Can the Left recover?
The need to renew its historic commitment to justice for the poor of the world
In the presidential and congressional elections of 2024, the people of the United States repudiated the political establishment, in part because of its alliance with the Left. In the aftermath of its repudiation, many of the Left are now predicting that Donald Trump will do really bad things, a prediction that reinforces the notion that the Left does not understand Trump and the MAGA movement. Moreover, the continued denunciation of Trump, even after the people have supported him, suggests that the Left is not capable of engaging in a self-criticism that would seek to discern the reasons for its repudiation, which is rooted in its own historic and contemporary limitations and defects.
MAGA, founded by Trump, is an anti-establishment movement that has matured to formulate a common-sense program that rejects the policies of the two political parties of the last forty-five years. The program includes: sensibly regulating and controlling immigration, and cracking down on illegal immigration; emphasizing the productivity and expansion of the American national economy, including the restoration of U.S. manufacturing; eliminating unnecessary restraints on the production of petroleum and natural gas; establishing executive and legislative control of the federal government bureaucracy, ending the capturing of agencies by the industries they are supposed to regulate; following a foreign policy of peace through strength, involving the maintenance of a strong military to protect the national territory, but using it sparingly, avoiding entanglements in costly wars with little or no benefit; recognizing the significant advancements toward the protection of the rights of racial and ethnic minorities since 1965; ceasing racial discrimination in colleges and universities and federal employment, presently implemented under the guise of equity; taking a more positive approach to American history and Western civilization in colleges and universities; placing primary and secondary school education under the control of the states, in accordance with the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution; returning to political principles that are consistent with the founding of the nation and with the Constitution, as amended; ceasing restrictions on free speech in the name of “disinformation;” and stopping the weaponization of law, in which legal processes are initiated against political enemies.
Many of the Left say that the MAGA call for effective control of immigration is racist. But I don’t interpret it this way, because I have observed the approach to internal migration in socialist Cuba. Recognizing that uncontrolled migration from the less economically advanced provinces to the city of Havana would be bad for the nation, Cuba after the triumph of the Revolution took two steps. First, it focused on the development of the less developed provinces, by investing in education and health care in all the provinces. Secondly, it tried to regulate the migration to Havana, expecting persons physically present in Havana to have family, educational, or employment reasons for being there. This principle should be applied to the world-economy. There should be investment in the economic development of the underdeveloped regions, and efforts to regulate the flow of persons from the underdeveloped regions to the advanced economies of the North. A policy of alleviating poverty in vast regions by encouraging poor individuals to migrate to the Global North is absurd; but this has been in practice the policy of the Western powers. To be sure, the MAGA movement, like nearly everyone in the Global North, has nothing to contribute with respect to the economic development of the poor nations. But the MAGA folks have enough common-sense intelligence to know that the unregulated flow of persons to the North is a sign of poor management by global elites. It is not racist to be concerned about the phenomenon, or to support a platform that promises getting international migration under control. Indeed, it takes a bit of courage to ignore the intimidating accusation of racism.
Many of the Left view the MAGA program as the road to impending ecological disaster. But I don’t see it this way, based on observation of an integral approach to environmental protection in Cuba, which I have found confirmed in the writings of Chinese President Xi Jinping. The socialist approach involves a balance between economic development and environmental protection, in which it is recognized that a nation cannot begin to restrict fossil fuel energy and production until it has green production in place. It is a question of moving gradually in accordance with a long-range plan, reducing the one while increasing the other, under a reasonable time schedule. It is simplistic and idealistic to demand green reforms that are removed from considerations of productivity, and doing so undermines the credibility of the ecology movement before the people.
President-elect Trump is moving rapidly to form a cabinet and a team of government, appointing people who are committed to his agenda, as any good administrator would do. This indicates that the second Trump Administration may be able to proceed effectively in the implementation of the MAGA program, overcoming what will likely be superficial and ineffective opposition from the Democratic Party. The second Trump administration may be very different from the chaos of the first Trump administration.
