American socialism revisited: “Lefty” Hooligan, “What’s Left?”, October 2021

Socialism for the rich; capitalism for the poor.

It’s an oft-repeated Leftist cliché that encapsulates an entire socio-political-economic analysis in a single sentence. It was first promulgated by Michael Harrington and frequently repeated by the likes of Noam Chomsky, Bernie Sanders, and Robert Reich. The gist of this argument is that capitalist corporations receive government largess in the form of subsidies, tax breaks, and favorable legislation while the general population is left to fend for itself. Big business regularly receives favorable treatment and corporate welfare from the government which allows corporations to “privatize profits and socialize losses.” The rest of us are shit-out-of-luck.(1)

Socialism, American style: “What’s Left?” September 2012, MRR #352

American socialism.

Now there’s an oxymoron, if there ever was one. So, would it come as a surprise to learn that socialism is alive and well in this, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where individualism and competition are valued above all else? I’m not talking here about the US labor movement, the struggle for the 8-hour day and the 40-hour week, the IWW and the CIO, the Grange and Populist movements, the extensive agricultural cooperatives, the popular unrest of the 1890s, the 1930s and the 1960s, and the like. That’s the past. What I’m talking about is real, existing socialism, in the here and now, some of it among the most cherished and honored institutions this country has to offer.

Let’s begin with American capitalism, of the corporate variety. Starting with William H. Whyte’s The Organization Man, published in 1956, there have been numerous exposés—nonfiction and fiction—contending that the American ethic of rugged individualism has been supplanted by a collectivist ethic that values teamwork, commitment, loyalty, risk aversion, and conformity. Amplify this with corporate hierarchies and the complete lack of civil liberties in the workplace. Then, combine this with a phrase that has become common since the 2007 financial meltdown, that American capitalism “privatizes profits and socializes losses” where banks and large corporations benefit from runaway profits but manage to fob off their losses onto the US taxpayer and society at large via government subsidies and bailouts, and you get a condition of state socialism for the rich and cutthroat capitalism for the rest of the population.

Of course, this description is also synonymous with corporatism, which is a polite term for fascism. Even if Israeli historian Ze’ev Sternhell’s assertion that fascism amounts to a combination of ultra-nationalism with non-Marxist socialism is accepted, the notion that America’s system of capitalism represents some type of socialism is a stretch. And thanks to Occupy Wall Street, a growing number of people disdain corporate capitalism altogether. There is a couple of examples of American socialism that are much more positive and far more popular.

Football, for instance. No, not soccer, which is played by most of the world. American football, which nobody else on the planet plays. Football, the quintessential American sport. The National Football League has 32 member football teams, and guarantees a rigorous profit sharing, an equal division of revenues from TV, ticket sales, merchandising, etc. Comedian Bill Maher argues that the NFL “put[s] all of it in a big commie pot and split[s] it 32 ways,” and contends that the NFL “literally shares the wealth.” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell admits that the League “combines socialism and capitalism” in a system “that has worked quite well for us.” Then you have the Green Bay Packers, a football team owned by the community of Green Bay, Wisconsin. A publicly-owned non-profit, the Packers are literally owned by their fans. Their bylaws state that the Packers are “a community project, intended to promote community welfare.” It’s the epitome of communitarian socialism in the quasi-socialist National Football League which, by the way, has legally banned any more Green Bay Packers-type ownership structures. But this community ownership scheme guarantees low ticket prices, sold-out games, fierce fan loyalty, and the Packers’ permanent residence in Green Bay.

For yet another example of good ole American socialism, we go big. Imagine an institution with 1.5 million members, with both the individual participants and the institution as a whole under strict government control. A combination of training, discipline and education creates an institutional culture that has a clear sense of both rigorous hierarchy and spirited camaraderie, a collectivist society in which cooperation, teamwork, conformity, obedience and loyalty are emphasized, and where the social unit takes care of its own. It is a thoroughly racially integrated institution that prides itself on providing equal opportunity and social mobility for all its members. Education and training are available at virtually every stage and age, with career education available for constant improvement, and a system of colleges and universities that are top notch. Housing is socialized, with the lowest ranks living and eating communally. Transport is socialized, as is medicine. Cheap, single-payer health insurance is available for all, and there is lifelong coverage for retirees. Excellent childcare is provided for working parents. And the difference in pay between the lowest and highest ranking members of this institution is only 10 times, quite a contrast to the 300-plus gap between CEO and lowest paid worker in the private sector.

What is this stunning example of socialism in practice right here and now in these United States of America? Why, the US military, of course. Retired four-star general and former supreme allied commander of NATO forces in Europe, Wesley Clark, once said: “It’s the purest application of socialism there is … It’s a really fair system, and a lot of thought has been put into it, and people respond to it really well.” He also said that the country could learn from the military’s sense of mission, and from its emphasis on long-term strategic thinking.

Be all you can be. It’s not just a job. It’s an adventure! The Few. The Proud. Indeed! The irony here is that this quintessential embodiment of state based socialism is, simultaneously, a conservative bastion of anti-socialism.

I had a junior professor in sociology when I was an undergraduate at UC Santa Cruz, Wally Goldfrank, who told me that being drafted into the US Army was the best thing that ever happened to him. This was at the tail end of the Vietnam War, when the US military was considered a horror and an abomination, an institution that killed babies, perpetrated genocide, and promoted imperialism. Yet, for an upper middle class Jewish boy from Brooklyn, it was Wally’s first encounter with people of different races, in particular, black and brown folks. He considered the Army a profoundly democratic and democratizing experience. Now, at the time I attended UCSC, Wally was a full-on Maoist, an admirer of Red China, Mao’s Cultural Revolution and the People’s Liberation Army. So, there was some affinity between his politics and his evaluation of his military service.

There you have it. Three examples of American socialism. First, a dubious, quasi-fascist, corporatist socialism (Wall Street’s corporate capitalism). Then, a communitarian socialism (the NFL’s community-owned Green Bay Packers). And finally, a state socialism (the US government run military). No need to disingenuously excoriate President Obama or the Democratic Party as evil socialists. There is plenty of American socialism to go around.