Beyond the Dem Party

Following up on the last post, some more excerpts from that article showing how the faux distinction between race and economics has provided a smokescreen for the Dems and Clinton from addressing the underlying issue in both cases, a corrupt capitalism that they must maintain. Conclusion: this can only be adequately addressed outside of the corrupt Dem Party.


"When Democrats refuse, as Clinton so often does, to recognize that those fighting for racial justice and those fighting for economic justice are engaged in a common project — and against a common enemy — they grant legitimacy to the economic order that has produced the profound inequities we see today. Thus Clinton-style identity politics has become, to quote Adolph Reed, 'neoliberalism’s version of a left.' It is a politics that places what Reed terms 'antidiscrimination' at the center and often downplays or ignores economic matters that have profound effects on black and Latino communities. At its core, then, this deep commitment to identity politics is 'the path Democrats have taken in retreating from a commitment to economic justice.' [...] It is a political framework that legitimizes capitalism by separating racial justice from economic justice and arguing that fighting for the latter will do nothing to move us closer to the former; it is a framework that argues not for more equality, but for more diversity among elite sectors of the population. [...] The Democratic Party's adoption of identity politics as an agenda entirely separate from issues of class exploitation has only served to obscure this reality, allowing the economic order that produced these trends to persist."


"Of late, Democrats have gone far beyond failing to address these inequities; they seem bent on perpetuating them. Unwilling to fight for an ambitious social agenda in the name of 'pragmatism' and eagerly receptive to floods of corporate money — these two things are not unrelated — Democrats have lost both the language necessary to fight systemic economic and racial injustices and the platform necessary to resist the class war being waged from above. Their party is now one that is content to, in the words of one commentator, use 'its accumulated power to compensate for its complete lack of compelling answers to contemporary political questions.' If it wasn't obvious enough already, the Democratic Party's refusal to recognize capitalism as an impediment to both economic and racial justice highlights the necessity of building coalitions and movements outside of the party system. After all, as Michelle Alexander has argued, 'it would be easier to build a new party than to save the Democratic Party from itself.'"