> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Ian Murray" <seamus2001 at home.com>
>
> >It seems the Repugs always want to target those elements of the
State
> >apparatus that supports the Dems business factions and vice versa.
The
> >post-New Deal state largely being the execrescence of business
> >factionalism played out via the two party duopoly; competitive
> >rent-seeking and all that....
>
> Yes, partially, and to compete with one another, they had to make
alliances
> with working class forces to gain the votes needed. The business
elites
> embodied in the Republicans, having previously allied with "Tory"
Democrats
> in the South, increasingly made their bid directly to socially
conservative
> and racist working class sectors to counterbalance the union and
inner-city
> alliances of the Democrats.
>
> Which alliance was made and took power mattered not just for which
business
> sectors gained rent-seeking opportunities but for which kinds of
concessions
> were made to working class forces - between backlash racist
repression or
> raises in the minimum wage, between bans on abortion or restraints
on sexual
> harassment, between subsidies exclusively for hetero marriage or
concessions
> of rights to gays and other family arrangements,
>
> If you treat working class forces as actually having agency and not
just
> being victims, you can reverse this formulation and note that
progressive
> working class forces have achieved some degree of power and
concessions from
> capital by exploiting tensions and competition between different
business
> sectors. The reverse can also be said of socially and racially
conservative
> working class forces as well. Of course, business elites themselves
exploit
> the divisions between working class forces, but that is the
challenge of
> radical politics in a formally democratic system - maximizing
working class
> electoral unity while maneuvering to pit business sectors against
one
> another to blunt their unified economic power.
>
> -- Nathan Newman
==============
Didn't Adam Przeworski point out the problems with this approach?
Ian