Link: An Open Letter to the American Left and in Particular, the Bourgeoisie “Left Wing” Media
An Open Letter to the American Left and in Particular, the Bourgeoisie “Left Wing” Media
Over the past three days on social media I have repeatedly watched in dumbstruck awe as affluent bourgeoisie media pundits across a fairly broad political spectrum – from Republicans trying to manipulate the Democratic Primary to editors of ostensibly “left wing” or at least “left leaning” publications like Vox and The Nation – game out the “inevitable” concession of the Bernie Sanders movement in the 2020 Dem nomination contest.
Please keep in mind that we’re literally five months before the first primary contest and just under a year out from convention night in 2020. Furthermore the vast majority of the “Liz Warren is inevitable” narratives that have spawned these discussions about how the “Berniecrats” can best surrender to Warren’s inevitable momentum, are based on roughly a week’s worth of newly-released Iowa polls; at least one of which is demonstrably “fake” as I wrote about the other day on Facebook.
Naturally some of this mainstream media chatter is political narrative building (as I’ve discussed numerous times recently) and some of this is plain old-fashioned upper class hubris. Literally nobody knows anything for sure about a 2020 Democratic Party nomination contest that’s still five months from starting and currently shows Palooka Joe Biden in the lead if examined purely by the numbers.
Still one does objectively have to acknowledge that this bourgeoisie confidence comes from somewhere besides pure arrogance. Even if you believe that the fake “left” corporate media’s ability to drive polling numbers is ultimately temporary (which I do), you still have to acknowledge that the narrative of Liz Warren’s inevitability has been far more successful in capturing the imagination of comparatively younger, hipper and more influential liberals in the public discourse, than the previous manufactured narratives around Palooka Joe Biden, Lock Em Up Kamala, Skateboard Jesus or Dollar Store Macron.
Sure, Warren’s rise is undoubtedly being built on an astroturfed narrative full of misdirection, outright deception and the same “Correct the Record” smear tactics the online propaganda campaign to destroy Sanders was built on in 2016 – but there is still a growing chance that narrative will ultimately take hold and transform itself into a reality; and clearly the bourgeoisie in our media are pretty sure that’s actually happening as we speak.
They might even be right.
I say that because right now and in a highly-polarized, politically ignorant society where the bottom eighty-nine percent of the population really isn’t allowed to talk about class, pretty much the entire spectrum of ostensibly “left wing” media organizations (from say Vox Media, or the New Republic on the extreme right, all the way to Jacobin or Current Affairs on the extreme left of this sample) are working pretty hard to get Elizabeth Warren elected even though many of them genuinely profess to “prefer” Sanders. Perhaps even more mindbogglingly, portions of these (perhaps) unintentional “forces for Warren” are actually people who work directly for the Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign; although again, they may not even realize that they’re working for Warren and against the labor class as represented by their own candidate, Bernie Sanders.
How are they working to help get Elizabeth Warren, or even Joe Biden elected instead of Bernie Sanders?
By repeatedly reminding their audience that although there are many policy-based, or even movement-based reasons why Sanders is the best left wing candidate, a Liz Warren presidency would still be an acceptable compromise, their personal “second choice” or at very worst – still “kind of bad for the left” but “vastly superior” to any of the other potential candidates in the 2020 Democratic Party nomination race.
So what’s the problem, what if they actually feel that way, right? Frankly, I don’t doubt that they do which is where class comes up in our discussion.
The first problem here is that even if these “leftist” media influencers are genuinely well meaning they are still furthering a narrative that Liz Warren represents a transformational change for American society and ultimately, for the labor class that simply isn’t true – we’ll get back to this point a little bit later so keep it in nested in your mind until then.
Thus whether they know it or not, bougie “left wing” media figures are actively preparing the minds of their readers for the possibility of having to settle for Warren and in the end, give up on Bernie Sanders and his admittedly “much better” labor class political revolution. They will also at this point often include vague allusions towards the left wing labor class movement built around the Sanders campaign picking up without him in a Liz Warren presidency – but as we’ll see later, this too is a fantasy.
