> Nathan Newman wrote:
>
>>-Whenever I hear this argument, I always want to ask: What if you
>>-compared Northern Dems from 1965 to today's Northern Dems?
>>
>>A more interesting question-- although the Northern Dems back then were
>>voting to put those reactionary Southerners in leadership positions -- but
>>even those northern Dems were pretty weak on a range of issues. And let's
>>be real-- on gay rights and womens rights, you have to look at Dems today
>>as a massive advance.
> Well yeah, but then on gay rights George W. Bush is a major advance over
> Franklin D. Roosevelt.
>
> I don't doubt that you could find some Joe Liebermans or Ben Nelsons in
> the class of '65. But I think there was more political space then for
> vigorous social-democratic rhetoric/ideology within the mainstream od the
> Democratic Party. Maybe I'm wrong.
>
> Seth
-------------------------------------------------
Well, another way of framing the question would be: What if we transplanted
Joe Leiberman and Hillary Clinton back to the depression era and brought FDR
and his Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau forward into the present? Don't
you think today's Northern Dems and those from the depression would abruptly
switch roles? They'd have no choice. The economic and political situation,
and therefore the policy options, would present themselves differently.
Being determines consciousness and all that.
I wouldn't want to to stretch the point by including George Bush. You could beam him back and Alf Landon forward and you wouldn't notice the change, although this is probably unfair to Landon. There are some members of the ruling class who are simply too hidebound to adapt. But the Republicans also have their more sophisticated and pragmatic types who can read the popular mood and understand when the system needs changing for its own good, and by how much. The disputes within ruling classes everywhere seem to turn on where to locate the tipping point, and how much reform is necessary and possible. Isn't that the case in relation to Iraq, social spending, the dollar, and other issues today?
On the whole - and I think the response to the Great Depression was the most striking example of this - the US ruling class has proved remarkably adaptable. But, then again, it has been historically endowed with great geographical and economic advantages which has given it more room to maneuver than the Bourbons and Romanovs and the Kuomintang. But those advantages now appear to be shrinking, and, with it, the domestic and foreign policy alternatives open to ruling class representatives in both parties.
MG