The Fallacy of the Center; The Confederate States of America, Centrist liberalism Despondent, and American power in the long duree
I elected not stake my academic future on the well trodden grounds of American and European phenomena, partly as a matter of taste, and partly because the most engaging and interesting questions of global capitalism and political economy are taking place in the evolving and shifting frontiers of the global south. It is an unquestionable reality though, that the domestic politics of Europe and the United States are of global consequence, and must figure into the geography of any geo-political imagination.
As novel as the shifting post 2016 political topography has been in certain respects, it should not stop us from the hard but necessary task of understanding the shifting and often explosive reorientation of American power. For as ridiculous and crude as the world of Trump has been, this is not the first nor last time that American domestic politics have so radically reoriented internally, and challenged the global liberal order internationally. This article is an effort to place the US as a pivotal, but not the pivotal, node in a world system which has no true center. The US is in many ways a state defined by the aftermath of its never quite resolved civil war, and therefore the conservative and reactionary forces which have so often radically altered the nature of American power, must be understood in this context. The triumph of the liberal state in the 19th and 20th century has always been an uneasy balancing act, a delicate matter, and in understanding its recurring crisis in the context of the US, the approach of the long duree is necessary. By situating Trumps election in the context of the shattering of the New Deal coaltion and the loss of the Solid South, the slow reorientation of the former confederacy towards the GOP, the incredible counter revolutionary triumph of Reagan, and the fracture of the Neo-liberal oriented Neo-cons from the true populist party that is the GOP post 2008, we may better see the truth. The center is a fantasy, a lie, an abstraction, a nonsense word. As a political platform it HAS never been the deciding force in the exercise of American Power, and to invoke it is the surest way to prove a complete lack of understanding of the post 2016 American political landscape.
Before we discuss the relatively recent phenomena of American power, and indeed it is quite recent, let us quickly do a bit of house keeping to make sure the vocabulary employed here is unequivocally clear. By liberalism here is meant the political meta strategy, as Wallerstein termed it, borne in the aftermath of the French Revolution. It was not the first ideological reaction to it, the credit goes to Burke and conservatism, but nonetheless it was the Liberals who situated themselves in European politics between reactionary and monarchist politics, and Jacobins and later socialists. It is in the Utilitarian philosophy of Bentham, for example, that gradual change through the legislative process of the state in the name of the public good, finds one of its earliest theoretical expressions. This liberal position is expressed more succinctly and in perhaps more familiar form by Hobhouse in the early 20th century, who claimed,´the function of the State is to secure conditions upon which its citizens are able to win by their own efforts all that is necessary to a full civic efficiency. It is not for the State to feed, house, or clothe them. It is for the State to take care that the economic conditions are such that the normal man who is not defective in mind or body or will can by useful labor feed, house, and clothe himself and his family´. This, is the position of the so called Center, and why I employ the term Liberal to mean the Center, as it envisions this role for the State. The political scientist Arthur Schlesinger in the years following world War II envisioned a similar role for the Liberal state in his Vital Center.
It is this conception of the center, which has so obsessed the establishment of a democratic party scarmbling to reassert itself. Lawrence Summers, treasury secretary under Clinton,loyal Rubinite, and a card carrying Neo-liberal if there ever was one, claimed after election day, with a confidence I have yet to fully understand, that `Biden will govern from the center.`The Center has been a consistent trope in the post revolutionary imagination of Euro-America, but its repeated crises have been a recurring theme of Euro-American modernity. It is a concept that is especially dangerous for use in the American context. The members of the Bush Neo-con era who formed the Lincoln Project PAC envisioned 2020 being the year of the Moderate republican, and that the centrist image of Biden would handily take back the Rust belt. They were astoundingly wrong. They severely underestimated the counter-revolutionary turn of their former party, a recurring theme in the history of Conservative politics, which have always proved more adaptable than their opponents, and indeed many of their own members, have understood. In 2008 it became clear, as it would be again in 2017(they came within one vote of gutting the ACA, with absolutely no plan for what came next), a large part of the Republican party was willing to let things crash and burn rather than perserve the existing order, and to adopt explicitly (rather than partially disguised) racial platforms. Once again, the consensus of ordering, seemingly fixed in many minds with the assurance of Fukuyamas End of History, in which capitalist liberal democracy was the pinnacle of human achievement, collapsed. When the Republican party split in 2008 over the bank bailout and refused to give Paulsons proposal the votes to clear the House, the writing was on the wall for the Neo-cons and for figures like Paulson, Bushes Treasury secretary who grudingly supported Clinton in 2016. Their stubborn failure to realize their obsolensce is nearly pathetic. Trump is, and will remain, the real face of the Republican party. It must mean also that we recognize that race remains a critical component, if not THE critical component, of American political calculus.
