tobacco capital vs US capital

Chris Burford cburford at gn.apc.org
Wed Jan 20 15:32:18 PST 1999


In his State of the Union speech Clinton managed to score two indirect digs at his Republican accusers, obliging Hastert to shake hands with him publically in a call for civility and consensus, and sharpening the attack on tobacco capital.


>As everyone knows, our children are targets of a
>massive media campaign to hook them on cigarettes.
>Now I ask this Congress to resist the tobacco lobby,
>to reaffirm the FDA's authority to protect children
>from tobacco, and to hold the tobacco companies
>accountable while protecting tobacco farmers.
>
>Smoking has cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of
>dollars under Medicare and other programs. You
>know, the states have been right about this: taxpayers
>shouldn't pay for the costs of lung cancer,
>emphysema, and other smoking-related illnesses, the
>tobacco companies should. So tonight I announce
>that the Justice Department is preparing a litigation
>plan to take the tobacco companies to court, and
>with the funds we recover, to strengthen Medicare.

I caught this reference in a comment on Channel 4 (UK) by Gore Vidal, who made some (for me) surprisingly pertinent remarks. He argued that recently the New York Times had reported "corporate America" as signalling to Congress to cool it.

"When it comes from Wall Street they click their heels", he said, implying a crunch looming between the special interests of tobacco capital and the wider interests of American capital.

Presumably Clinton thought this was the moment to twist the knife into the tobacco companies: if they squealed now, it would play into his hands.

Judging by the shrewd political crafting in the way he phrased it in his speech, I guess he is probably right.

And not in itself incompatible with the aim, expressed by Marx in his Inaugural Speech to the First International of 1867, in connection with the 10 Hour Bill, of "social production controlled by social foresight"?

Chris Burford

London



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list