-------- Original Message -------- Subject: [Marxism] RE: Hofstadter and consensus history [WAS: LBO...] Date: Fri, 09 Feb 2007 15:00:14 -0500 From: Mark Lause <MLause at cinci.rr.com> Reply-To: Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition<marxism at lists.econ.utah.edu> To: 'Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition' <marxism at lists.econ.utah.edu>
Congratulations to Doug Henwood and the LBO!
Permit a note of caution to enter into this reliance on Richard Hofstadter's AMERICAN POLITICAL TRADITION AND THE MEN WHO MADE IT. A generation of college students was intellectually raised on this work. More than once, I saw that thick red-white-and-blue paperback in the possession of people demonstrating against the war or participating in one or another movement activity at the time.
Hofstadter examined, in well-written and coherent chapters the views of Jefferson, Jackson, John C. Calhoun, Lincoln, Wendell Phillips, William Jennings Bryan, Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. As a progressive bemoaning the reaction after World War II, he picked "representative" examples that suited his sensibilities.
Using it to portray the white workers as being what Spiro Agnew or Rush Limbaugh say they are is...well, mistaken....
1. There is nothing whatsoever "representative" about these figures. As the subtitle explicitly states, it is "THE MEN WHO MADE" what he saw as the "American Political Tradition" that concerned him. All are white men. Almost all are ruling class white men.
2. The only two figures on this list that remotely fit into the political tradition of the Americans on this list--Lincoln and Phillips--are presented based upon the selective use of material that fits Hofstadter's thesis and the exclusion of material that does not.
3. Any generalization about American civic culture in general or the working class particularly (which is totally ignored in Hofstadter) based on this work is on shaky ground and requires top-down elitist assumptions about mass consciousness.
4. Hofstadter's work embodied what the New Left historians called "consensus history"--a view of the past the saw serious challenges to the status quo as inherently marginal. The alternative emphasized conflict, radicalism, race, gender, class and the possibilities of serious change.
Beyond this particular source and its myriad flaws, I doubt the evidence that "the white working class has been hoodwinked by Republican culture warriors into voting against their economic interests."
1. Voter participation and its demographics doesn't indicate this.
2. There's little evidence that the culture wars matter much to most workers whose time is preoccupied with work...which has been taking a growing portion of their time.
3. Of those that do vote, they are as likely to be hoodwinked by one party as the other.
4. The minority that actually votes and votes Republican are less reacting to issues like gay marriage than orchestrated fears of terrorism, imperial decline, tougher conditions, etc.
5. All of these things play out on different levels in different parts of the work force, but nothing that works or doesn't work among white workers is exclusive to them.
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Just a few observations....
ML
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