Dick Armey

[Roger Odisio]

At 11:18 AM 1/23/1999 -0500, Doug Henwood wrote:
>Henry C.K. Liu wrote:
>
>>I defer to your indigenous credentials.
>>Of course its all relative.  I lived one year in Dallas, and found even the
>>extremt right has deep populist roots with anti big government and anti big
>>business sentiments based on rugged individuality.
>
>Yes they do, but they do so from a region that would hardly be populated
>had it not been for decades of federal education, highway, water,
>agricultural, and military subsidies. Most of these clowns like Armey and
>Gramm have never held a private sector job of any consequence. Armey's
>first job in North Dakota was with the Rural Electrification Association;
>he went on to get degrees and teach at public universities. Then he went to
>Congress, where he's been drawing a federal paycheck since 1985. Very
>similar things can be said about Gramm, Tauzin, etc.
>
>Doug

No, Armey's "anti big government" rhetoric is not populism, if you accept
the notion that government (whatever its size) is, or can be, one of the
major organized forces that can stand in opposition to the imperatives of
transnational corporate capital. It is this opposition to capital by
government that Armey fights, and he does so by using standard "free market"
rhetoric.  To the extent government plays such a role, e.g., setting a
minimum wage, you can expect Armey to object. Those are not the actions of a
populist. 

He is against "big business' only to the extent it troubles his view of
market outcomes, i.e., that it's a good thing if the number of firms in a
market don't shrink too much.  That's what he learned in Economics 101, and
it fits smoothly into his "free market" cant.  His theoretical opposition to
big business, however, rarely causes him to oppose their interests in any
way that matters.