While I don’t want to call anyone out, one example would be the Harvard-educated left wing writer who I am absolutely certain does *mean* well, and who recently informed his readers that he found the prospect of a Liz Warren nomination “very worrying” – before spending a whole page explaining the general validity of the bourgeoisie liberal argument for settling on Warren. Of course, he does then goes on to do a pretty good job articulating why that argument is only true on the surface – but the lead and the feeling of inevitable compromise still hangs over the entire piece.
And frankly, the author in question here might be one of the few affluent “leftists” in the public media discourse who recognizes (even if he does not always understand) the class tension dynamics involved in this political struggle for control of “the left.’
Which brings up my second problem with this narrative, namely that it isn’t really true anyway – at least not for the sans culottes of the American labor class left. I mean sure Liz Warren is better than Joe Biden but that’s a lot like saying being shot is better than slowly being mauled to death by a wild bear; either result is still fatal.
The frustrating part here is that even as I type this, I know professional class “leftists” reading it will assume I’m being hyperbolic; but I’m not. I have no doubt whatsoever that if you’re an affluent trust fund baby with good intentions, a well-to-do professional class left wing activist or an Ivy-league educated democratic socialist working in the media on Manhattan Island or in the Beltway, what Liz Warren is bringing to the table *does* represent an acceptable, if disappointing compromise – a mere missed opportunity in the eternal struggle towards true (democratic) socialism or something along those lines.
I understand why you feel that way too. It’s because in the final analysis and even if you’re aware of the nuanced policy differences between what Sanders is proposing and what Warren is at best half-promising, you have no real lived experience with the labor class or real life perspective about the impact of these nuanced policy differences have on the ground in most labor class communities. To be clear, many of the individuals I’m talking about certainly do seem to care about the labor class, and perversely because their gateway into left wing politics often comes from political organizing at elite educational institutions, they frequently do have a direct understanding of what life is like for American families living in *extreme* poverty. But this only represents about thirty to forty percent of the U.S. labor class – they have no point of reference at all for the rest of us in the proletariat; from the working poor up on through to the rank and file of American organized labor.
You cannot presume to speak for the labor class and lead the intellectual wing of a grassroots, labor class revolution if when it gets down to brass tacks, you don’t even know us. If you have no idea what our lives and economic conditions are truly like, then it’s not surprising that you don’t fully realize that the gaps between Warren’s promises and Bernie’s proposals most directly impact the roughly two-thirds of labor class people I just told you affluent leftist media influencers know precisely f*cking nothing about.
Oh sure, you guys know all the stats and figures. On a conceptual level the bourgeoisie “left wing” media are fully aware of and extremely bothered by the fact that X percentage of American households are only one layoff or medical emergency away from going tits up and losing everything – but they’ve never lived it, and they don’t work, socialize or reside among the class of people who have.
They understand the staggering overall figures behind student debt, housing debt, medical debt – in fact, they can run the surveys and charts off in their minds from memory and that’s a pretty damn useful skill to have. But bourgeoisie liberals, no matter how well meaning they might be, don’t know anything about the working mom reading this right now while trying to decide if she’s skipping dinner tomorrow night or Saturday because something came up, the budgeted money ran out and she’s got kids who absolutely have to eat even if it means doing crimes to feed them.
I’m not trying to pick on the affluent left wing media, I know you folks just genuinely don’t know anything about this life and the majority of people living a labor class lifestyle in the modern neofeudal hellscape that is post-Crash America. You don’t know that the differences between Liz Warren and Bernie Sanders aren’t about a glorious opportunity to us, but a matter of life and death to millions of labor class folks who fall between the gaps of these two political ideas or moments.
We don’t need a vaguely nebulous “framework” called Medicare for All; we need Medicare for All and not just because the poorest third of us might literally die without it. You can’t understand this because you’ve never lived with the drain on wealth and opportunity that even paying for privatized healthcare you can afford has on the labor class. You’ve never traded your working rights or future wages for medical coverage and you know almost nobody who has – you folks don’t know and indeed almost could not know that just surviving comes at a cost for us.
