A revolutionary national narrative

A post-left perspective on the US ideological divide

May 05, 2023

National unity of purpose cannot be imposed. It must be established on a basis of the voluntary participation of citizens, who freely embrace a national narrative that is affirmed by a strong majority.

For a multicultural society, such a national consensus is especially difficult to attain. The USA, in its first nearly two hundred years, could forge a national consensus as though it were a nation of White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, even though it was a multicultural nation, because of the demographic and political dominance WASPs. But in recent decades, political and demographic realities have changed, such that no one ethnic group is in a position to expect other groups to accept its particular version of the national story.

In spite of the challenge, the forging of a national narrative must be accomplished, because a national narrative is the foundation to the consensual participation of citizens in the political process. And a consensual narrative is the basis for the legitimation of the government before the people.

Nation-states remain the key actors in the world. In today’s world-system, even though transnational corporations and organizations play an important role, governments that act in the name of nations are the actors that shape political-economic-cultural realities at global, national, and local levels. For citizens to have an effective voice, they must act in relation to the government of their particular nation. Such quasi-leftist notions as “global citizen” or a “world without borders” are idealistic, disconnected from real political dynamics unfolding in international affairs.

In most nations, the government represents the elite rather than the people, with the consequence that the people have limited influence. In representative democracies, elite political domination is recognized as a systemic problem, such that organizations of civil society have emerged to give some voice to the people, or at least certain sectors of the people. In civil society and other public contexts, space is granted to the people to debate and discuss secondary issues, which do not address questions of elite power and its structural sources. Many of the secondary issues are important, but by and large they do not threaten the political power of the elite.

In representative democracies, public discussion of secondary issues can fall into dysfunctional ideological division. Often this situation is stimulated by the elite, when there is elite concern that the discussion of secondary issues may turn to the question of elite power. Such is the current situation with respect to the United States of America.

The need for a revolutionary national narrative

The history of revolutions teaches us that in times of crisis and division among the people, exceptional leaders can emerge with the capacity to put forth a national narrative that unifies the people. The formulations of exceptional revolutionary leaders have three characteristics. First, they connect to the people and their day-to-day problems, formulating practical solutions. With this characteristic, revolutionary leaders demonstrate their own understanding of and sympathy with the people, even though they tend to have social origins slightly higher than the great mass of people (although not always). Secondly, the discourse of the revolutionary leader addresses both fundamental issues of power as well as the widely debated secondary issues. Indeed, part of the appeal of the revolutionary leader among the people is his (or her) explanation of the structural sources of elite power, which previously had not been well understood by the people. Thirdly, the discourse of the revolutionary leader embraces the nation’s established narrative and reformulates the story, envisioning the fulfillment of the historic national purpose. In the case of the USA, this means that revolutionaries cannot stand against the principles or the leaders of the American Revolution of 1774 to 1789. Rather, they must call the people to a revolution against the power elite, envisioning the complete fulfillment of the promise of democracy put forth by the American Revolution; and recognizing important contributions toward this goal that have been made by the social movements of the people, such as the African-American movement from 1919 to 1988 and the women’s movement from 1848 to 1920.

In the United States of America today, a unifying national narrative must be put forth. It ought to be a revolutionary narrative that includes the three mentioned essential characteristics: politically intelligent and scientifically based proposals with respect to the day-to-day problems of the people; an analysis of the structural sources of elite power, with proposals for the political empowerment of the people; and a revolution against the power elite in fulfillment of the promises of the American Revolution.

When I speak of a renewed American Revolution, I do not speak of violence. Revolution is in essence the taking of power by an underdog class, taking control of the state from an elite class. In the USA today, this involves the taking of political power from the hands of the power elite and putting it is the hands of delegates of the people, who are obligated to defend their decisions and actions before the people.

The history of revolutions teaches us that revolutions take power through a variety of ways. The Chinese, Vietnamese, and Cuban revolutions famously took power through armed struggle and guerrilla war. But the conditions that made their victories possible rarely exist in other places and times. People’s revolutions have come to power through various strategies, and their essential characteristic is that the methods are well suited to the political conditions of the nation.

In the case of the United States today, armed struggle—including acts of terrorism, sabotage, violent protests, and vandalism—do not advance the revolutionary cause. In the United States, the key to the future triumph of a people’s revolution is the patient education of the people, carried out by leaders/teachers at local settings throughout the nation, elevating the historical and political consciousness of the people, and teaching them above all that their destiny is in their own hands. When the people have revolutionary consciousness, their taking of political power cannot be stopped by the elite. Power elites are always powerless before a united revolutionary people.

