Samatha : This article discusses how the conservative machinery worked to mislead workers to vote against their own interests in the name of cultural and family values, not recognizing the gradual economic exploitation. Rich became extremely rich and the poor got only poorer. When this situation acquires a critical mass, you will have less people who can afford the goods produced by the very efficient manufacturers. Economy crumbles as it has happened in the last few months all over the world. Theory that everybody is just buyer or seller in terms of market ignores the fact that society is about people earning decent living standards. Even though below article is about conservatism by american republican party, it sheds lots of insight in to what’s happening in India too. Right wing political parties in india have also been using similar strategies. Recommended for everyone interested in dalit welfare, as dalits form a major chunk of the poor.

Also read below article:
Little Modi’s Corporate Safari

Source: Community Knowledge Net

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Planning the Counterattack
Against Radical Conservatism
Jerry Kloby
(Institute for Community Studies, Montclair, New Jersey)
The Great Divide: Retro vs. Metro America, by John Sperling, Suzanne Helburn,
Samuel George, John Morris and Carl Hunt. Sausalito, CA: PoliPointPress,
2004. 296 pp. $19.95 (paper). ISBN: 0–976021–0–0.
What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America,
by Thomas Frank. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2004. 320
pp. $24.00 (cloth). ISBN: 0–8050–7339–6. $14.00 (paper). ISBN:
0–8050–7774–X.
Reason: Why Liberals Will Win the Battle for America, by Robert Reich. New
York: Knopf, 2004. 272 pp. $24.00 (cloth). ISBN: 1–4000–4221–6. $14.00
(paper). ISBN: 1–4000–7660–9.

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Watching the best sellers list can be an interesting pastime. Over the
past few years the non-fiction category has become a bit like a horse
race. Conservatives have been producing a steady stream of books telling
Americans about the 100 people who are “screwing up” their country
and that we need to “be delivered” from the treasonous evils of liberalism.
Liberals and progressives have landed quite a few counterpunches
against these “lying liars” of the “culture wars.” Some of the leftish books
rise above the fray. They go beyond simply countering the distortions
made by the right wing to offering thought-provoking analysis of the
recent rise of the political right in the United States, and, in some cases,
proposing a strategy for corrective action. This essay examines three such
books, all of which shed some light on why the right has been so successful
and offer some ideas for a strategic counteroffensive.

Easily the most impressive of the three, at least in terms of research
and visual presentation, is The Great Divide authored by John Sperling
et al. Sperling is probably best known as the founder of the University
of Phoenix, which provides college degrees via internet-based courses.
Sperling has his hand in a number of other businesses as well, and was
named one of the top twenty-five entrepreneurs of the past twenty-five
years by Inc. magazine.
Robert Reich’s Reason is a more subdued and readable book that does
not overwhelm the reader. Reich has held numerous positions in the
federal government including secretary of labor under President Clinton.
He has authored ten books including the well-known I’ll Be Short: Essentials
for a Decent Working Society (2002).
Thomas Frank, the author of What’s the Matter with Kansas? is not a businessman
or a former high-ranking government official. He is a journalist,
the founding editor of The Baffler (a magazine of cultural criticism established
in 1988), the author of One Market Under God, a frequent contributor to
The Nation, Harper’s, and Le Monde diplomatique, and a native of Kansas.

The books reflect their author’s biographies. The Great Divide is an oversized,
glossy, well-financed publication, by a team of writers and researchers.
In style and substance it reflects its progressive-minded business roots.
Reich’s book, Reason, is much more modest. It is written in the friendly,
engaging style of an experienced politician who has a knack for making
you feel that he is talking directly to you, not down at you. Frank’s book
makes you appreciate journalists – something that is hard to do these
days. He brings the reader’s attention to Kansas’s progressive roots, while
asking: what happened to Kansas that moved it from those progressive
roots to a place where the majority consistently votes against its class
interests? His analysis is witty, deep, and clearly focused on the class
divisions that exist in the United States, divisions that Sperling et al.,
and Reich, to some extent, gloss over.
