Robert replied: "I suppose you mean expropriation from white folks.. :)" Robert Wood
I amended: "I think [Doug] means expropriation from rich white owners is not popular."
But my question is not to argue specifically for or against one view or another but simply to ask:
How do we know?
I mean, seriously, how do we know that people in the 1890s or 1930s or 1947 were not in favor of massive redistribution of wealth or of massive expropriation of the rich. How do we know one way or another? The fact that it didn't happen is not proof in itself. A lot of things that didn't happen were popular.
See the 80 cent gas law I mention above, which is similar to the rent control question. It didn't happen but it seemed to be overwhelming popular in NYC, according to all of the newspapers and politicians of the time, most of whom opposed the law and looked to the courts to strike it down because it was too popular to move against politically. And also the movement to municipalize gas and electric, which I read was very popular through the 20s until the 50s. The gas and electric companies spent millions and millions to prevent this from coming about. The fact that it didn't happen doesn't mean it wasn't popular.
Similarly with rent control and other housing protection laws. When those laws were enacted the politicians in NYC were afraid of their constituents. (The laws themselves may or may not have been popular, because they were bad compromises, but housing reform and the idea of cheap housing and expropriating from landlords seems to have been very popular in this city in the 1940s.) Unless something fundamental in the over all system changes then people will not remain organized and mobilized and eventually housing laws will change in favor of the landlords.
If mobilization and organization is absent, if mobilization and organization is not constant, then reform laws that are popular (or were once reactions to popular mobilization) will bet gutted. This says little about whether those reform laws are popular or not in the present. What it does say in this case is that the business classes are always organized and mobilized to protect their interests but the rest of us have to organize and mobilize anew every generation or every year. The situation that people become disorganized and are not able to mobilize, which I think is the principle circumstance leading to the reversal of reforms, does not say much about whether those reforms are "popular" or not. The lack of political organization is not evidence of lack of "popularity."
I'm not even willing to disagree with Doug's statement that "Expropriation has rarely been popular here." It sounds like a reasonable statement to me. And then there are times when the level of popular organization _seems_ to indicate that redistribution and expropriation of the wealthy is popular for a short time, here and there.
But really how do we _know_, one way or another?
Jerry Monaco
On Feb 6, 2008 8:47 AM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Feb 5, 2008, at 9:59 PM, Joseph Catron wrote:
>
> > No, but that doesn't alter the likelihood that the governments of the
> > State of New York or the City of Los Angeles would discard their rent
> > controls instantly if they thought their populations would stand for
> > it. Leaving aside the unfortunate leftist tendency to see everything
> > in terms of cronyism and corruption (and developers and landlords are
> > very kind to politicians everywhere), the enhanced tax bases alone
> > would make it well worth their while. Or do you see some reason other
> > than popularity that these laws remain in place after decades of
> > maneuvering by the propertied classes to abolish them?
>
> But they're not really "in place." They're gone in Cambridge and
> Santa Monica, and they're going in NYC. WHere else is there rent
> control in the U.S.?
>
> Doug
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>
-- Jerry Monaco's Philosophy, Politics, Culture Weblog is Shandean Postscripts to Politics, Philosophy, and Culture http://monacojerry.livejournal.com/
His fiction, poetry, weblog is Hopeful Monsters: Fiction, Poetry, Memories http://www.livejournal.com/users/jerrymonaco/
Notes, Quotes, Images - From some of my reading and browsing http://www.livejournal.com/community/jerry_quotes/