From: Jim Devine <[email protected]>
it's a mistake to blame Reagan. (If we want to blame any single individual, ^^^^ CB: Truly. Thus Reagan _Revolution_ or Reagan_ism_. Those are _not_ the individual Reagan , but a whole mob of rightwing political cadre. It is appropriate to pin the initial big shift on the Gang that used Reagan as a pretty faced puppet who could smooze lots of 'Mericans. Reagan was the front and titular head of them, so it is appropriate to name the reactionary movement after him. "As Comrade Sam put it: The other is the sharp turn to the right a decade later. If the "culture wars" of the '60s were the opening round of a new era of struggle, the 1980 ascendance of Ronald Reagan to the White House (and the decision of then Federal Reserve Bank chairman Paul Volker to spike interest rates to nearly 20 percent and thus induce a deep recession) signified a reconfiguration, intensification and extension of this struggle to a broader swathe of the population, especially the working class and labor movement. With the transfer of the main levers of political power to Reagan and his hit-men, the barbarians of the right initiated an all-out class war from above. It was ideological and cultural as well as political and economic. The gloves came off. There was no place for compromise.": The name Reaganism should be used. But naming it properly and good analysis doesn't get around the disturbing fact that it takes the corruption of the politics of tens of millions of people, including mostly working class people , for this to last for thirty years, and reinvent itself again and again as the Gingrich "reaction" , then Bush , now the Tea Party. The "Below" we often look to for change is has a lot of rotten apples the barrel. Our base, the American working class , has been manipulated far from its historic mission. ^^^^^66 I'd blame Paul Volcker, a Carter appointee and for awhile part of the left wing of Obama's economic team.) In any event, it's a full-scale social movement, a reaction to the low profit rates of the 1970s and the stagflation it provoked. ^^^^^ CB: And against the New Deal and Civil Rights, anti-Vietnam war, and counter-capitalist culture movement of the sixties and seventies. Reaganism is a reactionary cultural, political and ideological movement as well as a capitalist economic restructuring. ^^^^^ The employers' offensive to restore profitability and the financiers' offensive to restore _their_ profits spawned a whole bunch of "Reaganite" social and economic policies. These policies would best be described as "neoliberal." Larry Summers -- until recently Obama's main economic man -- can be called a neoliberal but not a Reaganite. ^^^^^^^ CB: I consider Clintonism as the Democrats in Reaganism or the Reaganite era. Neo-liberalism is the economic policy geek term for one aspect of Reaganism. Reaganism is neo-liberalism and more. "Supply-side" / the Laffer curve and deficit-hawk attacks on welfare and social programs are specific Reagan neo-liberal frauds. Many neo-liberal policies, like privatization began years before Summers was in office. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