The authors all have concerns about the direction that the United
States is headed and, for most of them, those concerns include questions
about the future of the Democratic Party. Not since Nixon’s defeat of
McGovern have the Democrats been forced to reflect so much on who
they are and where they want to go.
The Great Divide argues that American politics can best be analyzed by
seeing the United States as a divided nation. One is traditional, rooted
in the past – Retro. The other is modern and focused on the future –
Metro. Retro America’s chief characteristics include: religiosity, social
conservatism, an economic base of extraction industries, agriculture, nondurable
goods manufacturing, military installations, and a commitment
to the Republican Party. Its 25 states encompass 66 percent of the land
mass and 35 percent of the population.The term is from Ken Cook, director of the Environmental Working Group. See
Egan (2004).
Metro America, on the other hand, is loosely held together by a common
interest in promoting economic modernity and by shared cultural
values marked by religious moderation, vibrant popular cultures, a tolerance
of differences of class, ethnicity, tastes, and sexual orientation,
and a tendency to vote Democratic. Metro America has 34 percent of
the land mass and 65 percent of the population – 70 percent of the
metropolitan population.
Sperling and his colleagues claim that “culture and economics are the
major elements that determine voting behavior and, in turn, shape the
ideology and organization of the Republican and Democratic Parties”
(p. xvii). However, to a large extent they view the geographic distribution
of political power as a determining factor in shaping the electorate and
the two major parties.
Retro America is the America favored by the Republican Party and,
according to Sperling et al., Retro America is on the dole. What the
authors term “retronomics” is supported by two pillars: 1) the extraction
industries (oil, gas, mining and forestry) and agriculture, and 2) national
political power based on the alliance between the Southern, Prairie, and
Rocky Mountain states. The political alliance ensures a flow of subsidies
for the extraction industries and the siting of federal facilities – military
bases, shipyards, atomic energy, and military testing grounds. As a result
of this alliance, Retro America received US$ 800 billion more in federal
payments than it paid in taxes for the years 1991 to 2000. Conversely,
the 23 Metro states paid US$ 1.4 trillion more in taxes than they received
back from the federal government. In other words, Retro America enjoyed
an advantage of US$ 2.2 trillion over Metro America. More to the point,
perhaps, is that the excess in spending compared to tax receipts is not
due to higher federal assistance to the poor (with the exception of New
Mexico), but to the greater subsidies paid to the extraction industries
(oil, mining, lumber) and agriculture.
Many metro states pay much more in federal taxes than they receive
back from the federal government. For example, from 1991 to 2001,
New Jersey paid an excess of US$ 265.4 billion, California paid US$
253.5 billion over what it received in subsidies, Illinois paid US$ 252.7
billion more, and New York paid US$ 242.2 billion. Per family, the
biggest losers are Connecticut (US$ 116,179), New Jersey (US$ 97,559)
and Nevada (US$ 67,125). Ironically, the blue states are subsidizing Retro
America, leading some to refer to the Retro states as the “red ink”
states.
Overall, only 13 percent of those in Congress are minorities, compared to 31 percent
of the population at large.
The Great Divide is a very useful resource for documenting some telling
differences between the Republican and Democratic Parties in terms of
their representativeness. For instance, of the 278 Republicans in the 108th
Congress, 252 were male and just 26 female. In other words, only 9.4
percent of the Republicans in Congress are female, compared to18.4
percent of Democrats. In addition, 98.6 percent of Republicans are white,
compared to 79.1 percent of Democrats.2
Sperling et al., find much of the conservatism of Retro America rooted
in its Christian fundamentalist base – a base that has a significant hold
on the country at large. They cite an ABC News poll that found 60
percent of American adults believe the Bible is literally true, including
its story of the world being created in six days, and a Pew poll finding
that 36 percent believe God gave Israel to the Jews and “the state of
Israel is a fulfillment of the biblical prophecy about the second coming
of Jesus.” The fundamentalists’ faith in their beliefs leads to inflexibility.
