>"...Looking at the data from 1992 to 2004,
>Shellenberger and Nordhaus found a country whose
>citizens are increasingly authoritarian while at the
>same time feeling evermore adrift, isolated, and
>nihilistic. They found a society at once more
>libertine and more puritanical than in the past, a
>society where solidarity among citizens was
>deteriorating, and, most worrisomely to them, a
>progressive clock that seemed to be unwinding backward
>on broad questions of social equity. Between 1992 and
>2004, for example, the percentage of people who said
>they agree that “the father of the family must be the
>master in his own house” increased ten points, from 42
>to 52 percent, in the 2,500-person Environics survey.
>The percentage agreeing that “men are naturally
>superior to women” increased from 30 percent to 40
>percent. Meanwhile, the fraction that said they
>discussed local problems with people they knew
>plummeted from 66 percent to 39 percent. Survey
>respondents were also increasingly accepting of the
>value that “violence is a normal part of life” -- and
>that figure had doubled even before the al-Qaeda
>terrorist attacks...."
>
>http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=10844
>
This is a very interesting piece. It seems that while one part of classical Marixst politics - the material interests of the proletariat in expropriating the expropriators - has lost its salience, another - the alienating, atomizing effects of life under capitalism - has greatly increased. An excerpt from further down in this piece:
>The new Puritanism and cultural conservatism
>Frank described can also been seen as symptoms
>of how, in today's society, traditional values
>have become aspirational. Lower-income
>individuals simply live in a much more disrupted
>society, with higher divorce rates, more single
>moms, more abortions, and more interpersonal and
>interfamily strife, than do the middle- and
>upper-middle class people they want to be like.
>It should come as no surprise that the politics
>of reaction is strongest where there is most to
>react to. People in states like Massachusetts,
>for example, which has very high per capita
>incomes and the lowest divorce rate in the
>country, are relatively unconcerned about gay
>marriage, while those in Southern states with
>much higher poverty, divorce, and
>single-parenthood rates feel the family to be
>threatened because family life is, in fact, much
>less stable in their communities. In such
>environments, where there are few paths to
>social solidarity and a great deal of social
>disruption, the church frequently steps into the
>breach, further exacerbating the fight.
Doug