Talking Points:

·      There are massive corporate forces with massive financial resources, control of media, and ability to threaten to move their resources outside the U.S. or to disinvest and increase unemployment should they face even the most minimal liberal reforms. Therefore:

1.     There is no point in narrowing a progressive or liberal agenda to fit the desires of the corporate power structure. No matter how narrow those reforms may be, they will meet almost the same level of opposition that they would face were they more far-reaching and substantial. So the way programs and policies should be formulated should first and foremost be determined by what is actually needed to build a world of ecological sustainability, economic well-being for everyone,  social justice, peace, generosity, genuine caring for each other and gratitude for the amazing and wondrous universe. Do not ask “can it pass?”—ask instead, “would it actually help advance our world toward the goals we all seek?”

2.    To be politically “realistic,” liberals and progressives must start out with programs that are explicitly idealistic and outside the bounds of current political discourse, in order to move that discourse from its current location in the center/right of political discourse (e.g. Obama proclaiming to the Business Roundtable on Feb. 23, 2010 that he is an "ardent believer in the free market," and, according to the Associated Press, presenting himself "as a business-friendly centrist whose main concern is America's competitiveness”) to a left of center liberal/progressive outcome. Political leaders must reject the strategy of compromising to the right, and instead stand strong with policies on the left that are coherent and appropriate. Otherwise, we get the current outcome, where the original position being articulated by liberals and progressives is already so deeply compromised toward the center that when, in the course of further dynamics, they are asked to make compromises, those compromises almost always push liberal and progressive leaders and elected officials over the line toward the center/right.

3.     It is political suicide to be “realistic” because “realism” is always defined by the corporate power structure and their sycophants and hired guns in the media, the universities, the policy institutions and our elected representatives in ways that take for granted the existing power relations rather than the existing human needs. But the truth is that these assessments are reflections of their interests, not of “what is realistic” because in fact one cannot know what is realistic until one struggles to change the world toward what one believes is necessary. It seemed totally unrealistic to men and most women in the 1960s to think that 10,000 years of sexism could be challenged in our historical period, and significant changes could take place, but thankfully those women refused to be realistic and hence our understanding of “realistic” was dramatically changed in the course of that struggle. Ditto in regard to the status of African Americans and other peoples of color, and in regard to gays and lesbians. So it is unrealistic in the extreme to let our elected officials, even those who we know share our views and are fundamentally decent and honest people, convince us that the reason they won’t fight for the kind of world we seek is because they know that it is “unrealistic.”

4.     Be ideological. Don’t be narrowly pragmatic. Always insist on framing any particular piece of legislation, social policy, or political action in terms of your broadest and highest values and show how any specific is in fact or could contribute to the realization of one’s highest values.

5.     The only way to effectively challenge corporate power is to mobilize tens of millions of people into struggle. That can best be accomplished when we provide a mobilizing set of ideals and a vision of the world we wish to bring into being, because those ideals and visions are the very element most likely to help people transcend the nit-picking, detail-oriented, lawyer and accountant level of discourse with all their mystifications, and instead move to a level of discourse which transcends the normal left-right divide and speaks to abiding and widely shared values.  The more the corporate power structure can reshape the debates into narrowly framed technocratic issues, the surer we are to lose. The more we reframe issues in terms of our highest values, the greater chance we have to mobilize people to actually be willing to take risks for their ideals and hence to join in a transformative struggle.

6.     The mobilization of tens of millions of people takes tremendous amounts of time, money, and personal risk-taking, so it is self-defeating to try to do that mobilization around struggles that will not make deep transformations in the social order, because it will be hard to remobilize people after they have been exhausted and depleted by the ferocity of the struggle. So, make sure that these struggles are seeking significant enough changes which, if won, would really take you significantly closer to the kind of world you really want on this planet.

7.     Defend your leaders and reject the tendency in liberal and progressive circles to focus on what is wrong with them. There is no problem finding defects in everyone—and this will necessarily include those who take steps forward to provide leadership. One of the typical steps of the corporate power structure is to seek to dis-empower the leadership of any liberal or progressive struggle, whether that be through finding them having taken some gift that they should not have taken, or through inappropriate sexual activity, or through some other faults (and you can find these in everyone). In the case of Howard Dean, they even did it by portraying his loud shouts after a loss in a Democratic primary as “proof” of his alleged instability or unfitness for higher office. Choose leaders carefully, but then don’t expect them to be the highest embodiment of their own or your ideals—to make that demand is only to demand that our leaders be liars about themselves, and from there, liars about other things as well. We need to be careful in following leaders, we need to be risk-taking in becoming leaders ourselves even when we may suspect that we are not fully the best possible leaders imaginable, and then the rest of us need to actively and energetically support our leaders, reject those who put our leaders down or spread gossip or hurtful stories about them, and provide them with the kind of loving support that is the only plausible replacement we have for what leaders on the Right and centrist and sometimes even liberals who support the corporate hierarchy can count on—financial rewards aplenty.