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Why progressive movements fail and how they can win
For the second time in four years, Sanders supporters have been shown that the contemporary Democratic Party is determined to shut down progressive movements before they can threaten the privileges of the establishment. This fits in to the pattern that goes back decades, a pattern that was exploited by Third Way liberals, but is not their creation.
Perhaps the quintessential example of righteous movements that fail is the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 in England. The Black Plague had reduced the labor pool, leading workers to conclude that they ought to be paid more for their increasingly valuable individual efforts, and Richard II, a child king, was trying to raise taxes to fund his military adventures. And landlords regarded their renters more like property than separate human beings. In other words, history’s rhyming sounds a lot like repetition here.
The gravediggers in Hamlet, coming around two hundred years later, demonstrate the persistence of the attitude of the fourteenth century peasants. One explains to the other that Adam was a gentleman, since “Adam digged,” implying that he had arms. Anyone with arms, equivocating here on a second meaning of heraldic symbols, is a member of the privileged class. The attitude illustrated in this passage is one that has been consistent over the centuries among people who do society’s labor…