All of this is very bad news for the Left. Trump and the MAGA movement have a coherent program, a reasonable program in the nation’s current situation, and they appear to be moving toward implementation, with the backing of the majority of people, albeit not a strong majority at the present time. If they have success, they could revitalize the American economy and restore a sense of national pride, thus delivering on Trump’s promise to Make America Great Again. This would increase popular support, and it could ultimately shape the public discourse in accordance with the MAGA paradigm, which could imply casting the Left into the dustbin of history.
But the MAGA movement has a principal defect, namely, it lacks anti-imperialist consciousness. Its advocacy of peace through strength is a hopeful sign that it will leave behind the neoconservatism that has brought us wars in the Middle East and Eastern Europe as well as confrontation with China. But its critique of the foreign policy of the political establishment is not based in anti-imperialism, but in opposition to imperialist overreach. It is opposed to costly wars, but not necessarily less costly unconventional wars of an economic, financial, and ideological character against nations that defy American hegemony, especially nations constructing socialism in Latin America, which are located in what U.S. political culture traditionally conceived as its “backyard,” its own territorial domain that it has a right and duty to control.
It is not yet clear if the MAGA movement’s policy of peace through strength will include a continuation of unconventional war against anti-imperialist states. We must wait and see. Perhaps the Russian political scientist Fyodor Lukyanov is correct when he writes that, in the MAGA worldview, “The United States is at the center of the universe, not as the hegemon that rules everything, but simply as the best and most powerful country. It must be the strongest, including (or above all) militarily, in order to advance its interests when and where it needs to. America does not need to deal with world affairs at all.” If this interpretation is correct, it would imply that the Trump administration would leave nations like Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia alone, perhaps quietly softening some of the most damaging sanctions now in place. Analysts should not rush to immature speculation that assumes the worst, as many in the Left are now doing. They should give the process time to unfold, with recognition that a new direction has been promised to the people, and that the incoming Trump administration, even before the taking of possession of political authority, is actively taking steps to deliver on them.
The MAGA movement’s lack of anti-imperialist consciousness is a major defect, not only with respect to issues of social justice, but also with respect to MAGA’s own declared goals. In the context of the current conditions of the world-system, an important and perhaps necessary dimension of developing national economies is cooperation with all other nations, developing mutually beneficial trade with all nations, in an environment of peace and stability, regardless of the characteristics of their political-economic systems. Imperialism as a mode of economic expansion ceased being functional six decades ago; a world of competing imperialisms is no longer sustainable. In this context, it would be fatal for the United States to continue imperialist policies, whether it be in the form of the neoconservative endless wars or the less-militarist unconventional war against nations that seek true sovereignty.
It is precisely on this point that the Left can discover its true mission in the context of a possible new period in American history characterized by control of political institutions by the MAGA movement. With recognition of the legitimate claims of the MAGA movement with respect to key problems of the nation that have emerged from decades of mismanagement by the political establishment, the Left could become the voice of anti-imperialist consciousness, in defense of the long-term economic development of the nation, and in defense of the fundamental principles of social justice, understood in its classic sense.
But in order to assume this role, the Left would have to overcome its errors, defects, and limitations.
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The Left’s historic journey from superficiality to toxification
The limitations of the Left have deep historic roots, even though at certain points the Left was on the right side of important political and moral debates, which is the reason that I became a part of the Left in the late 1960s, even though its defects were visible to me.
(1) The union movement, although it emerged to become an important defender of the rights of industrial workers, lacked a comprehensive analysis of the national economy. Its proposals for higher wages and stronger benefits were pushed with the weapon of the strike, and important concessions were made to workers’ demands. But this process was not a dimension of any national integral plan for the development of the economy.
(2) In reaction to the concentration of industry in the second half of the nineteenth century, the populist movement emerged, calling for the breaking up of trusts, an idealist proposal that did not take into account the benefits of large corporations with respect to the productivity of the national and world economy. In response to the force of the populist movement, Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt proposed a moderate road of governmental oversight and regulation in the presidential election of 1912. Wilson’s economic package of 1913, as described by Richard Hofstadter in The American Political Tradition, was an attempt to arrest exploitation and the concentration of wealth in defense of the middle class, industrial workers, and farmers. The economic package, called the New Freedom, may have pointed to the right balance of controlling corporations yet giving them the necessary space to drive the economy. But Wilson’s package was swept aside by World War I, which gave corporations the free hand necessary for the rapid production of arms and military supplies, permitting the corporations to define their own terms. The question of the appropriate relation between the state and large privately-owned corporations remained unresolved.