In the United States, leaders, potential leaders, and would-be leaders ought to put forth proposed revolutionary narratives for the nation, seeking to arrive to a consensus among revolutionary leaders, committed leaders/intellectuals across the nation, who are seeking to mobilize the people in support of a well-defined revolutionary project.

I personally am not a leader. I am an intellectual, and at age 77, I am too old to remake myself into a leader. My intention in my writing is to formulate insights relevant and helpful to a revolutionary project, carried out by men and women of all occupations, races, ethnicities, and social classes across the nation, united in understanding of and support for a viable American revolutionary narrative and its coherent and comprehensive principles, concepts, and proposals; capable of mobilizing the people in the formation of their own understanding and in responsible, non-violent social action that seeks the taking of political power in the long term.

The components of an American revolutionary narrative

An American revolutionary narrative must speak the truth. It must speak the singular truth, not a version of the truth that promotes the special interests of a particular class, ethnic group, gender, or identity group. It must be a narrative that unites the common interests of the peoples of the nation, and that correctly understands the reality of the nation in the political-economy of the world-system.

This last point, that the narrative must understand worldwide realities, is most challenging in the U.S. political context. If there is one area in which national consensus is sometimes attained, it is in foreign affairs, on the basis of the erroneous identification of evil actors in the form of roque states. Such erroneous conceptions regularly lead the nation to dysfunctional foreign and domestic policies that generate more problems and deepen confusion and division among the people.

In eight recent commentaries, I have reviewed the human history of conquest and its culmination in the development of the modern world-system and its current structural crisis. In these commentaries, a narrative on the nation in global historical context is told. It is a narrative to which I arrived on the basis of many years of listening to and taking seriously the voices of the revolutionary leaders of the Third World, past and present, always reflecting on their insights with attention to their implications for questions of social justice in the United States. I submit that in the human and American story told in these eight commentaries, there are the basic elements of understanding—with respect to the place of the United States in the world—that that must be included in any proposed alternative narrative. (See “Conquest in human history: On the dialectic of domination and development,” April 4, 2023; “Islamic conquests, 622 to 675: The dialectic of domination and development continues,” April 7, 2023; “European conquests of the Age of Exploration: The origins of the capitalist world-economy,” April 11, 2023; “European conquests in the Age of Empire: The world-system becomes global,” April 14, 2023; “The conquered peoples seek a more just world: The emergence of socialism in the world of the colonized,” April 18, 2017; “Neocolonialism and the New Imperialism: The persistent quest of the neocolonized peoples for true sovereignty,” April 21, 2023; “Imperialism in decadence: Neoliberalism and military invasions make evident US decline,” April 25, 2023; “A more just world under construction: Circumventing imperialism in decadence,” April 28, 2023; and “The structural crisis of the world-system: The unfolding real possibilities for world peace and prosperity,” May 2, 2023.

With attention to how exceptional revolutionary leaders in recent human history have effectively mobilized their peoples with an alternative, reformulated national narrative, I also submit that any politically effective national narrative in the USA must be based in the foundational principles of the American Republic, not as static formulations, but as liberal republican principles that are constantly evolving in seeking greater inclusion and social justice. This was indeed the approach of the African-American movement from 1919 to 1988, and it was effective in promoting significant social change in defense of African-American rights, without fracturing the unity of the nation.

In addition, the development of popular assemblies is important. Cuba, Vietnam, and China have developed assemblies of people’s power, in which elected delegates of the people debate issue of concern. In said countries, structures of people's power have replaced representative democracy, and this is the basis of the enduring legitimacy of socialist governments in these lands. However, the replacement of representative democracy with people’s democracy is politically impossible in the West in the current epoch. But on the other hand, people’s assemblies could be developed in the USA as mechanisms of public dialogue and education and as indications of the attitudes of the people. Local people’s assemblies, composed of elected delegates of the people who would regularly report to the people, would be a more mature expression of public opinion than mass demonstrations, social media, and opinion surveys.

In this same vein, the development people’s schools also ought to be stimulated, in which the people meet in local settings to discuss readings, under the general guidance of a vanguard political party, composed of the most committed and prepared leaders. Not tied to formal education and employment but to the intellectual and moral needs of the people, people’s schools would emit certificates but not diplomas or degrees. Necessary for the formation of consciousness, people’s schools would be a counter initiative to fake news, misinformation, and confusion.