In the words of the authors: “. . . there is arrogance and a false sense
of superiority because the Bible tells humans that they are to have dominion
over all the plants and the animals and are empowered to do with
them what they will” (pp. 74–74 [??AU: check page range]).
Reading The Great Divide, one can’t help but wonder why the Democrats
did not take advantage of Bush’s poor performance record in his home
state. For example, Texas has the dirtiest air in the country, it ranks
forty-seventh in water quality, and has the seventh highest rate of release
of toxic industrial byproducts. Texas also has the greatest proportion,
nearly 25 percent, of residents without health insurance coverage (US
Census Bureau 2004:25).
The State’s Republican Party platform itself might have been enough
to deter many voters from pulling the lever for George W. Among the
planks in the state platform are:
• Nullify the separation of Church and State.
• The Census Bureau should only determine [sic] the number of people
in a dwelling.
• Repeal the 16th amendment authorizing the income tax.
• Oppose the theory of global warming.
• Oppose the Endangered Species Act.
• Repeal the minimum-wage law.
• Replace Social Security with a system of private pensions.
• Oppose women’s right to abortion.
• Abolish the US Department of Education.
• Teachers should be encouraged to teach Creationism, not Darwinian
evolutionary theory or a scientific world view (p. 69).
In terms of political strategy, The Great Divide calls for the Democrats to
present a clear identity. The authors claim that the Republicans have
established themselves as the party of Retro America and the Democrats
must respond by becoming the party of Metro America. In contrast to
the Republican values often expressed as “God, Family, and Flag,” the
Great Divide suggests the Democratic “brand” express the values of
“Inclusion, Science, and Security.” The identity can be promoted by
adopting a strategy that is “future-oriented, fair, and revives our belief
in government as the upholder of the public interests” (p. 236). Such a
strategy, they claim, will solidify the base of the party – union families,
people of color, women, and people of all ethnicities who live in cosmopolitan
areas.
How does one begin the process of establishing national policies based
on the values of Metro America? In answering this The Great Divide is
like one of those instruction manuals that leaves you scratching your
head wondering if you’re missing a few pages. Step one is to elect a
Democrat Congress and step two is to elect a Democratic President.
“Once in control of the House of Representatives, the Presidency, and
we hope, the Senate . . .”
• We must appoint judges who will respect the separation of church
and state and the right of women’s choice.
• Create a fair tax system.
• End corporate welfare, especially in agriculture.
• Preserve and improve Social Security.
• Create a system of universal health care.
• Adopt trade policies that benefit US families and workers worldwide.
• Rationalize defense spending.
• Invest in a sustainable energy future.
• Invest in the future through education and research and development
(pp. 238–242).
And so on. The Great Divide is strong in documenting a major division
in American society on cultural and economic issues and in arguing that
there is a strong geographic connection. However, the authors fail to
provide a clear and detailed strategy for electing progressive Democrats
to Congress and to the presidency. The book needs a discussion of who
will exert the necessary pressure on the Democratic Party to ensure that
it moves in a positive direction rather than continue its endless chase to
an imagined middle ground. The Great Divide does not raise the question
of how such pressure could be generated.
Thomas Frank’s book, What’s the Matter with Kansas? lacks the color
and glitz of The Great Divide but it covers much of the same territory.
Frank focuses on his home state of Kansas in order to explore one of
the central questions of American politics: How do so many people keep
getting their fundamental interests wrong? They keep voting for politicians
who are dismantling the welfare state, cutting taxes on corporations
and the wealthy, eliminating regulations that hold corporations
accountable to the public interest, and accelerating the pace of deindustrialization
and capital flight. Meanwhile, conservatives never deliver
on the issues that won the support of these middle-American voters.