During the period, there emerged a tendency among the Left to put forth radical criticisms of prevailing institutions and policies, including those of the nation’s founding, without offering constructive solutions. This tendency would grow in the Left, such that it was increasingly perceived by the people as an unpatriotic attack on the USA.
(3) The New Deal provided necessary welfare and assistance to the people in the context of the economic emergency of the Great Depression. However, the program was financed by deficit spending and by superexploitation of the other regions of the world, especially Latin America. As the Cuban economist Ernesto Molina Molina has pointed out, the New Deal was a temporary solution that was not sustainable in the long term, as the national debt accumulated and as the nations of the Global South became increasingly capable of implementing in practice their rights as sovereign nations.
The New Deal agenda of big government, therefore, was not a solution. But neither was the conservative approach of rule by the market. However, a third way was emerging. During the 1980s, the socialist governments of China and Vietnam, seeing the long-term unsustainability of their economies, characterized by excessive reliance on state-owned companies, found an alternative road of state direction of the national economy in accordance with a national plan for economic development, which included space for private enterprise and the market. This approach was subsequently taken by other anti-imperialist nations of the Global South.
Unfortunately, U.S. public debate, trapped in Cold War assumptions, did not take into account these significant developments in real socialism. As a result, the U.S. remained stuck in a simplistic debate of Big Government versus rule by the market. This limitation included the U.S. Left, which failed to carefully observe the developments in the world of real socialism and to flush out their implications for increasing the dynamism of the U.S. economy. The U.S. Left was ideologically trapped in debates involving the tension between Western social democracy and Soviet state-centered socialism, which was being left behind by the development of real socialism in the Global South.
(4) The U.S. student anti-war movement of 1966 to 1970 correctly discerned the importance of overcoming racism, poverty, and war; and it began to forge the rudiments of a global anti-imperialist movement, albeit not consistently. However, the student movement exhibited important juvenile tendencies with respect to sexuality, drugs, and countercultural idealism, thus provoking a negative reaction from the people. The movement lacked the maturity to sustain itself as a movement among the people in the long term, capable of contributing to the public debate and sowing the seeds of anti-imperialism. It failed to discern the importance of learning from the evolution of real socialism in the Third World.
(5) The African-American movement of 1917 to 1988 was the most significant and advanced social movement in the history of the United States. It consisted of two primary tendencies: full equality under the American constitution and law (most clearly represented by DuBois, A. Philip Randolph, and King); and black nationalism/black power (Malcolm X, SNCC, and the black political convention of 1972). Jesse Jackson synthesized the two tendencies in his presidential campaigns of 1984 and 1988, including the formulation of a foreign policy proposal of North-South cooperation, picking up on anti-imperialist articulations of King and Malcolm.
In spite of its essentially correct understanding of national and international questions and its commitment to social justice, Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition lacked the commitment to develop itself as a mass organization and a permanent presence in U.S. public debate. I was a Jackson delegate from South Carolina at the Democratic National Convention in 1988. I participated in efforts to develop the Rainbow Coalition as a mass organization during the period 1988 to 1990, through which I learned firsthand of the lack of commitment to the endeavor, at both the state and national levels.
Meanwhile, ignoring the call of Malcolm for black control of the institutions of the black community in racially separated urban areas, there occurred an out-migration of the black middle class from the traditional pre-1965 segregated black neighborhoods, creating separate black middle-class neighborhoods, and leaving the traditional black neighborhoods vulnerable to social disorganization. This provided the social context for the emergence of a distinctly black middle-class perspective on American society, from which came “identity politics” in the 1990s and critical race theory during the last decade. These tendencies functioned to preserve preferential treatment in university admissions and employment, which benefits primarily the black middle class and not the masses living in the deteriorating lower-class black neighborhoods. CRT has been supported by the political establishment, because it divides the people, and distracts from focus on the unity of all sectors of the people in defense of common interests.