A fundamental challenge that any proposed alternative narrative faces is the question of the appropriate and necessary role of the state in the economy. On this matter there is deep ideological division in the United States. It seems to me, on the basis of observing how the question is addressed in China and Cuba, that both sides in the U.S. ideological divide have it wrong. On the one side, there are the advocates of Big Government, who correctly discern that the government has a necessary role to play; but who think that any kind of half-baked plan will do, with little attention to covering the costs, beyond increasing the national debt. On the other hand, disgusted by the excesses of Big Government and generally distrustful of state power, there are those who want to reduce the role of the state to a minimum, giving free reign to corporate executives, who have neither the mandate nor the moral inclination to take into account the needs of the people and the nation.

Part of the problem here is that the nation was founded in the context of an agricultural society in which a good part of the population consisted of relatively small independent producers in both agriculture and craft manufacturing. This reality was brought to an end during period 1865 to 1914 by the concentration of industry and banking, a process forged by the “Robber Barons,” the great captains of industry. The concentration of industry had an important positive consequence, looked at from the vantage point of human needs and desires. Namely, it greatly increased the productive capacity of the national economy. But on the other hand, it had an important negative consequence, looked at from the vantage point of democracy. Namely, it left the captains of industry in control of everything, including the federal government, the leading universities, the major news outlets, and the establishment Protestant churches.

The rise of the robber barons generated a public outcry, especially from farmers, craftsmen, workers, and local bankers. Theodore Roosevelt earned undeserved fame as a “trust buster.” But in reality, TR understood, as did Woodrow Wilson, that it was a complex problem. It was easy to shout, as would-be leaders of the people were inclined, "break up the Trusts.” However, because of the contribution of concentrated industry to economic productivity, breaking up the Trusts might well have caused economic havoc. What was needed was to somehow regulate and control the corporations, without disrupting the productivity that they stimulated. Both Roosevelt and Wilson, true leaders that they were, thought through the problem and arrived to similar conclusions. It was Wilson who had the chance to implement his proposals, and he was able to persuade the Congress in 1913 to approve several measures that were part of an economic package, which may well have been the necessary and effective approach. However, in the tug of war between government and the heads of industry, military conflict gives industry an unchecked advantage, because of the government’s urgent need for the products of the arms industry. Accordingly, World War I converted Wilson’s economic package into a dead letter; it was not implemented, cast aside by the demands of war. Following the war, it was never revisited.

Following the craziness of the “Roaring Twenties,” perhaps psychologically necessary in the wake of the unanticipated carnage of the Great War, the Great Depression hit. The New Deal was a good plan as a temporary measure. But it was not sustainable in the long-term. In the first place, the New Deal was financed in part by deficit spending, which causes various economic problems if it becomes excessive, as it does in the long term. And in the second place, the New Deal was financed by the superexploitation of labor of the peripheral and semi-peripheral regions of the world-economy, and these peoples, comprising the great majority of humanity, were not going to accept forever their assigned role as providers of superexploitative labor, enabling others to enjoy material benefits from which they were excluded. At the same time, the New Deal left aside and did not address the question of the necessary relation between the state and the economy in the age of concentrated industry.

The closest thing the nation had to the solution to the problem of big industry was labor unions. The idea was that organized workers would seek to check the power of the corporations by demanding just wages, using the weapon of the strike. This, however, was a half-baked solution, encouraging workers to look at the issue simply from the point of view of their interests as members of a particular union. It fell far short of a comprehensive plan for regulating the corporations in a form that would promote the long-term interest of the nation in a vibrant national economy that elevated the standard of living and that provided for the fundamental needs of all.

So, with the issue never really addressed, we are left today with a debate between those who think that the government can resolve all and those who think that the government should do next to nothing. We are left with a superficial and caustic debate between Big Government and a free market.

In contrast, in Cuba, the government ministers, economists, and intellectuals debate the question of role of the state in the economy, with an approach to debate that can be described as dialogue seeking consensus. As I indicated in a previous post, China, Vietnam, and Cuba have developed “socialist oriented planned market economies,” involving state direction of the national economy in accordance with defined goals, granting space to both state and private enterprises, depending on which would be more effective in attaining goals in a particular sector. In my view, it is the most advanced approach to the issue of the production and distribution of goods and services that humanity has known. See “Socialist socioeconomic formations: Lessons from real socialism in the global South,” June 7, 2022; “China models a new type of socialism: The most advanced example of a new socioeconomic formation,” June 10, 2022; “The advance of socialism in Vietnam: The Doi Moi policy renovates socialist construction,” July 5, 2022; and “Realist pragmatism in socialist Cuba: Cuba’s socialist-oriented mixed economy under state direction,” July 29, 2022.