“Abortion is never halted. Affirmative action is never abolished. The culture
industry never cleans up its act” (p. 6).
Frank argues that since the “protests and partying” of the 1960s, conservatives
have been whipping up a backlash that mobilizes voters by
exploiting explosive social issues. The cultural anger is then wedded to
pro-business economic policies. And it is the economic achievements that
are the conservative movement’s “greatest monuments.”
Kansas, like the rest of the Great Plains, has a progressive past. It
gave the country Eugene Debs and Walter Reuther, and helped spawn
the IWW, the UAW, and the Farmer-Labor Party. Social Security,
according to Frank, was “largely a product of the Midwestern mind”
(p. 15). And Kansas was strongly abolitionist in the time leading up to
the Civil War.
The “Great Backlash,” however, took hold in Kansas by the 1990s.
Frank says the push that started Kansas “hurtling down the crevasse of
reaction was provided by Operation Rescue . . .” (p. 91). During the
“Summer of Mercy” in July, 1991, Operation Rescue (a national antiabortion
organization founded in 1986 by Randall Terry) planned civil
disobedience all across Wichita. The city’s abortion clinics reacted to
these plans by closing down for a week when the protests began. In
response, Operation Rescue claimed to have stopped the abortion “industry”
in its tracks. Thousands of anti-abortion activists descended on
Wichita participating in various acts of civil disobedience and a massive
rally in the football stadium at Wichita State University.
The anti-choice activity distracted attention from the nefarious forces
undermining working families and small farmers in Kansas and elsewhere.
In 1996, the misleadingly titled “Freedom to Farm Act” was
adopted. The act effectively terminated certain price supports, opened
all acreage to cultivation, and generally brought a close to the New Deal
system of agriculture regulation (non-recourse loans were ended with
major ramifications for the food industry and the waistlines of Americans)
(Pollin 2003). It also pushed the nation’s remaining farmers into an overproduction
spiral causing prices for corn, wheat, and other crops to fall.
The principal author of the bill was Kansas Senator Pat Roberts.
The drop in prices led to federal government subsidies based on production,
which, in turn, resulted in large farms receiving the biggest
handouts. “In Kansas in 2000 and 2001, such federal handouts were
actually greater than what farmers earned from farming itself ” (p. 65).
The Freedom to Farm Act and lower crop prices were a boon for big
food processing companies such as Archer Daniels Midland, ConAgra,
and Cargill.
Convincing people that it is in their interest to support politicians who
promote economic insecurity for American workers is no easy task. This
difficult undertaking can only be accomplished by a powerful media
apparatus. One of the strong points of What’s the Matter with Kansas? is
Franks’ discussion of the right’s ideological infrastructure.
The conservative propaganda mills (a.k.a. think tanks) are intricately
tied to big business, including some of Kansas’s home-grown corporate
giants. Koch industries, for example, is based in Wichita. It was founded
by Fred Koch, a charter member of the John Birch Society. His billionaire
son Charles founded the Cato Institute in 1977. Another son,
David, ran for vice president as a Libertarian. Koch money props up
the Manhattan Institute, the Heartland Institute, and Citizens for a Sound
Economy. Koch money also supported George W. Bush’s campaigns, as
well as those of conservative Kansas Senator Sam Brownback. In addition,
Koch gives money to the Democratic Leadership council.
Conservatives pretend to be working class, or part of “middle America,”
but they consistently put forth economic policies that erode the wellbeing
of workers. They want Americans to believe that liberalism is all
powerful because it gets conservative lawmakers off the hook. (At the
time of this writing, the approval rating of a very conservative Congress
is an abysmal 33 percent.) (Real Clear Politics 2005). According to Frank,
the Great Backlash is a combination of traditional Republican politicians
and working class Janes and Joes, who signed on to preserve family values.
