If only the problem really was intransient politicians unwilling to compromise. It’s actually much deeper and more profound than that.
Today's situation is similar to those in the years immediately before Lincoln’s election and the outbreak of the Civil War and before Roosevelt’s election in 1932 in the depths of the Great Depression. While the possibility of an armed rebellion (South Carolina in 1861) is unlikely in our present context, a revolutionary transition in political power in the years immediately ahead is all but inevitable.
Of course, that notion flies in the face of current mainstream punditry that stresses the need for “adults to take over” and find a compromise so we can all get back to business as usual. Such talk is always a strong stable of political thought on the eve of revolutionary change, but it is delusionary.
The Civil War crisis is a case in point. For a decade leading up to the 1860 election, American politicians, enduring the mushrooming catastrophe of slavery, sought ways to compromise. Progressive Americans had no real way to affect the political process, but their agitation (Harriet Beecher Stowe, for instance) steadily advanced their cause. Overall, they lacked the resources, organization and access to the media to contend for political power. Some (John Brown), feeling the impotence of their position, resorted to insurrection, first in Kansas and then in Virginia. In 1854, the Republican Party formed in opposition to slavery, but, even in 1860, when Lincoln won the Presidency on its ticket, it was still dominated by anti-slavery compromisers (including Lincoln, himself).
Despite all the compromising, however, time had run out on slavery and the nation’s first social contract (the Constitution) which tolerated it. Each successive compromise was essentially a sell-out to the slave owners, and each brought forth more despair and dissatisfaction with government. The Southern elite, sensing ultimate defeat, finally felt compelled to attempt to pull out of the national bargain. They attempted to secede, and war broke out.
The crisis of the 30s was rooted in issues much more like today’s – not slavery but, rather, the balance of power between corporate interests and the working masses. It, too, might have resulted in a political rebellion except for one thing: unlike in the years before the Civil War, progressive forces were highly organized and well-resourced in the thirties due to the emergence of the Labor Movement. Because Labor was so strong, it was able to win a bargain with capital (the New Deal and the right to collective bargaining). The rightwing was marginalized, and violence was averted.
Although similar forces are involved, today’s crisis is significantly different than that of the 1930s. For one thing, the economic base of U.S. society is no longer mainly industrial (it is service-based), and industrial unions have lost most of their power and influence as a result. Much as they might like to do so, unions cannot provide the agenda and organized power that they did 80 years ago.
A second key difference is the emergent split between the two key wings of the ruling elite. At the time of the last crisis, the big bank and big oil (and other industrial) corporations were working hand-in-glove with each other to secure as much international power (vis-à-vis Britain, Germany and the other Great Powers) as possible. Today, owing to changes in the economic base, industrial power has shifted to China, India, Brazil and other nations with low labor costs, leaving the U.S.-based oil monopolies as the only really significant industrially-oriented force in the country. Meanwhile, the same changes have untethered financial interests from any particular interest in the well-being of U.S. society (and Americans), except that they live here and want to maintain the high quality lifestyle and options that American elites enjoy.
Strategically, the oil barons are on the decline (though, relying on the oil-connected Bush/Cheney Administration, they asserted themselves and took control of the government in the aftermath of 9/11, dragging the nation into a catastrophic and hopeless war for control of Iraq’s oil), but the big bank elites, the rising clique, remain a long-term force to be reckoned. Unfortunately, their agenda (always the case but particularly evident, say, in the 1920s, 1980s and the last decade) is nothing more than aggrandizing profit through cycles of bubble-building speculation followed by debtor-squeezing hoarding and austerity. Unconnected to real people and real production, the big banks are unfit and unable to rule society on their own. Thus, as we have seen since September, 2008, under their domination (through Geithner and Obama in the US, Prime Minister Cameron in Britain and Chancellor Merkel in Germany), chaos is unleashed, and the downward spiral spurs grassroots fascist elements (as well as, in Egypt and Greece, for example, grassroots revolutionaries).
The problem for Americans is that, today, we have no progressive force capable of putting demands to the financial elite and the government for productive investment nor for containment of fascist elements. Thus, the situation is deteriorating.
The present political crisis over the debt ceiling is likely to be just one of a series of major, escalating crises leading up to the 2012 elections. Even then, it is hard to see how the crisis will be resolved, but those elections provide the first glimmer of opportunity for progressives to coalesce nationally and begin to project a program of real change to the nation. Bernie Sanders’ call for a challenge to Obama is a step in the right direction. While Obama, in an objective sense, is the leader of the united front against fascism (and, as such, should be supported against whatever candidate wins the Republican nomination), it is vital that progressives begin to establish a public, organized presence for the decisive battles that lie beyond 2012.
