Politicization Then and Now (Re: [lbo-talk] Alito & disability

Jim Devine jdevine03 at gmail.com
Tue Jan 17 10:48:46 PST 2006


On 1/17/06, Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol at jhu.edu> wrote:
> I'm not saying that they did that out of the goodness of their hearts.
> All I am saying is that it them who did, not labor - because labor did
> not have enough political clout in this country.

the thing is that in W. Europe, labor participated in the elite, as part of social-democratic coalitions, while in the US, labor was primarily on the outside of the elite. The AFL-CIO had to use its support for the US side of the Cold War to buy some mild welfare state programs. But in the end, WS is right here, since participation in the elite reflects labor's strength.


> The lesson here is that the best - if not only - way to achieve a
> progressive social change in this country is not by mobilizing the
> culturally fragmented and generally conservative underclasses - but by
> influencing and convincing elites that progressive policies are in their
> interests, when there is enough international pressure on the elites to
> take such claims seriously.

I'd say that the best way to influence the elites is to organize the "underclass." International pressure is all well and good, but it can easily push a country in the _wrong_ direction. And where does a progressive pressure come from? it comes from organizing the "underclasses" in other countries, because left alone, those foreign elites would simply go along with most if not all of what the US elite wants. (The Turks made the Turkish government do the right thing on Iraq, for example.) JD



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