Fwd: "global corporate liberalism"

[Doug Henwood]

[John Gulick asked me to post this. By the way, I think I'm 
responsible for feeding Pat B the "Marx was for free trade" line. I 
was on an obscure cable network with his sister Bay discussing NAFTA 
a few years ago, along with John Cavanagh of IPS and a really 
terrible woman from Forbes. The Forbesian was the only pro-NAFTA 
person on the panel. At one point, I said to her, "You're getting 
beaten up pretty badly here, so let me give you some support. You 
might not be pleased with its source, but at least it's support. In 
his 1848 speech on free trade, Marx said that free trade intensified 
the class conflict and hastened the revolution, so for that reason he 
was for free trade." Bay got a big kick out of this. A week or two 
later, the "Marx was a free trader" showed up in Pat's column and in 
his stump speech.]

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John Gulick writes....

Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2000 15:11:09 -0800 (PST)
From: <jlgulick at sfo.com>
To: dhenwood at panix.com

Several items in the news recently are convincing me ever the more that
the Dem Party now carries the banner of multicultural corporate liberalism
(kind of like Studies on the Left's "corporate liberalism" with diversity
consultants and conflict resolution specialists added into the mix), while
the Repub Party carries the banner of nativist/ populist neo-isolationism.
Perhaps in the last decade's wake of the end of authoritarian state
socialism and the Cold War, and of the rise of the "class of '94" Repubs,
this is hardly a new insight, but what do you make of the following ?

Item One: In an article posted to this list yesterday, it is revealed that
in this Y2K campaign fund-raising cycle, the Dems are attracting as much
big biz soft money donations as are the Repubs. Granted, I don't think the
article broke down the sources/amounts of the soft money contributions
sector-by-sector (e.g. globally-oriented finance K/ Fortune 500 vs.
domestically-oriented real estate development), and it's also clear that
big biz money is flowing to the Dems in roughly equal amounts partially
b/c big biz anticipated Dem victories in the fall and is "hedging its
bets." Still ... (BTW, how come so many fewer left scholars are analyzing
the social base of the parties than during th 1980's, when so much ink was
spilled on decoding the social base behind the Reagan conservative
coalition ?).

Item Two: Other articles posted to this list yesterday indicated that
Gephardt, supposedly the bellwether of the "fair trade"/"protectionist"
(I'm not going to join the debate on the proper terminology here) wing, a)
Dem Party, a) criticized the Meltzer report on scaling back the IBRD as
"neo-isolationist," b) has fallen in line w/Clinton & Gore on admitting
China to the WTO.

Item Three: Wildcard and loose cannon Dem Congressman James Traficant of
Ohio was on C-Span last night, threatening to bolt from the Dem Party,
b/c, among other things, the Dems want to deprive the citizenry of their
right to bear arms (which would leave arms in the hands of the police, the
army, the BATF, the FBI, etc., leading to more Wacos and Ruby Ridges), and
b/c the Pentagon is spending dough on UN peace-keeping missions in the
Balkans and sub-Saharan Africa, when it should be allocating its resources
to militarizing the US-Mexico border (recall also that Traficant was an
outspoken critic of NAFTA from a xenophobic/protectionist perspective).
He was also advocating instituting a national sales tax and abolishing the
IRS. (Note that Traficant is under Justice Department indictment for
something or other).

Item Four: Hard-line conservative Congressman Rohrbacher of Orange County
CA (also former speechwriter for Reagan) was also on C-Span last night,
blasting Clinton/Gore for coddling "butchers of Beijing," for not
playing hardball w/price-gouging OPEC members (the ingrates to whom "we"
gave money and blood in Gulf Slaughter of '91 are now "raping the American
middle class"), and for their "globalism" (they care about the fate of the
planet, I say we should care about America first).

Item Five: Pat Buchanan was on Crossfire last night. When the commentator
asked pitchfork Pat to explain his alliance w/the "loony left" (e.g.
Fulani) who profess "Marxism," Buchanan said in essence, "I'm not a
Marxist, Marx was for free trade ..."

Now certainly Wall Street/Fortune 500 are in the Dubya camp, but it seems
to me more and more every day that the Dem Party at the national level is
esposuing Trilateral Commission/Tom Friedman-style "global corporate
liberalism," and the Repub Party is more and more embracing (at least at
the more grass roots level) nativist/populist/neo-isolationist opposition
to "globalization" (making for weird events like Cockburn and Buchanan
appearing on the same dais, Buchanan's strategic defection to the Reform
Party notwithstanding -- i.e. basically a gesture to pull the Repubs in a
more nativist/populist/neo-isolaionist direction). Comments ?

John Gulick