Correction: I misspelled his name. It's actually spelled Geogheahgaean.
On 9/20/2010 5:01 PM, SA wrote:
> On 9/20/2010 4:17 PM, Angelus Novus wrote:
>
>> I made this point before: idealizing Europe is not just naive. It is
>> also the cudgel used by neo-liberal onslaught over here.
>
> I sort of agree but for different reasons and I would put it
> differently. Liberals in the US - and I'm thinking especially about
> American Prospect types like Tom Geohagan - do idealize Europe. But
> the problem isn't that they depict it as being much better off than
> the US; it is much better off, and in almost every way. The problem is
> that they show Europe without the politics. These strong unions, big
> welfare states, and (relatively) civilized political discourse
> "somehow" just got there in some mysterious way. And when these
> structures are periodically weakened and sanded down, that "somehow"
> happens for unexplained reasons and it's mentioned only in passing.
>
> There's a deep unwillingness to acknowledge that capitalism is a class
> society, which means it's constantly, endogenously generating
> pressures to eliminate these structures - and that they only come into
> being or get protected through militant struggle animated by ideology.
> In the Geohagan imaginaire, it just takes one big push, the structures
> come into place, and then we can thankfully forget about capitalism
> and enjoy our a self-perpetuating "middle-class society," the one we
> "used to have" in the 50's and 60's but then somehow lost. Well how
> the fuck did we lose it?
>
> SA