Hello everyone,
This is the final part of my conversation with Michael Steven Smith. Michael is an accomplished progressive lawyer and a former board member of the Center for Constitutional Rights. He is also co-host of the nationally broadcast Law and Disorder radio show, where he has interviewed some of the most prominent voices of the American left, including Chris Hedges, Daniel Ellsburg, and Democracy @ Work’s own Richard Wolff. Michael co-authored Who Killed Che? with his co-host Michael Ratner, and his latest book, From the Flag to the Cross: Fascism American Style, is highly recommended and available now from OR Books.
I encourage you to also read part 1 and part 2 if you haven’t already done so.
Isaiah Blum: Do you have any thoughts on the ways in which capitalism today is failing young people, and are you surprised at all by how it’s developed?
Michael Steven Smith: No. Debbie and I joined the DSA and we went to their last meeting three weeks ago in Sunset Park. There were 80 people at the meeting. The meeting a month before had only 40 people. We sat behind a white haired old guy. The three of us were the only people in the room our age. Everybody else was in their 20s and 30s. And I think that the reason for that is that there is really no future for young people here. Getting a job that pays you a decent amount so you can have a family, buy a home. It’s beyond anybody’s reach at this point, except for the ruling rich who can afford to send their kids to college. You go to college now, you get so much in debt, you pay it off for the rest of your working life. If you can get a job! See, I grew up in the 40s and the 50s. Getting work was never in question. It was easy to get a job. Not anymore. And I think that as a consequence of having a bleak outlook, people start asking bigger questions. And now the polls show that a majority of young people under the age of 25 call themselves socialists, which is remarkable, especially given the fact that the major media is controlled by corporations that don’t promote socialism. When Bernie Sanders tried to secure nomination for the Democratic Party, they made sure he didn’t get it. He would have won.
IB: I didn’t know he existed until I came to see him myself. I never saw him on the news. I never saw his speeches or his rallies amplified on any of the mainstream channels. The coverage they gave him compared to Trump or Hillary, it was like a drop in the bucket. I guess young people have become more politically and economically aware because they have to, given the situation. But do you think they’re historically aware in the sense that young people are learning the necessary lessons of the 1960s and the upheavals of that period, given the failures, the assassinations, the thwarted attempts at a better society? Do you think there’s a lesson from that period that young people really need to hold in mind as they move forward?
MSS: Well sure. I think the lesson of the civil rights movement, of the anti-war movement, of the feminist movement, the lesson of the movement for gay rights, the main lesson is that you need to be independently mobilized. The Vietnam War was stopped by the heroic sacrifice of the Vietnamese people - about three million Vietnamese were murdered by the United States - and by the growth of the anti-war movement in America. We started off in 1965 with a demonstration in Washington, DC, at the height of the Cold War. 20,000 people, it was extraordinary. 20,000 people got out to oppose America’s participation in the war against Vietnam. Well, by 1967 we had 500,000 people. Nixon was left cowering in the White House, peering out the window through a blind, scared to death.
IB: Yeah. He said, Henry, they’re gonna break through the barrier. They’re gonna get us.
MSS: I think the main factor in ending the war in Vietnam was the steadfastness of the Vietnamese people. But this was abetted by the mass anti-war movement in the United States, which was so large. We always advocated peaceful, large demonstrations. It was so large that it affected people way beyond the 500,000 that demonstrated. It affected the GIs themselves. So at the end of the war, the GIs refused to fight. They would march through the jungle paddies in Vietnam, and they’d see Vietnamese soldiers coming the other way. They’d both ignore each other. They were throwing fragmentation grenades into the tents of the officers, killing their own officers. There was a real rebellion amongst the GIs. And the mass demonstrations underlaid the support that was given to the GIs. So it ended the war. And that’s a lesson. The other lesson, of course, is the mass demonstrations in support of the civil rights movement. And I think that younger people can access that. There are more subtle lessons to learn about needing an independent labor movement, the betrayals of the Democratic Party, and why we can’t support the Democratic Party.
