Leftist or Liberal?

Where Do You Fit?

William Sundwick

Modern liberalism goes back a long way. Let’s start with John Locke in the 17^th century. He came up with the idea that governments exist to serve the needs of the people. Obvious to us now, but directly opposed to the divine right of monarchs. He was influential even in his own lifetime.  The Glorious Revolution of 1688,  establishing the supremacy of Parliament, was a Lockian idea.

All contemporary democracies are fundamentally liberal structures. The tension with the authoritarian right visible today in the United States and Europe has more to do with anxiety about who should be part of the polity than what that polity should provide its members.

In the 19^th century, tensions emerged with the first industrial revolution. Karl Marx became the icon for those who saw politics as a conflict of power wielded by the owners of capital over those who produce their wealth (workers). That was then. Now, anticipating a “fourth industrial revolution,” it is becoming clear that wealth tends to perpetuate itself – it doesn’t really depend on workers at all! Workers have lost most of the power gained over 200 years of struggle and liberal governance.

Economic prospects seem bleak for all who aren’t plugged into the capitalist wealth machine (mostly residing on Wall Street). It’s the current version of Marx’s alienation of labor. Yet, we’re loathe to divorce ourselves completely from the ideas of freedom and social contract in that very old liberal tradition. The liberal solution to the problem of alienation is based on disincentives for “excessive” accumulation of capital. Primarily, redistribution of wealth via taxation. Real leftists reject this solution as not going far enough to redress the imbalance of political power. And, political power is more than mere economic resources – it’s cultural. Liberals retort that leftists are guilty of “class reductionism.” Liberal societies, after all, allow for social mobility, right?

Class is the focus for the Left in the 21^st century more than wealth -- leave wealth to the liberals, they say. Yes, money is a common denominator in acquisition of political power (especially in the U.S.), but what the Left wants is a reversal of the dynamic behind ascendance of “elites.” Liberals may choose to make everybody happy with more money (Universal Basic Income is the current hot topic in liberal, and neoliberal, circles), but Real Leftists want to throw out the “money people” (Wall Street) from government altogether, feeling that an entirely different class should be in charge. Paradoxically, in the U.S., Donald Trump was supposed to be the kind of person the working class could get behind. Except, of course, he is the bastard child of Wall Street to begin with. Could a Bernie Sanders be the best answer? It’s populism, whether left or right.

Liberals generally counter populism with attempts at making everybody’s life more comfortable. It’s not about power, but comfort. If you give people enough stuff, maybe they’ll go away. Pitchforks come from more than discomfort, says the Left.

If the real contest in democracies is between classes and how much influence they can wield in government, then we should explore what defines these classes – the ins versus the outs. While it sometimes seems that multi-party parliamentary systems have more flexibility in accommodating class struggle, American political history also provides examples of realignments of the two major parties over time.

The Democratic Party of today is a strange (by historic standards) coalition of apparently divergent class interests – Wall Street capitalists find common cause there with communities of color and others who define themselves as marginalized, and with the well-educated minority of the population seeking to protect their privilege. The Republican Party seems to consist of a combination of “self-made” (allegedly) capitalists and culturally conservative religious communities, provincial rather than cosmopolitan in outlook (“people like me” versus “the other”). This bipolar party structure leaves those with strong left-wing convictions no home. It’s usually a story of compromise for American leftists – how much can they stomach to call themselves a Democrat?

So, what do American “leftists” believe? They despise liberals as much as the right-wingers in the Republican Party do. Yet they understand the economic structure of society to be based on exploitation of the labor of people like them. They no longer believe they can achieve “the American Dream” of one day becoming a successful capitalist themselves, probably not even their children. Privilege is so baked into the “elite” classes, who mobilize to protect it, that extraordinary political means are necessary to change it. They don’t want crumbs from the liberal establishment – they want power! How do they plan to seize it?

I have not met a single American Bolshevik – people who believe in a Dictatorship of the Proletariat.  If there ever were such animals, they probably all died out, or were co-opted, sometime around mid-century, during that unprecedented postwar prosperity with high participation of organized labor. Racial identifications with the Left persisted into the 1970s. But co-optation, and intimidation via police violence, mostly put an end to that. Women and young people? We’ve seen some organizing success with women recently (#MeToo movement), but young people will likely be co-opted by forgiveness of student loan debt – and higher starting salaries. That remains to be seen.

Anybody still committed to the Left imagines using social media to mobilize large numbers of people behind left-wing political candidates – and, doing it fast enough to save the planet from ecocide. The media message is crucial, but the goal is to ultimately seize victory through the ballot box. They expect great resistance here, however. Voter suppression and gerrymandering of legislative districts present real threats. And the judicial branch of government appears less friendly with each passing year. But seizing power democratically has long been the hallmark of Democratic Socialists and social democrats alike – the latter not necessarily committed to eliminating capitalism, anyway, hence of questionable “leftist” credentials.

Despite all the sniping at the “Democratic establishment” and resentment of “academic elites,” there remains a basic respect for democracy among the American Left – they have bought into the fundamental liberalism of the last three centuries. My bias here tells me that the liberal project is working. The differences between leftist and liberal will lead to a synthesis: a “Left-liberal” or “Liberal Socialist.” More leftists will be co-opted into the elites, convincing others that, given more attainable education, they too can become part of the governing elite.

The only ones left behind will be those who choose entrenched community traditions over current economic/political reality: otherwise known as conservatives. Looking inward and backward always succumbs to looking outward and forward. 

“I Prefer Not To”

Bartleby and Late Stage Capitalism

William Sundwick

Herman Melville published his short story “Bartleby the Scrivener -- a Tale of Wall Street” in 1853. It has been a staple of high school AP English classes and undergrad American Lit survey courses for at least sixty of those 160+ years.

