In my previous post I alluded to the specter lurking in Chris Hedges' article, 'the "Phantom Left'. In his follow-up, 'A Recipe for Fascism' , he again disdains the 'liberal class' but while America's bourgeoisie surely deserve his scorn, his assertion that 'a disenfranchised and angry underclass is being encouraged to lash out at the bankrupt liberal institutions and the government that once protected them' is both faulty analysis and a distortion of history. The hopes of the underclass have never figured in our political thinking.
Thanks to racism and mass immigration the socialist movement that transfigured Europe and inspired Africa and Asia never took root in America. The influx of poor Eastern Europeans coupled with the Great Northern Migration of the recently freed slaves was considered a threat by the lily-white unions. So while it is true that groups like the Wobblies and the Congress of Industrial Workers managed to diffuse some of the fear by showing that united, women and ethnic minorities could extract concessions America's labor force remained largely segregated and hopelessly divided.
As an English visitor observed in the years before WWI: "menial work is increasingly felt to be beneath the dignity of the free white American. The intelligent, highly paid American is actually in the position of a ruling class. He is served and attended by negroes and alien immigrants very much as the ancient Athenian was served by a Thracian or an Asiatic."
It is this privileged status that the globalization that began after WWII has been steadily turning on its head.
The 'Problem is the Blacks'
On Monday, April 28, 1969, Nixon aide H.R. Haldeman noted in the White House diary: "President emphasized that you have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the Blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this, while not appearing to. Problem with overall welfare plan is that it forces poor Whites into same position as Blacks. Feels we have to get rid of the veil of hypocrisy and guilt and face reality."
The reality that the Nixon Government faced was how to manage white resentment as they saw their privileged status collapse in the face of Asian competition. Nixon had hoped to find a latter day Booker T Washington willing to temper black ambitions and accommodate negro subservience. Unfortunately for the Nixon Republicans and the capitalist power structure the 1960's press for equal rights made finding such a leader all but impossible. As Haldeman wrote:
"[the President] broods frequently over problems of how we communicate with the young and Blacks. It's really not possible except with Uncle Toms and we should work on them and forget militants."
The American system's solution to its middle-class problem developed on the tactics employed in the 1950's to discredit the Socialists and and destroy the Communist party. The War on America's emerging democracy otherwise known as Cointelpro was replaced by 'the War on Drugs'. By flooding black neighborhoods with illegal drugs and then issuing Draconian sentences for minor offenses the petty bourgeoisie was able to protect its endangered status and the politicians indebted to big business had fewer unhappy voters to try and content. That a Democratic president, William Jefferson Clinton, would merge the strands and expand the practice speaks volumes about 'liberal policies and their commitment to the poor.
When Clinton entered office, the entire prison population-local, state and federal-was just over a million. By the time he left it had doubled to over 2 million, the highest rate of incarceration and highest total of prisoners held in a democratic state in the history of the world.
60% of those federal inmates were in prison for nonviolent drug offenses. For the beleaguered white middle class it meant the boon of hundreds of new prisons, police weapons and corrections officers. A system grown so large that like our predatory banks it is now "Too Big to Fail". The largest public construction since the Works Progress Administration of the 1930s, the prison industrial complex helped expand the bubble once revered as the 'Great Clinton Economy'. It was a cynical strategy drawn from a reactionary tactic but brilliantly devised: 'Increase incarceration by nearly a million, add a couple of million workers to create and maintain a sprawling prison infrastructure, and voila! Lower unemployment and a healthier economy.'
Unfortunately for Barack Obama, the cost of the scam has now come due and middle class anger or not, he has no such option.
Showing posts with label Bill Clinton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bill Clinton. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Sunday, February 22, 2009
The New Green Paradigm
"Don't forget, these men cleared billions of dollars in bonuses by fudging financial statements while packaging trillions of dollars of fraudulent loans into securities. This was money taken from shareholders who were lied to, and investors who bought these toxic securities."--Mike Stathis, Managing Principal of Apex Venture Advisors
Although they've been doing their damnedest to maintain their power the Western global elite, by which I mean the Anglo/American power-brokers, may have finally bitten off more than even they can devour.
First, a little background: At the turn of the 20th century a number of influential persons were interested in bringing the establishments of the United States and Great Britain closer together. Consequently, a new, elitist society was formed with branches in London and New York which became known as the Pilgrims Society. Robber barons, archdeacons and bankers, they would gather from time to time in the rarefied confines of luxury hotels like the Victoria, the Savoy and the Waldorf Astoria.
The Pilgrims network
If Obama is serious about saving the day he needs to puncture the hot-air balloon blown up by the Reagan myth (and expanded if somewhat reluctantly, by President Clinton) that the capital markets, unlike governments, are both efficient and self-regulating.
As Michael Meeropol attempted to warn us back in 2001 in his book, Surrender: How the Clinton Administration Completed the Reagan Revolution: "In reality, the consensus between the two parties on the superiority of American government and the beneficence of capitalism rules any challenge to the status quo politically out of bounds (even the candidacy of longtime policy activist Ralph Nader was seen as beyond the pale). The Republican and Democratic conventions were long commercials for American capitalism and imperialism paid for by American corporations.
"American prosperity from the New Economy was continuously celebrated throughout the campaign. The dark side to the recovery that threatens its long-term viability has been less noted: record trade deficits creating the largest debtor nation in history, crushing corporate and individual debt levels, an enormous speculative financial bubble (seen vividly in the astonishing drop of the NASDAQ), and shocking income inequality that has continued to worsen."
