On Helms, Republicanism and Democratic submission

Via Sir Charles at Cogitamus I see that Michael Lind has a very interesting piece up at Salon regarding the legacy of Jesse Helms. His thesis is that Helms was a purveyor of a crass base politics intended to perpetuate the status-quo of the 1920's and 1930's South and that Democrats have (unwittingly?) aided and abetted Helms. Lind concludes his piece thusly,

So here's the real horror story. In every respect except white supremacy, contemporary America looks more and more like the South between the world wars that Jesse Helms wanted to preserve. We have growing inequality and concentration of wealth, and an elite economic strategy like that of the traditional South that focuses on importing cheap labor, outsourcing manufacturing and exporting commodities (we supply industrial Asia with timber and soybeans). Private-sector unions are all but dead, as in the South. The political parties, as organizations, are weak, as in the South. More and more elected officials are self-funded millionaires or billionaires. Contemporary American politics, like Southern politics past and present, pits elite business-class conservatives against feeble, housebroken elite progressives who are not real threats to entrenched privilege. When, inevitably, the occasional populist protest figure like Perot, Dobbs or Huckabee appears, the affluent progressives quickly close ranks with the corporate conservatives.

Jesse Helms is dead -- but his sinister influence lives on. If you seek his monument, look around.

Provocative? You bet but I think his argument has merit. He puts his finger directly on the inherent conflict in the left's position on immigration. That is we reflexively reject the nativism and racism that drives much of the dialogue and motivates many on the right. This is, of course, good. The conflict comes in that when we are defending immigrant workers from racism we find quarter with the "Chamber of Commerce" Republicans who seek to exploit immigrant labor because it comes at a considerably lower cost and applies downward effects on the wages of non-immigrants. We're essentially selling out economic justice in order to fight back against racism.

So what's a progressive to do? One strategy that has been employed with some success has been to organize these workers. The SEIU had been leading the way in this effort. They have, for example, successfully organized janitors across the country and gotten good results for many of these workers - higher wages and good benefits. So it's clear that we are not facing an either-or situation, either we seek to raise wages and benefits or we protest against racism and nativism. We can do both. I think that the Democratic Party is too disogranized and too far removed from it's labor past to really lead such a change themselves. It's hard work and takes long term strategic thinking and solid leadership from social and labor organizations but it can be done.