We don’t need “green imperialism” and a Middle East policy fundamentally inseparable from John McCain’s – we need an end to American forever wars and a vast reduction in subsidies to the Military Industrial Complex through foreign aid to Israel (which they then spend on weapons.) You don’t know this because it’s not your kids and your mates bleeding out in the sand. You don’t get your loved ones back half-mad and mentally broken forever every time a War on Terror-loving US president feels adventurous and as such you could never understand why imperialism terrifies us more that Donald Trump’s latest unhinged tweet.
We’re the folks who’re going to be means tested out of a future, not you. We’re the folks who’re going to be sacrificed on the altar of free market solutions, not you. We’re the folks that are still going to be debt-slaves after Liz Warren pays off just enough of our student loans and medical bills to keep the banks solvent and the lender class leeches profitable, not you. For a staggeringly large percentage of the American labor class that you folks in the upper class “leftist” media have almost no contact with whatsoever, the difference between Sanders and Warren is as real as a heart attack.
I’m not criticizing you for not knowing it, or at best only vaguely remembering it while you’re explaining why Liz Warren isn’t as bad as Biden – like I said before, bourgeoisie leftists and professional class democratic socialists don’t live this experience and you don’t really associate with anyone who does; how could you know it? But if you don’t know the labor class, how can you presume to lead or inform us and how can you tell us what would be “disappointing but still better” for labor class people you do not even know?
If you aren’t part of the affluent left wing media set, there’s a small chance you think I’m exaggerating the vast distances between the more “mainstream” but still undeniably left wing media, and the average labor class American – but I absolutely assure you that I’m not; Google how many of your favorite writers from Current Affairs graduated from Harvard and how much the guy who runs Jacobin is worth (two magazines I love and subscribe to by the way) – then get back to me on that one.
Therein of course and as always lies the rub that is the difference between “the left” and “the labor class left.” Although professional class and above leftists are adjacent to the labor class in the U.S. left; they are not actually the real labor class. Their desires, concerns and ideas, all of which are fundamentally shaped by their lived experience as members of another class, are similar to ours but they are not the exact same; and the difference between us as a class and the “left wing” media influencers as a class is precisely the point where Elizabeth Warren’s “left wing credibility and support” ultimately lies.
At the end of the day, Liz Warren is a left leaning technocrat who actually believes some of the library liberal bullshit most fake progressive, center-left Democrats say but don’t mean. A hypothetical (and by no means guaranteed) Liz Warren victory on election night would represent a top-down, social democratic altering of the deal between elite capital and the poor, with some percentage of the labor class benefiting somewhat in the overlap.
By contrast a Bernie Sanders presidency would represent the nascent beginnings of a bottom-up, labor class and democratic socialist revolution (juxtaposition on purpose) that would actively seek to restore grassroots, labor class power and thus fundamentally alter the *balance of power* between the labor class and our “betters” – a class of people to which Liz Warren belongs herself; as opposed to Sanders who grew up labor class rather than even just “middle class.”
Look, just between you and me, I sincerely want to like the modern iteration of Liz Warren. If you could transport this new (non-Republican) Liz back in time she would have been the perfect candidate to run in 1992 instead of Third Way minion Bill Clinton and his slavishly pro-elite capital agenda. I do sincerely wish my desire to like her and my wish that she’d come along before we go to this point of no return meant anything at all my friends, but it just doesn’t.
For the labor class a Liz Warren presidency isn’t “disappointing” or a “missed opportunity” it’s poison and death. Liz Warren doesn’t have a grass roots revolution, she doesn’t understand how to build worker’s power and her top down solutions are not going to open up options for the labor class beyond her Presidency; if that even happens at all because I’m certainly *not* sure she’s capable of beating Donald Trump.
By contrast every single one of these great hopes for future of a labor class left are part and parcel of a potential Sanders presidency and certainly look like they would survive beyond his time in office, or on earth.