It is disappointing that after having found the courage to anger his fellow Democrats by declaring that the Clinton administration had not altered Reagan's neoliberal trajectory Obama has resorted to using the same tired lot who cling to their discredited belief that economies can be successfuly managed through 'trickle-down' monetary policy in place of trade adjustments, long-term planning and capital regulation.
Any history student can tell you that it was not until the 19th century's "revolutionary middle class" took charge of government that societies began to see a more equitable distribution of wealth. Before then, countries had a small but almost omnipotent wealthy class, a tiny and largely impotent mercantile class in the middle, and at bottom, an enormous pool of terrified workers barely surviving as peons and serfs.
Only the rise of liberal democracies as the mercantilists forged alliances with skilled labor allowed the new bourgeousie to wrest power from the leisure elite. Thanks to the Reagan/Thatcher counter-revolution that vibrant middle class is on the verge of extinction. For the great masses of humanity not already trapped in abject poverty, any chance of retaining a reasonably healthy standard of living will depend on their willingness to assert their rights and take action. Unfortunately, to manage the imbalances of an inequitable global economy while trying to sustain and support our increasingly ravaged ecosystem demands finding the collective will to cut and replace some of our largest but largely stagnating industries.
The challenge will not been taken up by our green-eyed Pilgrims or their lackeys in the corporate press, that ball is in labor's court. Will we, the threatened "workers", have the courage to strike boldly-- not for the same old wage/benefit paradigm, but for truly radical solutions? Unlike the leisure elite we rely on value rather than profit. That requires putting modesty ahead of excess and resisting the Gilded Age's lure of endless returns and mindless profligacy.
Although they've been doing their damnedest to maintain their power the Western global elite, by which I mean the Anglo/American power-brokers, may have finally bitten off more than even they can devour.
First, a little background: At the turn of the 20th century a number of influential persons were interested in bringing the establishments of the United States and Great Britain closer together. Consequently, a new, elitist society was formed with branches in London and New York which became known as the Pilgrims Society. Robber barons, archdeacons and bankers, they would gather from time to time in the rarefied confines of luxury hotels like the Victoria, the Savoy and the Waldorf Astoria.
The Pilgrims network
The all too familiar names represent a who's who on society pages. Astor, Duke, Mellon, Stillman, Aldrich, DuPont, Meyer, Vanderbilt, Belmont, Gould, Morgan, Warburg, Baker,Peabody,Carnegie, Harriman, Whitney, Lamont, Dodge, Lodge, Rockefeller, Drexel, Loeb and Schiff feature prominently among them. Only time will tell whether they are capable of restraining (or retraining) their rapaciousness or are prepared to perish along with their dream of 20% returns gifted by the fairy dust of unfettered markets and centralized capitalism.
If Obama is serious about saving the day he needs to puncture the hot-air balloon blown up by the Reagan myth (and expanded if somewhat reluctantly, by President Clinton) that the capital markets, unlike governments, are both efficient and self-regulating.
As Michael Meeropol attempted to warn us back in 2001 in his book, Surrender: How the Clinton Administration Completed the Reagan Revolution: "In reality, the consensus between the two parties on the superiority of American government and the beneficence of capitalism rules any challenge to the status quo politically out of bounds (even the candidacy of longtime policy activist Ralph Nader was seen as beyond the pale). The Republican and Democratic conventions were long commercials for American capitalism and imperialism paid for by American corporations.
"American prosperity from the New Economy was continuously celebrated throughout the campaign. The dark side to the recovery that threatens its long-term viability has been less noted: record trade deficits creating the largest debtor nation in history, crushing corporate and individual debt levels, an enormous speculative financial bubble (seen vividly in the astonishing drop of the NASDAQ), and shocking income inequality that has continued to worsen."
It is disappointing that after having found the courage to anger his fellow Democrats by declaring that the Clinton administration had not altered Reagan's neoliberal trajectory Obama has resorted to using the same tired lot who cling to their discredited belief that economies can be successfuly managed through 'trickle-down' monetary policy in place of trade adjustments, long-term planning and capital regulation.
Any history student can tell you that it was not until the 19th century's "revolutionary middle class" took charge of government that societies began to see a more equitable distribution of wealth. Before then, countries had a small but almost omnipotent wealthy class, a tiny and largely impotent mercantile class in the middle, and at bottom, an enormous pool of terrified workers barely surviving as peons and serfs.
Only the rise of liberal democracies as the mercantilists forged alliances with skilled labor allowed the new bourgeousie to wrest power from the leisure elite. Thanks to the Reagan/Thatcher counter-revolution that vibrant middle class is on the verge of extinction. For the great masses of humanity not already trapped in abject poverty, any chance of retaining a reasonably healthy standard of living will depend on their willingness to assert their rights and take action. Unfortunately, to manage the imbalances of an inequitable global economy while trying to sustain and support our increasingly ravaged ecosystem demands finding the collective will to cut and replace some of our largest but largely stagnating industries.
The challenge will not been taken up by our green-eyed Pilgrims or their lackeys in the corporate press, that ball is in labor's court. Will we, the threatened "workers", have the courage to strike boldly-- not for the same old wage/benefit paradigm, but for truly radical solutions? Unlike the leisure elite we rely on value rather than profit. That requires putting modesty ahead of excess and resisting the Gilded Age's lure of endless returns and mindless profligacy.
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