>What I see is that the Dems war on tobacco has transformed even-handed
>funding in the 1980s into lopsidedly Republican funding in the late 1990s.
>And the 1995-96 total of $10.3 million was out of a total cost for that
>Congressional cycle of about $433 million.
>
>Tobacco money goes heavily to tobacco-state Congresspersons, which
>certainly helps sustain cretins like Helms, but on the other hand, these
>are not people likely to challenge tobacco for electoral reasons either. So
>aren't you overstating things a teensy bit, Greg?
>
>Doug
I looked over the internet information on Tom DeLay's campaign funds and I agree on published figures, tobacco sponsorship does not look absolutely overwhelming. But Doug's studedly understated criticism misses the point.
I am not sure how far Greg Nowell could sustain his theory of a *conscious* plan within the Democratic party to break the domination of tobacco capitalism in the South, and how much it is the semi-conscious inevitable result of the movement of class forces, creating a momentum of its own. Overall we have a clash of capitalisms. Modern monopoly capitalism cannot support for any length of time open racism to the extent of apartheid and segregation. The Civil Rights campaign had to happen, independent of individual human will.
Perhaps whites had to flee the centre of Houston (so they thought) and settle in a suburb that would elect a Tom DeLay. These details are how the bigger forces manifest themselves.
Atlanta is now a centre of high technology, not the home of the deep South. Tobacco is old industrial capitalism, like absbestos.
We are not talking here about a moral issue about addiction. If Doug happens to be a smoker this is not about individual moral point scoring. Clearly some of us are too addicted to the internet for our own good.
But it is noteworthy that the Beer Barons in the UK always supported the Conservatives.
The point is the clash of class forces, and sometimes the clash between different sections of capitalism also expresses issues important to working people and give an opportunity for working people to shift the balance of power and accountability in a more revolutionary direction.
We are frankly talking about reforms. But I find Doug's suggestion that the imbalance in tobacco funding is the responsibility of a silly "war" the democrats have launched against tobacco, reform*ist*. It suggests to me that bourgeois party politics should accept that it is dependent on heavy subsidies from capital, and that if any one part seriously annoys a section of capital it has only itself to blame for being punished in an exemplary fashion.
It terms of published figures what is left out is of course what is not published.
How are costs of free air-travel around the USA for Republicans costed in their returns of interests? Much more important, there will be no costing for the enormous budgets for research and development of tobacco capital - research and development that does not go into developing a cancer free, addiction free product, but goes into monitoring every step, every breath of the bourgeois politicians in order to influence and control the process. So when DeLay gets a free policy statement from some campaign organisation for Freedom for Addiction or whatever open or front agency tobacco capital wishes to use, he is receiving something that actually cost hundred's of thousands if not millions to produce. That is actually its value in marxist terms. It is paid for from surplus value of course. This strategic information is not a free lunch. It is part of a whole system of political economy based on exploitation, and the private ownership of the means of production, which is energetic in striving to perpetuate itself.
Doug suggests even handedness of analysis in comparing the size of donations from tobacco capital to Republicans to the size of the trial fees. This is comparing apples and oranges. The rich lawyers are at the peak of a profession in capitalist society. But they are not capital. Tobacco capital is capital. Besides, every legal action requiring big fees on one side requires big fees on the other. Let like be compared with like. But to put the objectionable behaviour of a privileged profession on a par with a section of capital is not a marxist analysis. Besides there is another privileged profession, the medical profession, which benefits considerably from the amount of ill health that tobacco causes, but does oppose it.
Does anyone deny the evidence I submitted that Starr is in essence a BAT man?
Behind all the good jokes about whether people would rather use a cigar for a smoke or a sex aid is a real material battle over power.
The ability of a section of capital to delay a progressive development is a test case of the capitalist nature of the society. Many many reservations need to be expressed about the "Third Way". Clinton and Blair are openly trying to manage capitalist societies. But the fight to restrict the freedom of tobacco capital to promote a poisonous commodity, is part of the struggle to take free democratic control over the means of production and our lives.
In both USA and UK it is not accidental that the issue of tobacco sponsorship is a significant feature of the campaign to restrict the control of bourgeois politics by capitalist donors. I do not know the details of the Democrats' Campaign-Funding proposals. But they sound in a similar direction to the restrictions that the Blair regime has tried to accelerate. They are a reform but they are absolutely not reformist, unless we receive them as condescending favours from on high. No. The battle over tobacco illustrates that they have to be fought for.
Chris Burford
London.