I last read it as a college sophomore in such a class. That was more than 50 years ago. Something made me want to revisit Bartleby recently. It was probably that resonating statement of freedom that is the iconic Bartleby quote: “I prefer not to.” While there are endless life situations where one might think of Bartleby and his resistance, the one that comes to mind today is the movement of (mostly) young people to resist the dominance of capitalism in every aspect of their lives. Incur crushing student debt, says Wall Street, “I prefer not to” say many young people. Accept medical bankruptcy if you incur a serious health condition, “I prefer not to” say many with inadequate insurance coverage. Vote for the candidates we select for you, “I prefer not to” said many in 2016.

As a short story, Bartleby’s structure is perfect. There is a protagonist (the narrator, a successful corporate lawyer with Wall Street office), a symbolic foil (Bartleby himself, I maintain) and three secondary characters who are Bartleby’s coworkers in the narrator’s law office. There is setup – the narrator is hiring another scrivener (copyist, in the age before typewriters or copying machines); plot development -- tension between Bartleby and narrator over work requirements; climax – where narrator is forced to move his office to escape Bartleby; denouement -- Bartleby’s ultimate death -- and conclusion, where the narrator tells us what he learned of Bartleby’s past (not previously revealed).

Although industrious in his copying, any further request from narrator/employer to do anything special or perform any service outside his standard routine is always met with some variation on Bartleby’s classic line, “I prefer not to.” The narrator does not fire Bartleby, although he is sorely tempted to, due primarily to his own sense of charity and fairness.  The virtue-signaling narrator is an inveterate liberal. His employees, Bartleby included, are prisoners in cubicles (called “screens” in mid-19^th century office layouts) but he is convinced that he has their best interests at heart, so long as it doesn’t interfere too much with his easy life.

The reader asks as the story progresses: “Why doesn’t he fire Bartleby?” The answer becomes clearer as you continue to read. It is a paradox – the nut of the story. Therein lies the best modern interpretation for a timeless work of literature. Bartleby’s alienation increases:

   

“The next day ... Bartleby did nothing but stand at his window in his dead-wall revery”. 

Bartleby, unlike his three coworkers, appears not to want to socialize, but only to stare “in revery” out a small window overlooking nothing more than the “black brick wall” next door. Both narrator and coworkers become more aware of Bartleby’s disturbed state-of-mind. Coworkers tend to make fun of him, the narrator pities him. Bartleby, you see, is homeless. He eats and sleeps in the office with a blanket “rolled up under his desk,” on an old sofa. He is alone. No family. No friends. He prefers it not be this way but is powerless to change it. Very sad.

“It was his soul that suffered, and his soul I could not reach.” 

Bartleby does have a profound effect on the narrator. His occupation of the office begins to drive the narrator to distraction. Yet, this employer persists in doing what seems humane and continuously tries to reason with Bartleby. One critic, shortly after Occupy Wall Street and Zucotti Park, wrote that the OWS movement was inspired by Bartleby, using the occupy trope as their symbolic resistance to capitalism. This was, indeed, Bartleby’s strategy. Bartleby was a resistor. The narrator could do nothing about him, except try to accommodate him. He failed in this objective.

In exasperation, the narrator is forced to move his office to a new address. This leaves Bartleby continuing to occupy the building even with its new tenants. He sits on the bannister of the entrance foyer – having no “screen” any more in the office. He cannot be removed. The new tenants, fellow professionals known to the narrator, implore him to try harder to remove Bartleby. The narrator tries, weakly, but is inclined to wash his hands of the entire matter – to abandon labor. Among other things, he is afraid of what the “papers” will say. Ultimately left at the mercy of the less liberal new tenants, Bartleby is sent to the Tombs as a vagrant.

“Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance.”

Bartleby dies in the Tombs, presumably of starvation – he “prefers” not to eat. This, despite the “Grub-man” receiving a bribe from our narrator to provide Bartleby with better food. Liberal amelioration of conditions fails. Resistance overcomes it. Resistance unto death – it was a hunger strike.

We learn in the conclusion of the story that Bartleby came with a history of working in the “dead letter office” in Washington. He was let go in a “change of administration” (before civil service). There he sorted undeliverable letters, often to dead people, for burning. The narrator attributes Bartleby’s “cadaverous” demeanor to that sorrowful previous job.

The timelessness of Bartleby comes from the myriad symbols and interpretations given to the story. Its language is plain for the time yet encompasses much of the human condition – Bartleby’s ghostly presence, the narrator’s sense of charity, his reluctance to confront social approbation, the question of responsibility for Bartleby, and Bartleby’s alienation from his labor. All these themes are valid, and they point to the inexorable dominance of an employer (owner) over employees (workers), and how those workers can force change by simply stating their “preference” and refusing to move – “occupying” the workplace. The General Motors sit-down strikes of the 1930s come to mind, the birth of American industrial unions.

I found no evidence that Melville was aware of his German contemporaries, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, but there is some evidence to support the reverse (especially Engels from his time in England?) – the soul-crushing job of the scrivener has since been replaced by machines, as it was in the English textile mills of Engels. Bartleby is alienated from his labor, even as he is impelled to repeat it daily. He insists he “prefers not to” do any additional tasks for his capitalist employer. Alienation is clearly an important theme of the story, as with 20^th century existentialist literature. Melville was not a Marxist, but perhaps Marx and Engels had some American literary inspiration?

The closing line of the story is -- “Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity!” 

Seems Marx getting bit of a revival on left these days ... because rent-seeking now dominates capitalism