Re: Wage-Price Controls Under Nixon
I think in all fairness that the mixture of people with differing ideologies among the Progressives (or New Liberals as they were called in Britain) shifted substantially over the period from 1890 to 1940 from primarily libertarianish to primarily statist, and that the shift followed a fairly steady trend (or at least trended always from libertarianish toward statist). You can, incidentally, see the transition from classical liberal to Brandeisian to New Nationalistic in the person of Theodore Roosevelt who, when campaigning for mayor of New York City in the 1890s rejected municipal regulation of street-car rates saying that "you can no more regulate the law of supply and demand than the law of gravity." David In a message dated 6/19/03 6:28:45 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: >>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >> >>Post-modern liberalism didn't spring full-blown into being like Athena >from >>the forehead of Zeus. It evolved rather over time from classical >>liberalism >>through several fairly-distinct phases. > >You're right on this. But it might be more accurate to say that at any > >given time "progressivism" was a mix of relatively libertarian, "modified" > >laissez-faire liberal types (the "Brandeisians" and J.A. Hobson across >the >pond) and more authoritarian types like the Fabians and their American > >counterparts. The libertarian end of the spectrum, certainly, there were > >things like the recall and public initiative. But this same "good >government" movement, from the very beginning, also favored city-wide school > >boards, larger wards or at-large aldermen, etc., as a way of placing >government policy safely under the control of "professionals" and keeping > >the great unwashed from meddling in the business of their betters. It >was >the same kind of petty lust for control that Hilaire Belloc and William > >English Walling described in their critiques of Fabianism. And it tied >in >pretty closely with the authoritarianism of the public education >bureaucracy, the "deskilling" of blue collar labor under Taylor's >"scientific management," in a much broader phenomenon of the rise to control > >of the white collar "professional" class in the late 19th century. Even > >when "progressives" were more sympathetic to the relatively libertarian >part >of the mix, the increasing centralization of the corporate economy and >the >state made it likely that their movement would succeed only in those areas > >where centralized bureaucracies benefitted.
Re: Kolko 40 Years Later
In a message dated 6/19/03 9:40:04 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > >> The main "good" it provides is a negative one, that of keeping > >> homelessness and starvation to a low enough level to prevent > >> political instability. > >[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > This of course presumes that the welfare state reduces homelessness > > and starvation rather than encouraging it. > >In politics the appearance is usually more important than the reality. > >-- >Anton Sherwood, http://www.ogre.nu/ I couldn't agree more. Well said! David
Re: Kolko 40 Years Later
In a message dated 6/19/03 10:28:48 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: >>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > >> >>In a message dated 6/19/03 6:28:26 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: >> >> >The main "good" it provides is a negative one, that of keeping >>homelessness >> > >> >and starvation to a low enough level to prevent political instability. >> > >>This of course presumes that the welfare state reduces homelessness and >>starvation rather than encouraging it. > >Of course. But what it's proponents intend and what it actually does may >be >two different things. Then too, although non-statist alternatives might > >reduce destitution, they might also carry unacceptable costs to the ruling > >class. What's efficient from the perspective of the general welfare may >be >quite inefficient for those currently benefitting from the state. > >Tolstoy had a little parable along these lines that beautifully describes > >the mindset of the corporate liberal: a humane farmer took extraordinary > >measures to make life more comfortable for his cattle. He had his hired > >hands take them out of the pen for walks; he played music for them; he > >bought better food, etc. He was asked, "But wouldn't it be a lot less > >complicated, if their welfare is your main goal, to just knock down the > >fence?" The farmer replied: "But then I couldn't milk them." An apt and amusing metaphor, Kevin! David
Re: Kolko 40 Years Later
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] In a message dated 6/19/03 6:28:26 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: >The main "good" it provides is a negative one, that of keeping homelessness > >and starvation to a low enough level to prevent political instability. > This of course presumes that the welfare state reduces homelessness and starvation rather than encouraging it. Of course. But what it's proponents intend and what it actually does may be two different things. Then too, although non-statist alternatives might reduce destitution, they might also carry unacceptable costs to the ruling class. What's efficient from the perspective of the general welfare may be quite inefficient for those currently benefitting from the state. Tolstoy had a little parable along these lines that beautifully describes the mindset of the corporate liberal: a humane farmer took extraordinary measures to make life more comfortable for his cattle. He had his hired hands take them out of the pen for walks; he played music for them; he bought better food, etc. He was asked, "But wouldn't it be a lot less complicated, if their welfare is your main goal, to just knock down the fence?" The farmer replied: "But then I couldn't milk them." _ The new MSN 8: advanced junk mail protection and 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
Re: Kolko 40 Years Later
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: >> The main "good" it provides is a negative one, that of keeping >> homelessness and starvation to a low enough level to prevent >> political instability. [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > This of course presumes that the welfare state reduces homelessness > and starvation rather than encouraging it. In politics the appearance is usually more important than the reality. -- Anton Sherwood, http://www.ogre.nu/
Re: Kolko 40 Years Later
In a message dated 6/19/03 6:28:26 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: >The main "good" it provides is a negative one, that of keeping homelessness > >and starvation to a low enough level to prevent political instability. > This of course presumes that the welfare state reduces homelessness and starvation rather than encouraging it.