Although the cultural backlash has been building since the 1960s,
Frank says it has “pretty much been a complete bust . . . traditional gender
roles continue to crumble. Homosexuality is more visible and more
accepted than ever” (p. 121). The conservatives harp on cultural issues
but almost never achieve results on these issues. What they are really after
is cultural turmoil. It helps solidify their base by creating an enemy that
can be targeted – the latte-sipping, Volvo-driving, liberal elite – and
takes attention away from the right’s economic initiatives, which are
undermining working families. The conservatives deny the economic basis
of social class while nurturing a cultural class war. The culture war
generates a fog that disguises the class-based nature of conservative policy
making.
Frank doesn’t seem to have much hope for the Democratic Party. He
is well aware of their corporate ties, and he notes that the Democratic
Leadership Council has been pushing the party to forget blue-collar voters.
They are more interested in courting corporate interests that can
contribute significantly more cash than unions. As mentioned, even the
right-wing Koch Industries give to the DLC.
Frank puts more effort at getting class into the center of the debate,
and he is quite critical of the approach offered by The Great Divide. In
his New York Times review, Frank argues that The Great Divide substitutes
region for class and in doing so the authors neglect the important question
of why low-wage workers in “Retroland” would vote for a system
that only benefits their masters (Frank 2004). Most disheartening, according
to Frank, is Sperling’s recommendation to the Democratic Party that
it present itself as the true party of business and to denounce conservatism
as a superstition that undermines our international competitiveness.
And what does a progressive Democratic Party insider think of all
this? Robert Reich tells us in a friendly, lucid style that has made him
a widely-read author and a popular voice among those hoping to influence
Democratic strategy making. Reich’s ties to the party and to the political
establishment are deep. He served as secretary of labor under President
Clinton and he worked for the Federal Trade Commission under President
Carter. He also worked for Robert Bork in the Justice Department when
Gerald Ford was president.
Reason is a defense of the liberal political philosophy and it serves the
important function of reminding readers of the goals of liberalism and
its claimed accomplishments. The classical liberal ideas that emerged in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were to improve the well-being
of all people, not just the rich and the privileged. And Reich is a good
spokesperson for these ideals.
Reich is well aware of problems with the economic and political systems
and he takes a number of progressive positions. He points out that
the United States is the only advanced nation that doesn’t have paid
family leave and that more than a third of working parents don’t even
get holidays or sick leave from their employers. He notes that almost
every major bank in New York helped Enron commit fraud and that
corporate malfeasance is harmful to small businesses and investors. He
denounces runaway executive pay as a real scandal. Reich chides the
“Radcons” for concerning themselves with private morality but not the
public morality that leads to corporate wrongdoing or the corrosive
influence of money in politics. Reich says most campaign contributions
amount to legalized bribery and he favors a blind trust system that would
bar candidates from discovering who contributed what.
For Reich, society’s progress has come as a result of the ideas developed
by liberal intellectuals, and not from the labor movement or class
struggle. According to Reich, liberalism “led New Dealers to regulate
banking and clean up Wall Street [and] prompted them to create Social
Security, unemployment insurance and a minimum wage, rather than
resort to European-style socialism” (p. 6). Twice over the last century,
Reich claims, liberals have saved capitalism from its own excesses.
There is much that is appealing in Reich’s book but Reason is clearly
anti-socialist, it makes the labor movement historically invisible, and it
is unequivocally pro-globalization.
Reason is best when it attacks its chief target, radical conservatism.
Reich believes that Radcons hold their beliefs sincerely. They define the
world in terms of good and evil, and there is no compromising with
evil, no negotiating. It must be destroyed. Regardless of whether Radcons
are cynical or sincere, Reich does a good job of poking holes in their
arguments and bringing attention to the right’s ideological infrastructure.
He states: “Radcons have risen by means of a highly efficient, selfreinforcing
system designed to shape public opinion and politics. The
system consists of a steady stream of money from corporate executives,
wealthy ideologues, conservative family foundations, and Radcon media
tycoons . . .” (p. 9). On the other hand, “there are almost no liberal radio
or television personalities . . .” (p. 9).
