What is the source of Bernie Sanders' ability to raise tens of millions of dollars, bring out to rallies supporters in the tens of thousands, and run neck-and-neck in national polls,having been an unknown but months ago? To understand the consequences of the current political environment in the US for trade-and many other things-it is urgent to answer this question. One typical response is to invoke Sanders as a diabolical demagogue, able to lure throngs of deluded, idealistic young people who, as Hillary Clinton would have it, didn't do their research. Allegedly, Sanders has convinced them to shell out and turn out by promising to do the impossible, a magical solution to all of America's, or at least that generation's, problems.
This view, is I believe, fundamentally misguided. As a professor, and a denizen of a huge student community-the neighborhood that encompasses New York York University, the New School and other institutions-I can vouch that the young people in question are realists. Their experiences of life and politics are not those of bourgeois revolutionary dreamers. Few think that, either by presidential authority or sheer force of will, Sanders can directly achieve the central goals of his policy platform. The basic reason they are funding him, marching with him, and working for him, is that they are practicing what I call the new politics of expression. They have found someone who expresses their values, their anxieties, their hopes (on better days) and who is able to broadcast it day and night across the nation and the world, through a megaphone.
That millions would pay a price to have their political views and values expressed in this way by leader, with little attention to the real world chances of getting results, is a phenomenon that deserves close attention. This is a a decidedly non-Marxist concept of revolution. Like Marxism itself, the mainstream social sciences are dominated by instrumental and materialist accounts of social, economic and political behavior. Religion and ideology factor into the analysis primarily as forms of illusion or means by which people can be manipulated. Democratic politics has been built on the idea that people usually care most about their private interests, and that mobilizing individuals to come out, work on campaigns, and even to vote is a huge chore. Thus political parties must be able to give rewards-offices, handouts like subsidies, whatever-to those who devote significant amounts time and effort to making all this happen. This is why the creation of new, non-mainstream political parties has been very difficult-their candidates are unlikely to take power in the short term at least in any great number and therefore will not be in much of a position to hand out rewards. The 99% of those contributing to or volunteering in Bernie Sanders campaign have no expectation of rewards (at least not in this life) not even a celebrity handshake or autograph. The valuable good they receive is expression itself. The Sanders campaign is full of evocative imagery and words. The bird landing on the podium; the shots of Bernie from the back facing the huge crowd, the tee-shirts and button of multiple sizes, shapes, designs, messages. What a huge contrast to the clipped and corporate look of the Hillary effort. Bernie even inspired a whole exhibition of art, which closed tonight in New York's Bowery.
The politics of expression is not new-indeed, it is very familiar international trade law experts: the campaigns to save dolphins, end the cruelty of the seal hunt, stop trade in goods made with child or slave labor: these have been powerful and disruptive forces, driven by of course a wish or desire to reduce the suffering and injustice in question, but above all, to express it in some forceful way. Trade experts typically have talked down to the activists, using instrumentalist arguments suggesting that these campaigns are not likely to achieve the real world effects intended, certainly not to move the planet to a significantly better place overall. I am not surprised at the zero impact of this strategy of talking down. As the success of the public morals argument to defend a ban on seal products at the WTO illustrates, this once vanguard organization of economic globalization has itself had to yield to the legitimacy of the (non-instrumental) politics of expression. While a slew of empirical studies on the effects of the boycott movement on the end of Apartheid in South Africa suggest few real world impacts, this movement is nevertheless regarded as a model for the anti-Israel BDS movement and also the fossil fuels divestment movement.Again the power of these movements is the extent to which they reflect the power of the politics of expression-its practitioners derive a large enough good from the expressive value of participation despite considerable uncertainty as to whether, when and to what extent the movement will achieve its real world ends.
