Brad, Oskar, Noam

[Brad De Long]

>>>>>> But what's the point? Chomsky wants to write so that his readers get the
>>>>>> message that plutocrats in Wall Street and bureaucrats in Washington
>>>>>> cheer the departure of Lafontaine.... He won't let the fact that much of
>>>>>> what he says in and between the lines is false (U.S. financiers *are*
>>>>>> displeased at the  erosion of prospects for lower European interest
>>>>>> rates--Jeanne Kirkpatrick and her proteges do *not* run the U.S.
>>>>>> government--U.S. senior government officials *have* pushed Lafontaine's
>>>>>> line on monetary policy for six years) get in his way.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Brad DeLong
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Rubin [and] Summers [and] Greenspan [do not] share [Lafontaine] goals.
>>>>> They are... worried that the U.S. is... absorbing the world's exports....
>>>>> But that is different from Lafontaine's plans for wholesale reflation
>>>>> of the European economy to bring down unemployment and fend off attacks
>>>>> on the regulatory and welfare state... Chomsky's point was to show the...
>>>>> monolithic opposition to those social democratic policies....
>>>>>
>>>>> Seth
>>>>>
>>>> But I don't think anyone reading Chomsky's article would realize that
>>>>Rubin
>>>> >>>> had been publicly calling for the same changes in European
>>>>monetary policy
>>>> that Lafontaine was...
>>>>
>>>> Brad DeLong
>>>>
>>>True. But Chomsky's point was to show the rather monolithic opposition
>>>to those social democratic policies among U.S. policymakers and pundits.
>>>Accidental and transitory agreement between the two sides for short-term
>>>tactical reasons are -- as others on this list would say -- on a lower
>>>level of abstraction.
>>>
>>????
>>
>>If there is agreement on important issues--even if tactical and
>>transitory--then opposition is not "monolithic"...
>>
>>Brad DeLong
>>
>
>Lafontaine wanted lower interest rates because he thought this would
>reduce unemployment without sacrificing what he would call "social
>solidarity." ...In a narrow and technocratic way, there
>might be agreement. But with regard to the underlying values, total,
>monolithical opposition.
>
>Seth
>

First, I want to take strong, strong exception to the claim that something
going on in the real world isn't worth noting because it is "on a lower
level of abstraction." That road leads to the claim that much of what is
isn't really real because only the rational is real, and to Jean-Paul
Sartre's declaration that people shouldn't talk about the GULAG because it
would only confuse the workers.

It is bad politics, it is immoral politics, to say that our task is only to
make sure that the right shadows are cast on the walls of the cave so that
those in darkness will react appropriately. Instead, we should be aiming to
raise the level of the debate: to help people walk outside into the light.

Second, I don't think that it raises the level of the debate for Noam
Chomsky or Seth Akerman to claim that Bob Rubin is part of a "monolithic
opposition" to Oskar Lafontaine. "Monolithic" =
single-block-of-stone-without-cracks-fissures-or-joints, after all.

Oskar Lafontaine is a social democrat. Bob Rubin is a liberal democrat.
Consider: the twentieth century political world has included or includes:

		Kim Il Sungists

		Pol Potists

		Stalinists

		Leninists

		Trotskyists

		Left-wing anarchists

		State socialists believing in central planning

		State socialists believing in limited worker

			self-management

		State socialists believing in market economies and

			centralized control of politics by the CCP

			(Deng faction)

		Social democrats

		Liberal democrats

		Antisocial democrats

		Liberal republicans

		Social control republicans

		Laissez-faire republicans

		Libertarian republicans

		Right-wing anarchists

		Authoritarian oligarchs

		Populist oligarchs

		Military oligarchs

		"Soft" fascists

		"Hard" fascists

		National socialists

and other factions as well...

Against this backdrop, the differences between liberal democrats and social
democrats are really quite minor: differences between what means are
appropriate to achieve common ends, and differences between what ends
commonly-accepted means will lead to in two generations or so.

Seth Akerman writes of Lafontaine's desire for "wholesale reflation of the
European economy to bring down unemployment and fend off attacks on the
regulatory and welfare state."

And I recall a Clinton-administration National Economic Council meeting (at
which I stood against the back wall with the other aides)--perhaps in June
1993?--and heard Bob Rubin state that aggressive pursuit of deficit
reduction was our best chance to get a prolonged investment-led
job-creating high-productivity-growth recovery, and that without such a
prolonged economic expansion the chances of defending and expanding the New
Deal and the Great Society were zero...

Brad DeLong