Indeed, it is the right’s sustained efforts at building ideological propaganda
mills and developing their capacity to influence the established
media and lawmakers that provides one of the most direct answers to
Thomas Frank’s question of why so many people vote against their basic
interests.
Understanding the influence of the right in the mainstream media, as
well as their capacity to develop their own media outlets, is crucial to
understanding the broader ideological questions. Conservatives have built
counter-institutions and alternative professional associations. They have
set up propaganda mills that cultivate and support conservative writers,
that do pseudoscientific research and send out executive summaries, press
releases, and talking points to government officials, conservative talk show
hosts, the media, educational institutions, and on and on. They set up
pseudo-scholarly magazines. They buy radio stations. They get their distorted
word out. The National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy
reported in 1997 that twelve conservative foundations gave US$ 120 million
to organizations promoting right-wing causes. The comparable figure
for liberal groups was significantly less at just US$ 18.6 million.
Another element of the right’s upsurge is the growth of pundits and
talk-show hosts who promote the Radcon agenda. Rush Limbaugh’s radio
show went national in 1988. Rupert Murdoch owns Fox News, a national
cable TV station commanded by Republican political strategist Roger
Ailes. There is little on the left that is comparable.
Of the nationally syndicated talk shows on 691 stations in the top 120
markets, 86 percent are conservative. The top five radio station owners
broadcast 310 hours of nationally syndicated right-wing talk each week
and just 5 hours of non-conservative talk. The major right-wing propaganda
mills and Republican political committees send their talking points
by e-mail or fax to about 400 right-wing radio hosts. All of the books
reviewed here make note of the forceful presence of right-wing ideological
institutions, but unfortunately none of them offer clear ideas about
how to counter it.
Reich points out that Radcons have been remarkably effective at scapegoating
and their media infrastructure facilitates this finger pointing. But
where Reason is most problematic is when Reich perfunctorily, and without
equivocation, defends globalization in its current corporate-led form.
In fact, Reich suggests that labor’s critique of free trade is another form
of scapegoating (“meanwhile,” Reich says, “some on the left, including
organized labor, want to blame free trade”) (p. 123). He claims that
manufacturing jobs have decreased not just in the USA but in Brazil,
Japan, and China, as though the shift away from manufacturing is the
totality of the problem. And he argues against promoting international
labor and environmental standards because “it makes no sense for the
left to demand that our trade treaties with poor nations include “labor
and environmental standards,” unless such standards are pegged to what
poorer nations can afford. As poorer nations become wealthier, their
workers’ wages and their environmental standards should be expected to
improve” (p. 125).
Reich says if we want to blame anything for the loss of manufacturing
jobs then blame knowledge (talk about shifting attention away from
class!). “Everything is coming from everywhere. And any job that’s even
slightly routine is disappearing from America” (p. 126). Tell that to all
the American workers serving coffee, mopping floors, and taking care of
the elderly. The hypermobility of finance capital is not a problem, from
Reich’s point of view, “it makes perfect economic sense for Americans
to invest all over the world” (p. 138).

Anti-globalists be warned, Reich cries, “you’re on the wrong side of
history . . .you’re not seeing all the new jobs” (p. 128). If this is what
progressive Democrats have to offer, why would the working class throw
its support behind the Democratic Party?
And, although Reich believes the Democrats are too dependent on
corporate contributions and that such contributions amount to legal form
of bribery, he does not hesitate to declare “I always believed it possible
to reform the nation by working within the political system – and still
do” (p. 12). As long at that system doesn’t restrict capital mobility or
redistribute the wealth, “we can’t bridge the widening gap just by transferring
wealth from the have-mores to the have-lesses. Direct redistributions
are politically treacherous” (p. 132). On the other hand, Reich
goes on to talk about how unfair the recent tax cuts are.