The ascendancy of the politics of expression is greatly bolstered by other related trends. Many of the young people who participate in it are secular or have moved far away from traditional religious values. They are quite hardheaded and have few illusions (some would wrongly say few ideals) about matters such as sex and money. Yet the longing for the righteous city, and the idea that a cause deserves support even if faith alone underpins the notion that it will triumph, do not simply disappear with traditional forms of reverence and moralism. These are part of human moral economy, and so they morph or go underground and then resurface in new ways. Second and related to another notion with ancient ethical and religious origins-"the truth shall set you free"-is a rise in the intrinsic value placed on all forms of truth-telling. As Ruti Teitel has shown in her scholarship on transitional justice, the demand for truth commissions has spilled over into situations with little if anything to do with the kind of political transition or regime change that characterized their origins in places like South Africa. Instead of truth and reconciliation, truth telling in itself is valued-the exposure of injustices and oppression is worthwhile and cathartic even if the solutions for repair seem controversial and distant. For many Sanders supporters, Bernie tells it like it is, dispensing with the normal lies and dissimulation of mainstream politicians and this is a good in itself and perhaps a necessary stage in the transformation of politics even if the actual blueprint for systemic reform, and how it will be realized, seem unclear and distant. To my mind, this political outlook was early and perhaps best captured in Vaclav Havel's book, Living in Truth. The logic is outlined in the most famous essay of that volume, "The Power of the Powerless": "By breaking the rules of the game, [the citizen living within the truth] has disrupted the game as such. He has exposed it as a mere game. He has shattered the world of appearances, the fundamental pillar of the system. He has upset the power structure by tearing apart what holds it together. He has demonstrated that living a lie is living a lie. He has broken through the exalted facade of the system and exposed the real, base foundations of power. He has said that the emperor is naked. And because the emperor is in fact naked, something extremely dangerous has happened." The politics of expression is in many ways the politics of living in truth: Snowden, the Panama Papers, Anonymous etc. are at its center not its periphery (Consider the title and concept of the on-line publication, The Intercept). In vain do Sanders' enemies whine that his supporters care about the release of Hillary Clinton's Wall Street speeches but have little interest in Sanders' own tax returns. Whatever personal foibles the tax returns might disclose are irrelevant, but the highly-paid Goldman Sachs speeches have the potential to disclose what is suspected as part of the lie of the system. As early as the failure of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment in the 1990s we had an indication of the power of the demand for truth, for transparency and openness. The very negotiation in secret of the TPP and TTIP is likely to spell their doom, whatever arguments there are about the substance. The courage to defy the system, and the ability to convey the message, and unite others with one's voice, are more important than the personal purity of the leader-Havel himself, Mandela too, had (at times) quite chaotic private lives.
Until recently, the politics of expression has remained largely what Havel called "anti-political politics"; while convinced of the lie of the system, its practitioners would focus on a single issue or cause at a time: the seal hunt, GMO foods, the Keystone pipeline, often with a largely "anti-" agenda of stopping something or, true to the expressive core, if not stopping it showing powerful resistance. This often led to the politics of expression being criticized as irresponsible, imposing unreasonable demands on real-world democratic politicians who must balance and trade off daily many constituencies, interests and worthy goals. As the example of of Havel illustrates, one of the deepest roots of the politics of expression is to be found in dissent or resistance in contexts where changing the system is widely viewed as impossible in the short or even medium term. This is why the "establishment" media is so wrong to understand the Sanders attraction as based on magical revolutionary thinking; rather it is much more "hope against all hope", yet again a Biblical formula, said by a New Testament figure of an Old Testament one. But the dismissal of Sanders as a "one issue" candidate has blinded many commentators to what Sanders has really done in transforming the politics of expression: he has put together a wide-ranging, positive political program that has broken this kind of politics from the "anti-political" model. And he has shown how the politics of expression is compatible with the scale of fund-raising and organization needed to to compete for high public office, despite a system that purports to exclude challenges to itself through a toxic relationship between politics and money. As noted above, he has found a way out of the vicious circle that a new political party or movement cannot provide plausibly the material rewards expected of those who make sacrifices for political participation, and therefore the system closes challenges to its own ways.This way out is what is most dangerous and destabilizing to the system, because it is not dependent on Sanders' personal appeal; if expression is a political good people will pay for, and on-line donating, phone banking etc. makes it easy, then the same model can be used by others, as it is already for instance to some degree by Sanders-supporting Congressional hopeful Zephyr Teachout.
But can it be that there are so many in America who feel so alienated and badly done by that they think the "system", comprising the major institutions of democracy and capitalism, is fundamentally rigged, or lacks even basic justice and decency? Contemporary America is hardly Communist Czechoslovakia or Apartheid-era South Africa. Yet it was Tocqueville, that unique blend of Catholic aristocrat and liberal political reformer, who already saw the danger of a kind of soft tyranny in democratic societies, where the ordinary individual feels powerless and alienated from any kind of active shaping of the whole. Tocqueville also grasped that Americans, who appeared to his European confreres as drearily practical and pragmatic, would not settle for materialism, or cynicism; that was a streak from non-conformist religion that would forever play a role in otherwise hard-headed real-world economic and political life in America, depending on one's point of view either a destabilizing role or a check on free fall into decadence.
But the velocity of the Sanders movement owes much to the good luck of having the foil of a perfect adversary-one who embodies many of the features of the system being challenged, especially the connections to big money and (in their eyes) a corrupt establishment suppressing alternative forms of political life and expression.If there is any candidate poorly equipped to handle this sort of challenge it is Hillary Clinton. Her campaign lacks any real message, the slogans "I'm with her" and "She's for us" almost announce with a loudspeaker the politics of clientism. What can set off more starkly the moral superiority of an alternative politics of expression? Indeed, saying to every relevant constituency what they want to hear cheapens the value of expression to close to zero, or perhaps even negative-whereas for the practitioners of this kind of politics of expression is a highly valuable political good in itself. It just requires "authenticity" to have that value.
