[lbo-talk] The American Prospect 8/30/07: "What's behind the sub-prime disaster?" by Robt. Kuttner

[B.]

I'd always assumed the Reaganite Revolution of 1980
was the result of almost a decade of
counter-organizing from on high by the right -- you
know,  the Coors Foundation people (United States
Chamber of Commerce panicky memo: "Confidential
Memorandum; Attack on the American Free Enterprise
System") and the Trilateral alert about the "crisis of
democracy," etc.) -- whose talking points percolated
down to the masses and caught on by the time of the
'80 elections.

Until hearing Doug speak of the "working class
surliness" of the 1970s on his radio show, I'd never
actually thought of the 1970s as a period of working
class militancy. At least ideologically. I think of
the 1970s as a time of right-wing think tank
propagation, reactionary money being put into
foundations (the establishment of the Heritage
Foundation in 1973, for ex.)  to combat the uppity 60s
[which many people actually say culturally ended in
1972, heh], culminating in the ascension of Ronnie
himself at the end. Maybe there was working class
militancy to some degree -- but how? Were there some
big worker victories from the 1970s I'm in the dark
about....? Didn't unionization rates actually start to
drop big time by the late 70s?

-B.

Seth Ackerman wrote:

"Profits were down and the working class was surly in
the 30's. But the response was quite different. In the
early and mid-70's, the Republicans thought that
implementing a Reaganite agenda would spark a backlash
and end in political disaster. By 1980, they had
changed their minds. Wasn't that because of a change
of creed?"