Reason has much in common with The Great Divide. They both offer a
liberal perspective that presents liberalism as a forward-looking set of
ideas that are detached from social class. What Reich and Sperling et
al., offer is an enlightened corporate viewpoint that recognizes that lowering
the cost of labor to third-world levels is not the only way to attract
investment and revive economically vulnerable regions of the United
States. The authors recognize the economic and social importance of an
educated public and an efficient infrastructure. And they recognize that
government has the capacity to play a constructive role in developing
both the social and the physical infrastructure. The authors are also
aware that high levels of inequality represent a threat to democracy.
They believe in democracy and they understand the threat that the
extremes of capitalism can present. “A society is different from an economy,”
Reich says, “people aren’t just buyers and sellers in a market.
They’re also citizens engaged in a joint project of improving the wellbeing
of current and future generations” (p. 144).
But Reich and Sperling et al., downplay the power of the corporate
class. They do not call for strong democratic control of the nation’s productive
resources, only improved corporate accountability to stockholders.
They marginalize the role of labor and, although they point out the
strength of the right wing’s ideological infrastructure, they do not offer
a prescription for developing a competing one. Frank’s book suffers some
of the same shortcomings but he, at least, is injecting class much more
forcefully into the discussion.
The arguments presented in all three books are best understood in
the context of two myths that present substantial stumbling blocks to the
development of a broad-based progressive movement. One is the myth
that the conflict of haves and have-nots has been supplanted by a new
cultural divide. This is a myth propagated by right-wing pundits who
rant about America’s culture wars and it is perpetuated by pollsters who
found that most voters in November 2004 were motivated by moral values.
But the term “values” is a very nebulous and subjective term. These
poll results were often interpreted as meaning that voters were motivated
by “family values” (i.e., the kind expressed by conservative Republicans),
but many people value social justice, world peace, corporate responsibility,
and honesty in government. Commentators could just as well say
that these people are also motivated by moral values. When analysis does
not look deeply at the real issues underlying general notions of a new
social divide then it does do more to obscure than to clarify.
The second myth is the need for austerity. It is the belief that the
United States can no longer afford to provide substantial benefits to its
working people. The need for austerity is usually justified by references
to the competitive nature of the global economy.
Neither of these beliefs hold true. For decades worker pay in the
United States has been increasing much more slowly than productivity.
The benefits of this productivity are conveyed upward to the investor
class. Consider the fact that the mean net worth of the richest 1 percent
of Americans grew by nearly US$ 5 million over the past two decades –
from US$ 7.8 million in 1983 to US$ 12.7 million in 2001 (in 2001 dollars).
By contrast, the mean net worth of middle class Americans increased
by less than US$ 15,000, and the net worth of the lowest 40 percent of
Americans decreased by more than US$ 2,000 (Wolff 2004). Consider also,
that in 1989 the richest 1 percent of Americans owned financial assets
(i.e., investment capital) that totaled US$ 2.4 trillion. By 2001 their
financial assets had grown to US$ 6.4 trillion (Kennickell 2003).
Globally, it’s the same story. The richest one percent own more assets
than the lowest 90 percent combined. The 1990s, in spite of economic
growth that added approximately US$ 10 trillion per year to the global
economy, left the number of people living in dire poverty basically
unchanged at more than one billion (Flavin 2002).
Any existing austerity is a surplus austerity. That is to say, it is a product
of social domination not economic underproduction. The policies of
the both the Bush Administration and Congress are clearly promoting
class interests. Federal tax “reforms” enacted since 2001 have resulted
in an average tax cut of US$ 123,592 for the nation’s seven-figure income
earners. There are approximately 250,000 households in the USA with
incomes of over a million dollars, their tax cuts cost the rest of the country
more than US$ 30 billion in 2005 alone. Middle-income households,
on the other hand, received an average tax cut of just US$ 647 (Shapiro
and Friedman 2004).