The ideological divide between the Red half and the Blue half

The Red half has two components. On the one hand, there is the South, with its undemocratic history of slavery, Jim Crow segregation, ideology of white supremacy, and racial discrimination. During the period of 1800 to 1860, two separate political-economic systems were emerging, implying the de facto emergence of two distinct nations in the American Republic, with two different elites with opposed interests. The South sought to defend its interests through secession, which could have been allowed to stand; but if it had, both the North and the South would have been more limited in their economic development.

The problem of the North-South divide was not well resolved. Union was imposed on the South through military force, and the subsequent Reconstruction program was badly flawed. There should have been compensation to the former landholders and slaveholders, necessary to bring them on board in the new democratic order, and providing them with the resources to invest in new industries in the region. The land should have been distributed to the emancipated slaves, accompanied by technical and financial support, which would have led to the formation of black middle-class farmers in the South. Instead, the pathetically limited Reconstruction program was abandoned in less than a decade, and the Jim Crow South emerged following 1876. In the period of 1954 to 1965, the North’s version of racial democracy was imposed through the legal and constitutional forces of the federal government, necessary for the USA to adjust to its new role as the hegemonic core power in the neocolonial world-system.

Thus in the end, the North imposed national union and a limited form of democracy. But neither union nor democracy should be imposed. The legacy of half-hearted commitment to democracy and to the nation is an important factor in today´s Red-Blue ideological divide.

The Red also is composed of rural and small-town America. Here the nation suffers from its failure at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries to constructively address the question of the concentration of industry and banking. The nation failed to address the consequences of concentration for rural and small-town America, which included: local banks with limited financial powers; farmers increasingly pushed out by big agricultural enterprises; and small towns with less and less employment. The nation failed to debate, formulate, and implement a politically and scientifically intelligent program of rural development. The nation abandoned rural America, stimulating the rise of the Red half.

Taking into account the factors that led to the rise of the Red half, it can be said that the Blue half failed in its obligations to the nation as a whole. It failed to reconstruct the nation from slavery in an enduring form. In defense of itself, it names southern resistance to its proposals as the culprit, without recognizing that its own failure to formulate a comprehensive and workable proposal was an important factor in the resistance of the South. And the Blue half did not even consider any kind of program in rural development, giving the impression that, for the Blue, rural folk simply do not matter.

So today we have the phenomenon of Blue sophisticated urbanites, insufferable in their arrogance and myopia, completely incapable of formulating a plan for the ideological unification of the nation. Their plan is to dismiss the Red half as racist, sexist, and homophobic jerks. Which means that their plan is permanent ideological division.

A post-left narrative

The narrative that I am suggesting is a post-left narrative. It embraces the profound historic truths of the left with respect to racism, poverty, war, and social justice. It is anti-imperialist, seeking cooperation with the nations of the world in their just quest for true sovereignty. It seeks to define the necessary role of the government in promoting the development of the economy. Yet it parts company with today’s left, because today’s left has discarded its social justice agenda. Today’s left makes no effort to find common ground with conservative and religious citizens on the complex moral issue of abortion. Today’s left adopts an extreme radicalism with respect to transgenderism, casting aside the sacred teachings of human civilizations, and bullying those who respectfully disagree. Today’s left converts ethnic identity into a weapon to silence others and to advance its own political-economic power. Today’s left undermines the historic principles and goals of the African-American movement and the women’s movement, ignoring the teachings of the finest citizens that our nation has known. Today’s left dismisses the American Revolution and the founding principles of the American Republic, which have been affirmed and embraced by the revolutionary leaders of the last 100 years, including Ho Chi Minh and Fidel Castro.

We need a renewed American Revolution that is the fulfillment of the American Revolution of 1776, a renewed revolution forged by exceptional leaders nourished in the breast of the people. A Revolution against the power elite and the uncontested control of big corporations and financial institutions. A revolution brought into being through people´s schools and people’s assemblies. A revolution that seeks the non-violent taking of political power by the people from the hands of a power elite that has repeatedly demonstrated its moral and intellectual unpreparedness. A revolution that focuses on the restimulation of the American capacity for economic productivity and competitiveness; and that focuses on the fair and just distribution of goods and services, including a safety net for the protection of all in need. A revolution that respects the sovereignty of all nations, and that seeks international cooperation. A revolution based in the principles of American republicanism and constitutionalism. A revolution born in the enduring goodness and decency of the American people. A revolution that has faith in the future of humanity.

Knowledge, ideology, and real socialism in our times

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