(6) The women’s movement from 1848 to the 1970s had formulated the principle of full equality for women in all areas of society. In the 1980s, as the proposal was gaining wide acceptance, the movement, led by academic feminists in elite universities, began to evolve into a post-modern abandonment of the objective pursuit of truth in order to justify sexual liberties and gender-bending performances. This turn was supported by the political establishment, generating deep cultural divisions among the people.
(7) The ecology movement identified an important contradiction between the geographical and productive expansion of the modern world-system and the geographical limits of the earth. However, as noted above, it presented its proposals in an idealist form, disconnected from the actual conditions of national economies, thus undermining its influence.
As a result of these historic errors and limitations, the Left was not able to formulate a sound and politically intelligent critique of the contradictions of the nation and the world-system in the first quarter of the twenty-first century. It turned to the toxic cancellation and ghosting of individuals who challenged any aspect of its deteriorating project. Rather than engaging in a constructive critique of the MAGA phenomena, based in careful listening, it dismissed its devotees as racists, fascists, and deplorables, thus undermining its own goals, because a movement that attacks its own people has little hope for success. For Donald Trump, the Left has had nothing but contempt, supporting the political establishment’s use of lawfare against him.
Now repudiated by the people, the Left is continuing the attack against the MAGA movement, with the hope that the people will return the coalition of the political establishment and the Left to a sharing of power in the 2026 and 2028 elections. If they have success, it most likely would mean a return to a nation deadlocked in political division, because it would be difficult for the Left in its current manifestation to persuade an effective majority of the people, who possess a certain degree of common-sense intelligence. On the other hand, if the Trump administration has success in moving the nation toward peace and prosperity, its popular support would increase, leaving the woke Left, if not the entire Left, in a position of permanent repudiation by the people of the United States.
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Renewing the historic commitment to justice for the poor of the world
In this situation, the Left, in my view, ought to rediscover its best side. It has no option but to expand its horizons through sustained personal encounter with the socialist projects and anti-imperialist movements of the Global South and East, which themselves have appropriated the concepts of social justice formulated by the ancient prophets from Abraham to Mohammad, as well as the fundamental principles of democracy formulated by Western bourgeois revolutions of the late eighteenth century. I have written of the base of real socialism today in the Judaic-Christian-Islamic tradition and Western bourgeois social philosophy in my commentary of February 22, 2022, “Religion and modern socialism: The universal human quest for the true and the right.” Real socialism today—advancing with great strides in the economic, political, and spiritual terrains—possesses far more appreciation for Western religious and political traditions than the U.S. Left. If the U.S. Left can begin to learn from the insights of real socialism evolving in the world today, it would be able to arrive to a formulation that is not perceived by the people as a rejection of the nation and of Western civilization, thus providing a theoretical foundation for its renewal.
A renewed U.S. Left, renewed through encounter with and appreciation of actual socialist revolutions in the world today, would have much greater credibility among the people of the United States, on the basis of its evident insight into the problems that humanity today confronts, combined with its visible commitment to the renewal of the American republic.
A renewal would also provide the U.S. Left with the moral authority to critique the MAGA movement in power, in the event that the MAGA movement’s lack of anti-imperialist consciousness leads it to immoral and dysfunctional unconventional war with the nations of the earth.
The world of real socialism under construction is a world in which fundamental moral truths are known and followed in practice. These universal moral principles include: truly democratic states have structures for ample citizen participation and authority; every nation has the right to sovereignty and to control over its human and natural resources; every person in the world has the right to meaningful employment, a modest standard of living, and access to education, health care, and culture; every person has the right to the full and free development of his or her personality; and the state has a necessary role to play, in cooperation with private enterprise, in the social and economic development of the society.
The U.S. Left, in its historic quest to understand the true and the right, has included a current of thought, primarily in the Catholic Left, committed to social justice to the poor of the world. In the context of the self-critical re-evaluation made necessary by the political triumph of Trump and the MAGA movement, this current must experience renewal, nurtured by encounter with the poor of the earth.
Human life is full of ironies, and among them is the fact that the U.S. Left can find the true meaning of the American Republic through encounter with the real socialism of the Global South and East, thus enabling it to play a constructive role in public debate.
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