Even if I assume she’d win, the truth remains a Liz Warren presidency will result in the complete implosion of the still infant democratic socialist left in this country; just like the Obama presidency strangled the nascent left wing American peace movement in its crib on his way to winning two terms in office as POTUS.
The message a Warren nomination would deliver to the labor class is that once again, our “betters” have decided what is “realistic and beneficial enough for the proles” – the fact that the “betters” doing the deciding will contain more managerial class professionals and less billionaires than before won’t make a goddamn lick of difference to the labor class in practical terms. Compassionate free market fundamentalism managed by upper class rule is still a debtor’s prison that ends in a pauper’s grave unless you’re one of the newly ascendant professional class power players a hypothetical Warren presidency will create.
Furthermore, I strongly suspect the bourgeoisie and petite-bourgeoisie who see their moment in the sun embodied in the form of Elizabeth Warren haven’t completely thought through the potential consequences of delivering that message to the labor class at the Democratic National Convention next summer.
If bougie liberal jackals who pretend to be leftists from downtown loft apartments do finally convince Sanders to accept Liz’s offer of a role in her government, what happens when his base won’t go along quietly with him? Wouldn’t that potentially hand the nomination to a god awful elite liberal stiff, namely Joe Biden? Do any of you, even among the affluent “left wing” media poseurs, seriously believe punch-drunk and openly sundowning Palooka Joe is really going to beat Trump in the 2020 election, if that is indeed what the final match-up comes down to?
If you lose the labor class because you refused to fight against Warren and for Sanders on their behalf, what exactly is left of the Democratic Socialist revolution? A couple of glossy magazines, a couple dozen new think tank analysts and some podcast celebrities?
You need us more than we need you or anyone else who can afford to settle for Liz Warren. Are bougie “social democrat” and library liberal types really ready to play chicken with the pissed off eighty-nine percent of the population that doesn’t have much left to lose?
I think affluent cosplay revolutionaries in the “left wing” media who don’t want to lose everything their current influence is based on, should stop selling the line that “Liz isn’t as good as Bernie but I’ll still be happy if she wins and you should be too.” No, we will not be happy because it will destroy the moment we the labor class and not affluent media pinkos, have built here – nothing you folks can say is going to change that, no matter how often you say it.
At the end of the day there can only be one nominee and as much as the pinko magazine editors and Sanders campaign surrogates want to pretend the American left can hug this out and somehow secure the nomination for Sanders without “attacking” Liz Warren, they’re simply wrong. While you foolish “upper-class twits” are helping Liz sell herself as the “pragmatic compromise between liberal and left” her campaign is currently eroding labor class power and putting flame to everything labor class Sanders supporters have worked so hard for already.
Just because Liz Warren doesn’t represent the absolute top tier of elite Pig Empire capitalism, doesn’t mean that this isn’t still fundamentally a class war; even if the bourgeoisie left has conveniently forgotten that fact, it would be foolish for them to assume that we have. The difference in this round of the ongoing class struggle is merely that Warren’s campaign represents hijacking the power built by the labor class, to benefit the professional class primarily in their conflict with the billionaires and aristocrats – in this arrangement however, it’s still the American labor class that gets the short end of the stick if Warren wins the nomination and takes the bourgeoisie left to power with her; we do the hard part and you folks in the middle classes swoop in for the rewards, the same as it ever was.
Frankly, I think you have all miscalculated your own importance within the moment. It is not the sans culottes who need to get wise to which way the wind is blowing, it’s you folks in the bougie “left wing” political and media spheres. There are no moral victories or prizes for second place in class warfare.
Furthermore, I’d suggest you get around to accepting that reality pretty quickly before Warren’s manufactured narrative of inevitability turns into a reality and the entire house of cards you’ve been constructing on top of a labor class political movement comes crashing down like so many panes of broken glass.
The 2020 Democratic Party nomination contest is a class war and Liz Warren is no friend of the labor class at all. Maybe it’s time the bourgeoisie and petite-bourgeoisie “left wing” media started acting like they understand this before someone gets the impression we aren’t all on the same team after all.
– nina illingworth
