Anti-state link

(Joseph, “Radical Intellectuals and the Subversion of Progressive Politics,” p. 183-185)

Contrary to the fears of "difference theorists" that "universal" concepts such as citizenship suppress diversity, a politics of social solidarity con- tends that "difference" can only be empowering if the particular com- munities of a polity share a sufficient sense of common membership so as to sustain a strong complement of social rights. Public provision of basic human needs might, at times, be most effectively provided by decentral- ized voluntary associations within civil society (e.g., nonprofit day care centers, community-governed health clinics). But to ensure social equal- ity, the state would still play a central role in equitably financing such programs and in setting minimal standards of provision. In their hostil- ity to a bureaucratic, paternalistic welfare state, both post-structuralist feminists and communitarians forget that the power of the democratic state is the only means for rectifying the inegalitarian distribution of a market capitalist economy. Contemporary radical theory's hostility (or, at best, indifference) to the state perhaps derives from an unwillingness to consider strategies for influencing the state in an era when the center and right largely govern. But to cede state power to procorporate forces is to abandon the project of democratic equality. It is time for radical democratic and socialist theorists to ask "post- structuralist" and "difference" scholars to make clear their political— rather than solely ontological and metaphysical—commitments. While culturally sustaining identities of "difference" contribute to a pluralist democracy, so too does the solidarity derived from a common sense of citizenship. Citizenship need not be a "homogenizing" category that reduces all to the pursuit of the same needs and interests. If our public understanding of "citizenship" fails to embody a nonmarket conception of human worth then "difference" will not be built on a terrain of demo- cratic equality. "Difference" is not empowering if affluent suburbanites feel no common bonds with residents of the inner city, with the immi- grants who care for their children, or with deindustrialized workers expe- riencing economic and social dislocation. The extreme example of the breakdown of social solidarity in the United States is the absence of any coherent plan to rehabilitate and reintegrate into American society the 2.3 million citizens in jail and prison and another 4 million on parole or probation. Radical academics only have to interrogate the inegalitarian policies of the neoliberal university to comprehend the continuing relevance of the value of equality of standing to a democratic society. The value of equal- ity of standing often falls by the wayside under the self-interested logrc of neoliberal capitalism. Many tenure-track and tenured faculty refuse to express active solidarity with hyper-exploited lecturers, adjuncts, and graduate students who get paid infinitely less for the exact same teaching labor that tenurable labor performs. But unless tenured faculty use their limited leverage to fight for improved working conditions for exploited academic labor, their PhD students will face dismal futures, as tenure- track jobs will soon be as few and far between in America as are unionized industrial jobs. For several decades now the Right has taken seriously the role of higher education in generating public ideas. The corporate community and their think tanks fund and "discipline" business schools and economic depart- ments to prescribe "free market" ideology. Such market fundamentalism has had disastrous effects on economic policy both before and during the Great Recession. Progressive faculty in the humanities and soft social SCI- ences, in contrast, have done a fairly good job of popularizing among their students concepts of tolerance, diversity, and even transgression. But we have done a poorer job ofexplaining how rampant social inequality thwarts the lives of millions of our fellow human beings. Despite the Right's claim that Marxists abound in the academy, the concept of class is fairly alien to most college classrooms. Students know why corporate boardrooms should be more diverse; but few question the concept of corporate rule itself. Radical democratic theorists must subject to democratic critique insti- tutions that are created by interdependent human efforts, but which arc governed undemocratically, such as corporations and the neoliberal uni- versity. Otherwise, why should not the "different" or "agonal" interests of corporations be treated as persons with full rights to spend unlimited frnds on campaigns and lobbying? Democratic theorists also need to revisit arguments as to why labor rights are an essential part of the right to freedom of association, as well as a crucial means for redressing capitalist inequality. We should remind our students that skyrocketing tuition and their resulting indebtedness stem from neoliberal tax giveaways to the rich and corporations. Politicians of both mainstream parties have used the resulting revenue shortfalls to justify drastic cuts in public provision. How many of our students—or colleagues—know that per capital state fund- ing for higher education has declined by 40 percent over the past 30 years? Not that a simple revisiting of traditional radical democratic values will suffce. Social and political movements still fight largely on the terrain of the nation-state, but to regulate global capital these movements will have to build both transnational solidarity and new forms of democratic transnational regulatory institutions. That is, international social solidar- ity must go beyond a moral imperative and take on concrete institutional forms. Such new practices must enable working people to raise up, rather than level-down, global labor, environmental, and human rights stan- dards. This task will take both theoretical and political creativity beyond our existing political imaginary. The questions addressed in this essay are not purely normative or theo- retical. Theorists must reflect a pessimism of the intellect by rigorously analyzing present realities. But theorists must also have the optimism of the Will to search for the cracks in the dominant power structure. Iheir work should remind us of the historical reality that no social order is completely stable or devoid of possibilities for democratic transforma- rion. And it is precisely in times of social crisis that "epochal theory ' has contributed to democratic social transformation. Thus, work in demo- cratic political theory should not avoid analysis of contemporary politics, political economy, and policy debates. In short, political theorists who are committed to democratic critique must reengage with politics. A new majoritarian Left will not be reconstructed through anachro- niscic appeal to a never-realized golden age of leftist solidarity, which in reality excluded women, gays and lesbians, and people of color. But the defense of the rights of marginalized communities cannot succeed absent the revitalization of majoritarian democratic theory and practice. Whether the understanding of social solidarity and democratic equality explored in th1S essay is latent in our atomized and fragmented culture can only be answered through intellectual and political contestation over the meaning of democracy. The outcome of such contestation will influence the future of our common politics; if not, what is the purpose of political theory?