krebscycle

Ernst Thälmann was the leader of the German Communist Party in the late 1920s. He insisted that the “lesser of two evils” Social Democrats not the Nazis were the primary threats to German workers although he might have reconsidered by the time the Gestapo executed him. The annoying style of Andrew Levine’s effort to advocate the Ernst Thälmann plan in modern America is almost enough to distract from its bizarre politics.

Lesser evilism is ultimately illogical because evil choices can and do affect future choices in ways that make the lesser evil down the road worse than the greater evil now is

I mean “lesser evilism” – Good Gracious. The essay begins with an assertion that many of the President’ supporters are “panglossian”, followed by a helpful explanation that Dr. Pangloss’s ideas were

a clever caricature of some important metaphysical doctrines of the great German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. 

Fascinating. We then get a gratuitous reference to Marx’s “superstructures” metaphor. The browser shakes under the dismal radiance of lines that have been reprocessed through a sophomore term paper breeder reactor too many times. One is only thankful that the word “hegemony” doesn’t pop up immediately and that we don’t have to see the marginal comments in the well thumbed copy of … . STOP!

Phew. But under all the humbug, Levine is making a simple argument

When Obama’s minions come asking for support, we can, following the late Lady Gipper’s advice, “just say no.”  A few dissident union leaders have already done that.  It is a basis upon which to build.

Of course, saying No is no substitute for building a real alternative; but at this point, with an election looming, it is a quick and dirty way to launch a credible threat that just might make the lesser evil less evil.  This is why now is emphatically not the time to come to the aid of the Democratic Party.  Perhaps in a year and half, for the few minutes we spend in the voting booth, lesser evil logic will be less illogical than it now is.   But that will be then; this is now.

Unpacked:

1. “We” (leftists/progressives) should refuse to sign up to help Obama’s “minions”.
2. The absence of “our” support is the best chance of forcing Obama to move “left”.
3. “We” should reserve the right to change our minds in the voting booth.

This is a political program that would make the famous underwear gnomes happy. These are the ones with the business plan that that they explain consists of three steps: (1) collect underwear (2) then a mysterious shrug for step two and (3) profits! A sulk by the massive proletarian movement of anti-panglossian Counter Spin readers will somehow [pause for a bewildered shrug] induce the President to change ideologies and challenge the oligarchs and plutocrats that Cub Scout (with merit badge)  Cornell West often warns us about[1].  Goodness! At least Ernst Thälmann had the excuse that disagreeing with Stalin had unpleasant consequences. Levine’s reasoning is that 

Thus the erstwhile harbinger of “change” is now set on outdoing all past presidents in implementing the Reagan agenda. Count on Obama to keep on defunding the affirmative state and to keep regulation at bay.  Count on him to continue the wars he inherited and the ones he has started.  Count on him too to enhance the power of the “unitary executive” and to ride roughshod over the rule of law, not just overseas but in the “homeland” as well. 

 Actually President Obama has overseen a dramatic expansion of social services, civil rights enforcement, environmental and financial and health insurance regulation, an about face on foreign policy from the Straussian Empire, and a remarkable revival of enforcement of labor law – just to name a few items not compatible with the “Reagan Agenda”. What he has not done is transform, by application of pixie dust, a world empire into a Kropotkinite vegetarian commune run on consensus. I’m trying to contain my disappointment, but I kind of suspected it would come to this.

Here’s Levine:

And now the first order of business is to break the fall into “bipartisan” lunacy.  To that end, it is crucial to realize that lesser evil thinking, so far from dictating what should be done, should itself be undone.  It is a part, a big part, of the problem we confront.

Well, call me a Leibnizian deviationist if you must, but I find the Koch brothers, the Turner’s diary reading militia movement, the Chamber of Commerce, the De Vos family and their Blackwater cousins, the right wing evangelicals and their chaplains

in the military, the effin Republican party, not to mention global warming, nuclear power, bee extinction, and the proliferation of bedbugs all to be much more disturbing than “lesser evil thinking”. The United States remains on the very edge of the brink of the verge of the cliff overlooking fascism.  People who advocate shrugging away a chance to keep the Republicans from reclaiming the executive are wildly irresponsible. Wildly. Mind-blowingly. Stunningly. Kicking holes in the lifeboat to demonstrate one’s preference for rescue by a luxury liner is, as Marx’s mom could of put it meshuga. How about a rethink of the most sensible line in the essay?

Of course, saying No is no substitute for building a real alternative

If only the professional left, the class of people who make a living generating left/liberal opinion was not so isolated from political activity, its members might understand the concrete effects of government policies or be informed by authentic activism – and we might have a chance to develop a real leftwing political movement. However, what we have now is an exceptionally smart moderate Lincolnian Democrat who leads a movement called the Democratic party that actually has working class support and that stands between us and that greater evil. I’m in, Professor Levine is welcome to join us if he wakes up.

Footnote

[1] Professor West complained that President Obama “talked to me like I was a Cub Scout, and he was a pack master, you know what I mean?”