Re: Kolko 40 Years Later (Away from office)
I am out of the office till June 30. I may be checking my e-mail between now and then but can't be sure. - - Bill Dickens
Re: Kolko 40 Years Later
From: Bryan Caplan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Kevin Carson's remarks on Kolko reminded me that I recently reread Kolko and had some comments to share. Just for background: Kolko's *Triumph of Conservatism* was written largely as a left-wing attack on mainstream liberalism. Kolko's message was that most of the regulations and government interventions of the Progressive Era that supposedly gave capitalism a human face merely made matters even worse for the common man. In his related volumes *Railroads and Regulation*, for example, Kolko argued that railroad regulation was designed by railroads themselves to keep rates UP under the fig leaf of consumer protection. Kolko was subsequently dismayed that free-market economists from Stigler to Rothbard eagerly accepted his thesis, arguing that Kolko had shown that laissez-faire would have been better than what emerged. And indeed that is largely what Kolko showed, though it scarcely occured to him that anyone would actually take the laissez-faire option seriously. Kolko's goal, rather, was to show the futility of trying to tame capitalism, in order to push mainstream liberals towards socialism. Chomsky has a similar blind spot today. He points out, rightly, that what neoliberals call "free trade" is really a form of corporate mercantilism that is heavily dependant on state intervention on a global scale. But then he turns around and says that "we" have to strengthen the state and act through it to break up concentrations of private power. It seems to me a pretty common sense conclusion that, if these concentrations of private power depend on the state for their existence, the solution is to *reduce* the power of the state. But enough background. On my re-read, I noticed the following. 1. Kolko frequently fails to distinguish between government policies that directly helped business, as opposed to policies that directly hurt business, but reduced the risk of socialist revolution. The whole idea of a government-enforced cartel, for example, is to raise profits above the laissez-faire level. This is rather different from business consenting to moderate welfare state policies that reduce profits below the laissez-faire level, but arguably reduce the risk of total elimination of the profit system. They are indeed two entirely different cases. The latter case, of welfare state concessions, is productively examined in Piven and Cloward's *Regulating the Poor*. To a certain extent, the welfare state is something forced on the ruling class from above, rather than a positive good for it. The main "good" it provides is a negative one, that of keeping homelessness and starvation to a low enough level to prevent political instability. The point they make is that, even when political pressure from below is the main cause of a policy initiative, it is the ruling class that actually carries it out. And the ruling class implements it in a way that, as much as possible, produces side benefits for itself and is as harmless as possible to its interests. The welfare state provides some second-order benefits for the state capitalists: it provides a system of social control for the underclass, similar to that of police/prisons/parole officers. It provides some minimal floor for aggregate demand, to the extent that the corporate elite still take a Keynesian view of such things. And (at the risk of being dismissed as "rather silly"), it partially cartelizes the portion of the wage package that goes to providing against absolute destitution and removes it as an issue of competition. But these negative and positive benefits fade into each other to the extent that the "New Class" of social engineers have been incorporated as junior members of the corporate ruling class. If you take a Millsian power elite view (or even Christopher Lasch's neo-populism) of the parallel significance of Taylorism in industry, "progressive" paternalism in the welfare bureaucracy, the rise of the public educationist complex, and the "professionalization" of all aspects of life, it seems that big business depends on this New Class of managers, engineers and "helping professionals" to manage and plan society. As Mills put it, the capitalist class was "reorganized along corporate lines." To a large extent, our society is run by interlocking directorates of state and corporate oligarchies, with the lines between them blurring. For these junior members of the corporatist elite, especially the ones in the state bureaucracy who live off of tax revenue, the welfare state is purely a positive benefit. Now this point is important because if you take the risk of socialist revolution seriously, then ANY welfare state measure that falls short of expropriation could be said to "help business." This in turn makes Kolko's thesis rather trivial - or, more precisely, an expression of his deluded over-estimate of the risk of socialist revolution i
