Shane Taylor wrote:
>
> Besides, this Administration, with it's war without end, warrants it's
> own, new pejorative.
>
> -- Shane
The most worrying aspect is the lack of effective opposition from the ruling class or any large sector of it. The criticism that has appeared is focused on this administration and on fairly specific points. No ruling class voice has called for withdrawal from the Mideast, or even from Iraq.
There have been several explanations offered, many of them persuasive in their way, but none decisive and free of serious objections.
Whoever the DP candidate is, he (or she) is _not_ going to pull the troops out of Iraq. And as long as the troops are there, the present policy is still in place.
We do indeed need a new and descriptive term for what is happening in the U.S. today.
Remember the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act!
Query: Has there ever been a substantive broadening of rights in the U.S. in the absence of tremendous (non-electoral) pressure from one or more sectors of the working class?
It seems to me that there is an unending pressure within capitalism for the narrowing of rights, while resistance to that pressure comes only from self=conscious independent mass movements.
Compare Marx's argument in _Wages, Price and Profit_ that the general tendency of capital is to reduce wages and that that tendency can only be controlled by constant struggle by workers.
And on finding different words for different things. "Wage slavery" is a useful metaphor, but wage slavery is NOT slavery, and it is no contribution to the struggle to pretend that it is.
Carrol