It is sadly the case the absorption of the Confederate states into the Union in 1865 did not mean the death of Dixie as a critical centre of power nationally, and therefore relevant to the exercise of American power globally. We should not forget for example, Stephen Alexander, vice president of the confederacy who claimed in 1861, Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition. [Applause.] This, our new Government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth`…. Would return to serve as governor of Georgia in 1882. The confederacy as a political force was never really defeated. The counter reaction after reconstruction speaks to that. Nor would this be the last time that Dixie and the segregationist South would wield its domestic power so mightily, and therefore affect the global. Though before the Republican party had fully absorbed these elements into their coalition, they would be first to counter Americas first attempt to define the global liberal order.
In the aftermath of World War I, it was a Republican congress that shattered Wilsons grand vision of Post war order, the League of Nations. Henry Cabot Lodge, a northeastern Republican who despised Wilson, had pushed hard for Americas entry into the war, yet was unwilling accept the conditions of the League in its entirety. The absence of American power in the League would have deep repercussions indeed. Europe was left to wonder then, what would be Americas future role on the continent? Was Wilsons vision forever crushed? Such uncertainty and radical reorientation was what defined Americas entrance to the geo political stage, and this should be understood in any analyisis of American power.
Until the 1968 election, though Goldwaters win of the Deep South was a harbinger of things to come, the South had been a part of the New Deal coalition. Predicated of course, on the continued practice of segregation. Even George Wallace, the segregationist Governor of Alabama, had been a staunch New Deal democrat. In an interview with a typically condescending William Buckley before the 1968 election, Wallace defended his position in rather populist terms, as Buckley argued that he had betrayed conservative ideals by growing the federal government. Wallaces run is the last time a third party made serious gains in the US electoral college, and it was an explicitly segregationist platform. It would be Dixieland, the former confederacy, that would give its votes to Wallace, and alter the balance of American power. It should be noted, perhaps interestingly for democrats in 2020, Wallace would run again in 1972 and win Michigan in the democratic primary. Perhaps telling us something about the nature of the Rust belt. This reorientation of political power served Nixon and the Republicans well, but the true counter revolution was yet to come.
It was no mistake, that in 1980, Ronald Reagan chose Pennsylvania, Mississippi to launch his campaign, one he proclaimed would be one focused on states rights. The famous murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner had taken place here, and Reagan knew full well the racial resentment simmering in the deep south. Reagans conservatism shows the frightening ability of counter revolutionary politics to adapt. His landslide victory, fueled largely by the Southern strategy, who have deep implications globally. Granada, Nicaragua, El salvador, Afghanistan, the sites of a rabid right wing administrations scope were firmly aimed at revolutionaries world wide. A global arms race against the Soviet Union will leave a nervous Europe wondering if they will be the front lines in a nuclear holocaust.
Let us end in today, with the aftermath of 2016 fresh in our minds. The post cold war liberal order, for better or worse, has been irrevocably changed. French finance minister De Maire made clear that the USA has decoupled from Europe. Even the right leaning CDU coalition in Germany has made clear it can never be sure of its relationship with American power. It was in many ways, the legacy of 1968, the legacy of Americas unresolved American civil war, that has brought the global order into question. We need not look far for the continuity.
The results of 2020 tell us what we might have already known. Trumps hold on the white vote was strong. He ran strong numbers in the rust belt. The republicans won back seveal house seats. It was we should have known. Trump is the real Republican party. He is dixie and the ethnic enclaves of the mid west. He is strong. The imaginary center that was supposed to support Biden did not appear.
What is to be done then? If the imagined center failed to deliver us, if there is no more normal, no center of gravity to fall back towards, if we must continually deal with a political apparatus built upon dark money, racial hatred, and corporate super PACs that refuses to even share the tasks of actually governing, what then? The best glimmer of hope came, from the very coalition that the DNC establishment said was simply too radical and would lose them the election. The democratic party writ large has been very willing to embrace a far more progressive agenda than the shell shocked DNC leadership has been willing to admit. The coalition that Stacey Abrams built inGeorgia the aftermath of her defeat in 2018, of minorities, educated whites, youth and activists, dealt several blows to GOP dominance in the Old South that should make the Republicans nervous, or at least a bit apprehensive. They registered thousands of voters, canvassed communities, and turned what had become a reliable seat of Dixiecrat conservatism into a real battleground, sending both senate races to a run-off and flipping a house seat. In an election where revolutionary politics was said to be too dangerous, it was the only real ray of hope that shone through, and it proved surprisingly successful. While the future may be unwritten, we may take solace that if we are brave, we might be able to write it.
The GOP, however, is still in a very strong position. As a conservative, and therefore counter revolutionay movement, the Republican party is in an enormously advantageous position. Despite Trumps populist bluster, the basic goals of the GOP since Reagan remain unchanged. The destruction of the welfare state, the social safety net, and the Neo-liberal aim of keeping capitalism safe from democracy remain the basic goals of the GOP, and while Trump has been a mediocre populist in terms of legislating, as a Right wing counter revolutionary of the Reagan mold, he has performed his job well. The power of this voting bloc to affect national, and therefore international politics, is profound. The battle lines of the old Confederacy have changed, but Dixieland lives on. And she is strong.