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

B. docile_body at yahoo.com
Fri Aug 31 00:27:37 PDT 2007


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?"



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