Barbarians at the Gates

Next weekend, all over the Golden State, Democratic Party activists will be running for delegate positions to the state party. At a minimum, being a party delegate means attending a yearly convention and voting on resolutions, a platform and candidate endorsements. Symbolically, it also means being an official part of the party, which has an inherent appeal to netroots-type progressives heeding the battle cry to "crash the gate".

Accordingly, the Progressive Democrats of America this year is organizing like-minded Dems to join "progressive slates" in Assembly District races everywhere. The idea, according to a website dedicated to the project, is that "the power to change our party comes from a cohesive group of individuals dedicated to making change happen" (which is funny, since one might do worse than "a cohesive group of individuals dedicated to making change happen" as a definition of a political party in the first place, though I suppose it works just as well as the definition of a faction). To be a "progressive" -- again, according to the site -- is to believe in universal healthcare, to oppose pre-emptive war, and to oppose the death penalty, among other principles (nothing in there about a worker's right to join a union....oh, well). Their policy platform calls for immediate withdrawal from Iraq, clean elections, "elimination of poverty" (big enough?), and "investigations toward impeachment."

So far, their efforts seem to be gaining some traction, at least among bloggers. DDay's post on MyDD and cross-post on Calitics have sparked lively discussion threads, and who knows if Chris Bowers' entreaty back in early December was what drove the unwashed masses to the barricades in the first place? If you believe what you read on blog comments, it sounds like there's at least a handful of reasonably organized rank-and-filers running slates, and if you believe idle chatter from electeds and their aides, at least a couple of them are serious enough to pay attention to, if not necessarily to fear.

However these slates play out, next weekend's DSCC elections should be at least a little more interesting than usual.

Seymour Martin Lipset, deceased at 84

Seymour Martin Lipset was one of the giants of American academia and progressive political thought. As a student of American society and government steeped in the intellectual traditions of European social theory, Lipset brought to the social sciences a highly original and cosmopolitan perspective on "American exceptionalism." Lipset brought light to such conundrums as the extraordinary vibrancy of voluntary associational life in the U.S. and the conspicuous absence in U.S. history of a serious American socialist challenge. As a committed Socialist in youth, Lipset helped build an aspirational American social scientific tradition that dwarfed in creative fecundity the plodding methodicalness of Talcott Parson's reigning postwar paradigm of Structural Functionalism. Yet, as an intellectual offspring of Max Weber and Roberto Michels, he was finely attuned to the capacity of ideology to yield and give shape to new modes of domination within the structures of workers' organizations and political parties ostensibly committed to egalitarianism and class struggle. This combination of moral vision and disciplined skepticism engendered a social analysis that cut to the core of a culture so profoundly shaped by moralism in a society so fundamentally perverted by inequality. Lipset's contribution to the U.S.' understanding of itself looms as large as that of Toqueville. For as long as American civilization lasts, Lipset's intellectual legacy will persist.