Populism

[rc-am]

a prefacing remark seems in order:  populism, strictly speaking, is any
discourse which emphasises 'the people'.   at an abstract level, it's clear
that 'the people' is a way of unifying a disunity that at the same time
relies on a series of exclusions; but that kind of representational antic
has been used to present a range of figures, including at times a racist
'we', a socialist 'we', or just a plain democratic 'we'.  and, to some
extent, max is right, anti-populism tends to present itself as above that
kind of antic, a surreptitious 'we' that slides along as
academically-licensed derision.  but i don't think that has been apparent
at all in the discussion here (except perhaps tangentially in the thread on
bush jr's marks).   however:

max wrote:


> Amoral Global Capitalism...

i don't know where you see 'amoralism'.  even from this distance, the last
two decades in the US and Britain, as well as here, have been accompanied
by a distinct moralism.  across the board, the repubs, tories, liberals,
labourites, and democrats have -- in the absence of any redistributive
possibilities -- resorted to an increasingly frantic moralism.   or is it
that you're pairing 'amoral' and 'global'?  tell me it isn't so; but with
your depiction of the nation-state as the repository of virtuous
protectionism, i'm not sure.


> The right terminology
> is opposition to the use of market forces to reduce labor
> standards. The objective of organized labor is to forestall
> this to the extent possible, both through collective
> action and government policy, among other means.

you said you didn't disagree that deregulation of laws relating to
employers was accompanied by an authoritarianismviz workers...  i note the
double negative.    yet, i think you're missing the whole raison d'etre of
migration laws, and indeed of most laws: they don't stop things from
happening, they create and sustain certain condition.  in the case of
migration law, they create distinctions between groups of workers, eg.
illegality doesn't make migrant workers disappear, it only makes them
available for undocumented and hyper-exploited working conditions -- and
that can, does, happen just over the border and inside a country.   short
of re-asserting a formal system of apartheid (which in any event only ever
really applied to certain occupations), the only real option for mitigating
against the competitiveness of the labour market is to make sure that
organised labour includes those at the bottom end of the scale, those who
are used as scabs.   market forces only reduce labour standards if the
state creates and sustains the conditions for it to do so, which is why
when it comes to labour standards (and associated policies such as welfare
and migration law), the state has in the last two decades been decidedly
authoritarian, not deregulatory.


> We need foreigners as export consumers.

interesting.   during the rise of One Nation, the constant refrain from
govt and opposition alike was that this would hurt export markets.  heh.
saun micallef (comedian), doing a govt announcement, declared, "...at the
bottom of your screen, you'll see a list of those countries we do not trade
with. please direct your hatred toward them."

Angela
_________

link of the day:
Australian union boffins at
http://www.econ.usyd.edu.au/acirrt/