IB: You’ve seen masses of young people supporting Mamdani, and the crucial role they played in bringing him to power, and they have some reasons for being hopeful. They’ve got a young person in office, who identifies as a socialist, which is very heartening. But at the same time, he is a member of the Democratic Party, which is one half of the corporate duopoly that controls American politics. And almost everyone you interviewed in your book, from Richard Wolff to Chris Hedges to Margaret Kimberly, discusses the importance of a decisive break with the Democratic Party, which has been called the graveyard of progressive movements. So with that in mind, how hopeful should young people be about Mamdani and his political prospects, and what advice would you offer to them?
MSS: Mamdani isn’t exactly a Democrat: he’s a democratic socialist. He said that he ran for office as a democratic socialist, and that he’ll govern as a democratic socialist. He told Cuomo that he may not have experience, but he has integrity. He said, Mr. Cuomo, that’s something you don’t have. So I’m hoping that the logic of his position leads him to a more revolutionary socialist position, that the logic of what he’s trying to do, I hope, will cause him to rely on the 90,000 people that knocked on doors and set up tables and telephone banks to get him elected. Because that’s the only thing, ultimately, that’s gonna stop him from just making deals with other Democratic people, like the governor. I was disappointed that he didn’t keep that apparatus engaged. And I think that people who had illusions… I didn’t have any illusions about Obama, but people who did have illusions should have understood. And when Obama dissolved the support that he had, the organized support, they should have realized what he would do. And what he did was not good. So, I’m hopeful that the example that Mamdani set by getting elected will continue. I mean, there’s no question that he’s an extremely talented person and a charming person. His mother said, when they asked her how come he’s the way he is she said: he was marinated in love. And I hope that we see continued proof of that. I think the other example that people have in front of them now is the Minneapolis movement. It’s not a general strike. And it’s a mistake to call it that. But I think we have to educate people about what a general strike is. And that’s what Kshama Sawant is doing now, with her campaign for Congress in Seattle. A general strike’s going to involve unions and a conscious working class. It’s more than just stay at home from school, or not shopping: we’re not working. It’s consciously aimed at the whole profit system of the capitalist class and bringing it to a halt. And I’m hoping that people will come to understand that, and I think that that’s what could ultimately turn the situation around. You ask me before, am I pessimistic or optimistic. Well, wasn’t it Gramsci who said I’m a pessimist of the intellect, an optimist of the heart? Yeah. I think we have to do what we have to do. You’re an anti-fascist because that’s the right thing to do, not because you necessarily think you’re going to win. I’m not sure we’re gonna win. I think that Trump is a symptom of the disease. He’s not the disease. The disease is capitalism. And there’s always been a fascist current, and kernel, in American history, going all the way back, all the way back. The Declaration of Independence, all men are created equal, that was not a reflection of fact, that was an aspiration. Andrew Jackson put the Cherokee Indians on a forced march from North Carolina out to the West. The slaveowners thought, and there’s a tradition of this kind of thinking, that there’s a hierarchy. There are people on the bottom that are destined to work for the masters for the rest of their lives, and then there’s us. That was before the Civil War. Those people are still around. When Lincoln was killed, which is another turning point, like the assassination of Kennedy, those people got the wind in their sails. They destroyed reconstruction. Reconstruction lasted for, what, a dozen years or so? And black people were re-enslaved in a way. They were kept down like that for 100 years, until the civil rights movement. Aimé Césaire said that when you have an imperial structure abroad, it boomerangs, it comes back home. Chalmers Johnson, who was a veteran of the CIA, wrote four books about that. And we’re seeing now the boomerang effect. You can’t have imperialism abroad and democracy at home. You can’t have 1,180 billionaires at home and have democracy. The Supreme Court recently said that Trump could do what he wanted to, as long as he did it as an ‘official act’, and he’d be pardoned. The mission of the Nazis was to bring under control all independent sources of power. And they had a word for that, Gleichschaltung, which means bringing into line. The Nazis brought the labor movement into line, as you indicated. And then the media, and the communists and the socialists, and so on. And that’s what Trump is accomplishing. He hasn’t done it fully yet. He’s got the major media. He’s got the courts, not the lower courts so much, but the Supreme Court. He’s got the universities, he’s got the big law firms, and he’s consolidating his power. He hasn’t yet achieved that consolidation. But that’s the direction things are going in.
Isaiah Blum is Graduate of the New School, teacher and contributor with Democracy @ Work. he writes about economics, politics, history, culture and more. Follow him on Instagram @blumbergznews