Blindspots and Fear of the Working Class

[Joanne98]

I think a lot of the discussion about Freddie DeBoer’s “the blindspot” (with Steve Hynd as one exception) focuses too closely on the personalities–on whether Jane is mean in print or whether Ezra is too conciliatory–and not on whether our political dialogue is dangerously ignoring the plight of workers. For the purposes of this post, I’d like you to first ask yourself why, during the Depression, we started building a safety net for working people, whereas during this current crisis in capitalism, many developed nations are using the crisis as an opportunity to dismantle the safety net.

Then read this part of what DeBoer had to say:

That the blogosphere is a flagrantly anti-leftist space should be clear to anyone who has paid a remote amount of attention. Who, exactly, represents the left extreme in the establishment blogosphere? You’d likely hear names like Jane Hamsher or Glenn Greenwald. But these examples are instructive. Is Hamsher a socialist? A revolutionary anti-capitalist? In any historical or international context– in the context of a country that once had a robust socialist left, and in a world where there are straightforwardly socialist parties in almost every other democracy– is Hamsher particularly left-wing? Not at all. It’s only because her rhetoric is rather inflamed that she is seen as particularly far to the left. This is what makes this whole discourse/extremism conversation such a failure; there is a meticulous sorting of far right-wing rhetoric from far right-wing politics, but no similar sorting on the left. Hamsher says bad words and is mean in print, so she is a far leftist. That her politics are largely mainstream American liberalism that would have been considered moderate for much of the 20th century is immaterial.



I look out onto an America that seems to me to desperately require a left-wing. American workers have taken it on the chin for thirty years. They have been faced for years with stagnant wages, rising costs, and the hollowing out of the middle class. They are now confronted with that and a cratered job market, where desperate people compete to show how hard they will work in bad conditions for less compensation. Meanwhile, the neoliberal policy apparatus that brought us here refuses even to consider the possibility that it is culpable, so certain of its inherent righteousness and its place in the inevitable march of progress. And the blogosphere protects and parrots that certainty, weeding out left-wing detractors with ruthless efficiency, while around it orbits the gradual extinction of the American dream.

What seems most important, to me, is that a blind faith in capitalism led to catastrophe. And at a time when we should be reining in the capitalism that failed so badly, we are instead capitulating to it, using the event of the failure of our corporate masters to give them even more. How is that even happening? And to what degree does the blogosphere deserve some of the blame?

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2011/01/18/blindspots-and-fear-of-the-working-class/

[dotymed]

1. That is exactly what makes it so

apparent to anyone capable of thought, that corporations and the elite have completely taken over our government. How else could more of the same (an unregulated corporate atmosphere, for one example) even be considered to be helpful to the majority? Until people of all political persuasions, band together and demand a fair share of "the pie" we will keep going down the drain. We will eventually stop circling and be sucked down the plumbing. Sad to imagine that people have to become shit before they realize or act upon their realization, that they are serfs.

[BridgeTheGap]

2. Back in the day, "liberals" were disdained by socialists, radical leftists, as apologists

for capitalism. Now, we have the right, the middle(?) and the left (which includes liberals, progressives, socialists, anarachists and anyone else who isn't conservative and wants to see government playing in larger role in bringing about economic or social justice). The cost of this trend is clear as the working clss takes a beating in the "new economy." Labor unions are passe', don't you know! Was it a conscious effort on the part of those capitalist conservatives who deemed it necessary to craft a consistent message (funding think tanks to do it) and buy up media outlets to propagate their message? That could be the case - anyone who doesn't agree with their position is painted with the broadbrush of "liberal, socialist, anti-american, etc." And, as has been pointed out numerous times, the country has veered so far to the right, that most elected Democrats at the Federal level, are to the right of Dick Nixon. So, whether or not the rich right intended this, they are making out like bandits!

[Populist_Prole]

3. I noticed that very treatment from the media just recently

When the subject came to NAFTA the article said it was opposed by "some union members and some on the left". You can see how they tried to pigeohole and discredit the opponents as though they were some small kooky minority. An utter distortion, as Clinton didn't at first have all the votes he needed so he went and twisted his congressman's arms, and had his mug pushing for trade at every opportunity...despite the huge populist groundswell against it.

[BridgeTheGap]

4. Yep. And we're still paying for it! n.t

[struggle4progress]

5. America's "Old Left" had political and policy objectives; it had

tools for political and economic analysis; and it had an organizing agenda, to promote its objectives based on its analysis. The analytical tools are unpopular here today, not because they didn't work -- they did work -- but because any serious and accurate analysis of modern American political and economic structures must almost automatically proceed along some Marxian lines: it must address different economic interest groups and the manner in which they propagandize their interests (including divide-and-conquer strategies and issue-mystification), as well as the methods they use to consolidate their power

[tama]

6. Marxian lines

The difference between this crisis of capitalism and the earlier ones is that this is the final crisis of capitalism (as we know it de facto, oil dependent system of continuous growth) that Marx predicted. Wage-slaves of working class have been made just as dependent from capitalistic growth economy as capitalistic class. That very dependency is the form of slavery that makes "old left" political objectives mostly meaningless in this final crisis.

Limits of growth and adjusting to sustainable ways of production are, on the other hand, crucial issues that Marxian lines have little to offer.

[struggle4progress]

8. The analytical techniques that Marx pioneered, involving careful

inspection of political history and culture, in combination with detailed investigation of the economic structure and the role different groups play in that structure, remain extraordinarily useful, whether or not specific predictions made a century and a half ago turned out to be accurate

The actual analytical method works much better than might be suggested by crude stereotypes of it: it is not an appeal to economic determinism, and it is not a two-class model involving only capitalists and workers. The world, of course, has changed significantly in the 150 years since 1848, but if we want to understand intrinsic social conflicts and mechanisms of control, we must still examine the structure of society carefully, with an eye to political history and culture and to the slots filled in the economic organization by various social subgroups

[bemildred]

7. Yep, if you think MLK or Jesse Jackson are "radicals", then you are most confused.

And if you reduce the public to being peons, and prevent reform through the political process, you make the resulting explosion that much more bloody when it comes.