Likewise, six million workers lost eligibility for overtime pay thanks to
the Bush Administration. New rules regarding overtime pay went into
effect on August 23, 2004. These rules reclassified certain administrative
workers, learned professionals, financial service workers, and even cooks
so that they will no longer be eligible for overtime pay. The reclassification
affects workers who make as little as US$ 24,000 a year (Eisenbrey 2004).
The right wing’s ideological machinery has propagated the belief that
liberalism undermines America’s values. But both conservatives and many
liberal thinkers propagate the myth of austerity. Conservatives have gained
the upper hand by building an extensive ideological infrastructure.
Conservative media outlets blame liberals for a wide variety of social ills
and they have sufficiently confused enough voters to get a critical mass
of them believing that the policies of George W. Bush and his radical
Republican supporters are not made in the interests of a privileged capitalist
class but are made to counter the corrosive effect of liberal dominance
and to restore the collective strength of the US economy in the
context of the new global economy.
Polling data gives us an inkling to how confused many voters are.
During the 2004 election, pollsters found that a majority of the people
who voted for George W. Bush thought he favored the inclusion of labor
and environmental standards in trade agreements, that he was for US
participation in a treaty to ban land mines, that he favored US participation
in a treaty that bans the testing of nuclear weapons, that he was
for US participation in the International Criminal Court, and that he
was for US participation in the Kyoto accords on reducing global warming.
Of course, the president was (when all the qualifiers and exceptions
for the United States are considered) opposed to all of these international
efforts (Program on International Policy Attitudes 2004).
Did the Democrats differ on these issues? Yes, they did. Did they
make it clear? Well apparently they did to their supporters. Kerry voters
were much more likely to have an accurate assessment of his position.
But why were Bush supporters so wrong about their candidate?
Here we once again must return to the failure of the Democrats to wage
ideological warfare. Would it have been so hard to make people aware
of the Texas Republican Party platform described earlier in this essay?
Or to expose the deceptions practiced by the Republican right? The
problem is only partially that the Democrats don’t have the ideological
machinery. The bigger problem may be that they are too similar to the
Republicans when it comes to some core beliefs, especially their deference
to the rule of capital.
This also explains why the Reich and Sperling books almost totally
neglect labor as a force for progressive change. While leftists often harshly
3 See Critical Sociology, vol. 31 no. 3, 2005, for a further discussion of Clawson’s work.
criticize the part played by organized labor in shoring up the power of
capitalism in the United States, they usually hold out some hope that labor
can be a progressive force, as it was in the past. Gapasin and Yates
(2005), in their recent discussion of the state of labor, say unequivocally
that “governments and global lending agencies such as the World Bank
and International Monetary Fund” implemented “policies that made
workers increasingly insecure,” but they see numerous signs that sectors
of organized labor are making common cause with the antiglobalization
movement and that there are some trends toward “social justice unionism”
(Gaspin and Yates 2005:3). Likewise, Dan Clawson’s The Next Upsurge
provides evidence that the labor movement may be on the verge of a
major upsurge.3
Yes, Democrats can do a better job of framing the issues (Lakoff 2004)
and, more generally, progressives are hindered by the lack of an ideological
infrastructure (a point made well by Robert Parry in a June, 2005,
article titled “The Left’s Media Miscalculation”). But perhaps the biggest
obstacle to a truly progressive response to the surging strength of radical
conservatism is the Democratic Party’s unwillingness to take the lead
on class issues. To even expect them to do so without pressure from
progressive forces is naive. The Democratic Party will only attempt to
lead the counteroffensive if it is forced, as has been the case in the past.
The impetus for such a movement may include progressive elements of
the Democratic Party but it is more likely to come from labor, progressive
think tanks, and grassroots social-justice organizations. The development
of such a progressive counterattack will involve building multiple
counter-hegemonic frameworks, including a new ideological infrastructure
and a progressive labor movement that connects to other movements
for equity and social justice.

---

References

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Flavin, Christopher
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