Not everybody in the electorate likes the politics of expression or identifies with it, to be sure. People who have worked hard within the system to grab their little morsel of progressive change, or some kind of access to power, really resent those who believe that a $27 contribution, wearing a button and attending a rally gives them a serious claim to pursue more transformative kinds of political change. Also, while expression need not be a luxury good, and Sanders has done well by underlying this and pursuing small donations, those who are so poor and overburdened in daily life that they cannot afford what seems like even a modest price to college students aren't likely to have a big place in the politics of expression, even if the movement wants most of all to break down the systemic barriers that produce their plight. People with day-to-day dependency on existing governmental programs know better than anyone the inadequacies but are understandably prone to fear that a sweeping agenda of creating something new or better could backfire, threatening what they already have, and could not live without. This is a constituency to which Hillary Clinton has been able to appeal, by, for example, presenting Sanders as wanting to tear up the Affordable Care Act, rather than transition to a more adequate, comprehensive and just system.
One of the easiest areas on which to make concessions to the politics of expression is on trade policy because major redistributive programs don't have to be changed. Bill Clinton spoke to labor and environmental standards for trade agreements, and demanded transparency in the WTO. He was a free trader but grasped the politics of expression as they were emerging at the time. Bill Clinton though was sincere, and perceived to be at least for a time (I'm told he was indeed genuinely committed to the agenda of transparency and inclusiveness in the WTO, though on environment and labor very prepared to accept window-dressing) Hillary Clinton's opposition to TPP is perceived as too late, and probably not sincere, and thus of little value as a compromise with the politics of expression.
If Sanders is nominated, his movement will be confronted almost immediately with the challenge of political responsibility. An enormous potential threat to America's basic political and economic institutions will be channeled into the tall task of designing a workable reform agenda. The effort will go into the old fashioned approach of reworking taxes and regulations not carrying out angry vendettas against Wall Street bankers. Most in the movement will compromise-some will take the path of a Yannis Varoufakis, break off and remain faithful to the original posture of the politics of expression, the "anti-political politics" of resistance, disturbance and dissent.
But what if the establishment does manage, in the coming weeks and months, to crush Sanders?
Look at his numbers, at the demographics. He leads a large majority of younger people who seem to believe that America's basic institutions are rotten and corrupt to the core. Having demonstrably been able to raise multiple millions and pack rallies, is it likely that he is going to go back in his hole as it were, an eccentric US senator whose specialty is roll-call amendments? Hardly, He and his supporters are already building a powerful narrative of voter suppression, rigged primary rules, and egregious violations of campaign finance rules that they think favor "establishment" candidates already, even to the point of corruption. Defeating Sanders will give him the status of Socrates or Jesus, maybe a combination of both, among the ascendant generation. What will be the impacts on major corporations and banks, which need these people as faithful consumers and even more trusted employees? Using the financing and organizing techniques of the Sanders campaign, the practitioners of the politics of expression will disrupt elections, fielding ant-establishment candidates in Congressional districts and other political fora, armed with war chests funded by a national movement.Sometimes they will lose, and sometimes they will win. They will force pension funds and related institutions not to invest on Wall Street and they will break up the big banks by refusing to use them for their own personal needs, cutting them down to size. If you think this is exaggerated just look again at Sanders' numbers, and how they have held or expanded.
But all of this will remain contained, though very disruptive and challenging-until there is some mega-event, a game changer. A meltdown on Wall Street or of a nuclear reactor, the equivalent for the left of what 9/11 was for the right. A that moment a new Sanders will harness all of the negative as well as positive energy of the politics of expression, and possibly sweep to power. The establishment" call to order will not work, because they will have no fund of trust to draw on; the mainstream media, none of the traditional authority figures, will have the credibility to calm things down.
The Sanders folks hold meetings 27000 strong without a single incident of violence-the politics of expression inherently values persuasion and protest over any form of non-peaceful disruption (Velvet Revolution, again Havel). But their are darker forces out there with their own challenges to the system, and a huge negative energy. The frightening thing is that the ability of such forces to construct a system-shaking mega-event is rising considerably. Last summer, the trading platform of the New York Stock Exchange went down for some hours-it turned out to be an internal glitch. But the speculation was, immediately, about hackers. Imagine a collapse that took days and weeks to sort out, paralyzing international not just domestic capital markets. And these are among the more modest forms of possible chaos-producing events-see the chilling tale told by Harvard Law Professor Gabby Blum and co-author journalist Ben Wittes, The Future of Violence: Robots and Germs,Hackers and Drones-A New Age of Threat. If I were in the "establishment", and I sort of am in the 1%, I would want Bernie Sanders and his followers on my side, and want the new politics of expression to be tamed by the discipline of real political responsibility. To those of my fellow Manhattanites who are hoping today to shut him down as a political candidate I would only say: beware what you wish for.
