LEFT BUSINESS OBSERVER HITS 20
DOUG HENWOOD, one of the most useful and remarkable voices on the left for the past two decades has just published his 20th edition issue of the Left Business Observer. One of the things we've always liked about Henwood is his ability to make one think differently about money and its effect on us. His anniversary issue is no different. For example he notes that Tom Frank in the 'What's the Matter with Kansas' had argued that "the white working class has been hoodwinked by Republican culture warriors into voting against their economic interests." This has been a case we have long made as well and is one of the reasons we support a strong populist approach to politics.
But Henwood shoots two well-aimed holes in the argument:
- "[Richard Hofstadter] made the now largely forgotten point that American Protestants have long had a deep sympathy for The Market. Since they see humans as fallen, corrupt creatures always in need of a good kick in the ass, they revere it as a wonderful mechanism of social discipline, punishing the lazy and rewarding the hard-working. If people are poor, it's because they're immoral, impatient, or wasteful.". . .Henwood notes the acceptance of this fantasy explains "why there's been so little political price paid for the economic march back to the 19th century."
- "I'll confess that for a moment or two after the dot com bubble burst, and Enron and the other corporate scandals were revealed, I'd hoped there might be some moment of magical awakening. But it didn't happen that way. And the reason it didn't happen was well anticipated by C. Wright Mills in the Power Elite. Writing of of the routinization of crisis and scandal, Mills declared there was really no energy for sustained or productive outrage: 'Among the mass distractions this feeling soon passes harmlessly away. For the American distrust of the high and mighty is a distrust without doctrine and without political focus; it is a distrust felt by the mass public as a series of more or less cynically expected disclosures.'"
Henwood hopes to have a more upbeat tone for the 30th anniversary of LBO, but in the meantime it's an excellent place to find why things work the way they don't. . . and why they don't know matter how hard we try.
LEFT BUSINESS OBSERVER http://leftbusinessobserver.com/
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Colin Brace
Amsterdam