Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
> Doug:
>> The ideology got massive assistance from its oligarch friendliness,
>> for sure, but it wouldn't have gone anywhere if they (35 years ago I
>> would have said "we") hadn't persisted in prosyletizing for what felt
>> like a doomed struggle. In those days, Hayek was a relic and Marx
>> seemed fresh. There's a point to what Cde Cox likes to call dorm room
>> bull sessions.
>
[...]
> Stated differently, the demise of the progressive ideology and causes had
> little to do with what 'we' (i.e. lefties collectively) did or failed to
> do,
> but rather was caused by the oligarchy's renewed support for
> neo-liberalism
> thanks to technological advantage it gained in globalization, the demise
> of
> the USSR, and the natural responsiveness to right-leaning calls in the US
> populace. The left did not have a chance against that lineup.
>
-------------------------------
All true, and I know I've said it before, but it also - and perhaps mainly -
has to do with the decline of the industrial unions, once the largest and
most effective progressive institutions in capitalist societies, and the
only ones with the weight to challenge the "oligarchs".
The decline of the unions can be traced to the shift from industry to services. In the earlier period, working conditions were brutal, the workforce was highly concentrated and regimented in large-scale manufacturing and resource enterprises, and workers were housed and socialized together in mine and mill towns or working class neighbourhoods adjacent to the factories where they worked. In such conditions, it was easy for a culture of grievance and solidarity to flourish.
The service economy brought with it technological and organizational changes which a) reconstituted the workforce and dispersed it both within and outside of the workplace, and b) distributed enough of the rapidly expanding global surplus to improve the basic conditions of existence of workers in the advanced capitalist countries. In such conditions, the culture of grievance and solidarity waned.
The real question for me is: which of these factors has been the more crucial? If the former (changes in the nature and organization of work in a service economy) then the unions may just turn out to just be a historical moment in time corresponding to the early industrial stage of capitalist development; if the latter (relative prosperity), that would suggest the decline of the unions is an interlude, and that we can expect a revival of the old forms of self-organization and combativity within the ranks of these new and passive white collar, technical, and professional workers when conditions change, which they invariably will at some point.
I'm more certain that progressive students, intellectuals, and social movements of women, environmentalists, gays, and others can't fundamentally change society without the organized support of a majority of those Wojtek calls boobs, and I don't believe either that such change can be forced on the "metropoles" by the revolutions of more impoverished and radicalized Third World peoples. These New Left and Maoist theories were the product of the social and political decline of the industrial proletariat. Unless and until the big box stores, fast food chains, the back offices of the financial and entertainment conglomerates, the high tech factories, and all of the new sectors are organized and begin introducing to their millions of workers a renewed trade union and political consciousness, I don't see how a a revival of the mass progressive struggles in the West which marked the period 1880-1950 is possible.
I think Wojtek's point about the role of the progressive bourgeoisie in fostering change tends to be underestimated on the left, but one of these reasons for the promotion of reform from above is to contain an insurgent workers' movement from below.
The superior funding of right-wing think tanks or the relative ignorance of a large part of the American population are epiphenomena.
In case it needs saying - and it probably does - this doesn't obviate the the need for changes in the here and now. It's just an attempt to put some context around the Western left's relative impotence.