From: Carrol Cox
Louis Proyect wrote: > > > > You can count on CP leader Sam Webb to obfuscate the rise of > "neoliberalism" in accord with his party's long-term orientation to the > Democratic Party. In fact, neoliberalism got started under Jimmy Carter > just as another viciously reactionary policy-- McCarthyism --got started > under Harry Truman. ^^^^ CB: This long term dogmatic obsession of Lou’s, started in his party days, but still with him after he left his party, distorts his logic, causes him to dwell on a trivial aspect of this subject matter. It is precisely in Lenin’s phrase an infantile point to make about an essay that talks about so many other issues that are substantive. That neo-liberalism started in the last year of Carter’s administration is so unimportant it’s ridiculous. And, in fact, Webb _says_ that neo-liberalism “got started” with Volcker , who Carter appointed. Webb says, Volcker’s “start” was one year under Carter. He says: “If Volcker struck the first blow, it was the Reagan administration, entering the White House less than a year later, and then successive administrations that were the main political agents of this upheaval in ideology, politics and economics. “ (He mentions Volcker’s role at several other places in the essay.) Note that this formulation by Webb would include the _Democratic_ Clinton administration as part of the Reaganites, who did the main work in creating “neo-liberalism”. Lou has the ability to ignore or forget all such statements critical of the DP by the CP, because if he cognized them , it would cause cognitive dissonance for his CP=DP illusion. As to Truman, our pair of dogmatists forgot to mention that he started the Cold War. Now that’s anti-Communism. And of course the US Supreme Court decided _Dennis_ while Truman was President. But to try to say that McCarthy was not important in the specific witch-hunt nature of the Congressional Committees , because he was a Republican , is contorted logic in service of a politically dumb obsession with misrepresenting the relative historical roles of the DP and RP in the last seventy years. It includes blithely reciting complete fictions as fact about 50 % of the time. It includes just ignoring major advances in the working class, anti-racist, women’s, and peace movements led by Democrat Presidents , Congress, and Party ( New Deal, Civil Rights laws, Great Society, War on Poverty, McGovern nomination, and now the nomination and election of Obama; tens of millions of white people voting for a Black person for President is a major blow to racism; all the sour left downplaying of this is evidence of a very weak understanding of the anti-racist movement and struggle in America) Yeah, the Democrats were the main imperialist agents of the Cold War; Kennedy started to cut the taxes of the rich; and Clinton deformed welfare , repealed banking regulations, did NAFTA and attacked Yugoslavia. Under Truman the Dems did some civil rights things that caused Strom Thurmond to lead the “Dixicrats” out of the DP. In other words, Truman did something good ( Lou and Carrol just went blank when they read the last two sentences) Truman also vetoed Taft-Hartley. ( Lou and Carrol go blank again; can’t hear that) Like I said the infantilists get it right about 50% of the time on the DP. That’s a good batting average in baseball, but it’s dismal for political analysis of the last 70 years. This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