Re: Wage-Price Controls Under Nixon
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Post-modern liberalism didn't spring full-blown into being like Athena from the forehead of Zeus. It evolved rather over time from classical liberalism through several fairly-distinct phases. You're right on this. But it might be more accurate to say that at any given time "progressivism" was a mix of relatively libertarian, "modified" laissez-faire liberal types (the "Brandeisians" and J.A. Hobson across the pond) and more authoritarian types like the Fabians and their American counterparts. The libertarian end of the spectrum, certainly, there were things like the recall and public initiative. But this same "good government" movement, from the very beginning, also favored city-wide school boards, larger wards or at-large aldermen, etc., as a way of placing government policy safely under the control of "professionals" and keeping the great unwashed from meddling in the business of their betters. It was the same kind of petty lust for control that Hilaire Belloc and William English Walling described in their critiques of Fabianism. And it tied in pretty closely with the authoritarianism of the public education bureaucracy, the "deskilling" of blue collar labor under Taylor's "scientific management," in a much broader phenomenon of the rise to control of the white collar "professional" class in the late 19th century. Even when "progressives" were more sympathetic to the relatively libertarian part of the mix, the increasing centralization of the corporate economy and the state made it likely that their movement would succeed only in those areas where centralized bureaucracies benefitted. In the earliest stages of "progressivism" people still by and large believed in free markets and private property, but believed that left entirely to themselves, free markets produced monopolies which had to be broken by antitrust action. These early antitrust progressive are sometimes known as Brandeisians, and we see their imprint heavily upon Wilson's New Freedom platform. The next stage of progressivism invovled allowing the big businesses to remain unbroken, but regulating them with the federal government, a few we find heavily influencing TR's New Nationalism platform of 1912. New Nationalism contained no explicit calls for cartelization, but it evolved into Hoover's New Individualism (a rather contradicatory name for what it described) in which government would, mostly informally, support the cartelization agreements of Big Business. Hoover's voluntary cartelization finally, by the New Deal, evolved into outright calls for goverment-forced cartelization that heavily animated the NIRA of 1933. It's worth note that the Brandeisians fought the NIRA bitterly, and their influence on the Supreme Court got it declared unConstitutional. Cartelization remained anathema to old Progressives right through the New Deal. David Levenstam In a message dated 6/18/03 12:24:15 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: >Actually, they support state capitalism under the name of "progressivism" >or >"putting people first" or some equally inane goo-goo slogan. Just about > >every part of the Progressive/New Deal agenda reflected the interests of >big >business in cartelizing and stabilizing the corporate economy; it was >just >sold to the public as a "progressive" restraint on big business. > >Please bear in mind that what was called "socialism" by democratic >socialists in the 1920s would not have been recognized as such by most >of >the classical socialists of the nineteenth century. The difference reflects > >the New Class takeover of the working class movement, by Leninists and > >Fabians, at the turn of the century. > >Revisionist historians like Gabriel Kolko and James Weinstein called the > >phenomenon "political capitalism" or "corporate liberalism." Murray >Rothbard agreed with their analysis. Whatever you call it, it is organized > >capital acting through the state. The court intellectuals of corporate > >liberalism (Art Schlesinger) like to depict the movement as an idealistic > >attempt to set "countervailing power" against the giant corporations. >And a >lot of big business propagandists like to howl about how "anti-business" > >forces have won consistently. But in fact, it is a case of Brer Rabbit > >hollering "Please don't fling me in that briar patch!" _ The new MSN 8: smart spam protection and 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
