[lbo-talk] Edward Snowden, Enemy of the State

[Carl G. Estabrook]

"[In the US from the 1970s] the agenda of a new regime of accumulation took shape. The neo-liberal order ahead would include deregulation of markets, de-unionization of labour, decreases in taxation and deflation of the money supply — in effect, a reversion towards norms of the original liberal regime prior to the Depression, minus the gold standard and tariff protection. But there would be two critical differences, in the position of industry and the nature of the electorate. Manufacturing, just burgeoning into mass production in the twenties, with fifty years of expansion ahead of it, would from the eighties onwards contract relentlessly under the pressure of lower-cost producers abroad, displacing capital into finance as the command-centre of the economy, and yet more drastically eroding the position of labour. At the same time voter expectations now precluded wholesale liquidation of insolvent or inefficient enterprises: mass unemployment appeared incompatible with stable capitalist rule. In most capitalist countries of the period, analogous changes took hold. But *in the absence of any significant traditions critical of the over-riding prerogatives of private property and free enterprise*, and the structural erosion of the power of labour, in America they acquired their purest form. The parameters of the political system shifted to the right everywhere in the West, but nowhere so far and with so little impediment as in the US."  


>From <http://newleftreview.org/II/81/perry-anderson-homeland>.

On Jun 11, 2013, at 6:33 AM, Wojtek S <wsoko52 at gmail.com> wrote:


> I feel sorry for this guy - he obviously drunk too much CoolAid of American
> libertarianism and basically fucked up his life fighting windmills.
> 
> I feel rather sad that the only thing that keeps most Americans moving -
> intellectually - is that old canard of liberty.  Liberty is a bullshit
> metaphor - what it really means is that businessmen are free to do whatever
> they want without  being accountable to any authority, and the grunts are
> free to think that they too can become rich one day.  That kind of thinking
> is the foundation of neoliberalism.
> 
> As for myself, I find this preoccupation with liberty pretty irritating.
> It is knee jerk reaction of immature youth rebelling against their parents
> and teachers glorified to the level of anti-statist ideology.  It shuts
> down any critical thinking how much "liberty" do we really need.  I tend to
> believe that most people do not need too much of it - just enough to carry
> out their daily lives without undue interference.  It is the businessmen
> that need a lot of it to carry our their money making scams and laugh all
> the way to the bank.  Ordinary people are in a far greater need of good
> life,  food, shelter, public services, access to health *care* (not health
> business), social safety net, personal security,  - not some bullshit
> abstraction cooked up by reactionary philosophers.
> 
> That good life is not affected in any way by some government agency
> collecting information about people's daily lives for a very simple reason
> - that information is the Library of Babel
> http://www.thecriticalpoint.net/index_files/libraryofbabel.pdf.  The more
> information they collect, the less actionable it is.  By sheer law of
> probability, most people will be unaffected - only libertarian freaks may
> have nightmares about all that "government power."  Contrary to libertarian
> canards, police states do not need to gather information - they make it up
> to frame someone.  The difference between a police state and a democracy is
> how that information is used, not how much of it is collected.  So if that
> information is used to prevent some terrorist from killing people to "make
> a statement" but there is a due process to challenge that information-
> that is a net gain in a democracy.
> 
> This whole affair is a sad manifestation of American knee-jerk anti-statism
> and libertarianism.  It is really sad that they rally against the
> government (that safe scapegoat of businessmen)  in the name of a bullshit
> concept of liberty rather than, say, that of "good life" or "health care
> and social security for all."  For that reason, when I hear about liberty
> in America, I want to puke (elsewhere, it might be a different story).
> Long live Hobbes. And send all liberty lovers to a reeducation camp where
> they can learn the virtues of solidarity and reasonable limits on human
> capacity to act  ;).
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Tue, Jun 11, 2013 at 12:22 AM, JOANNA A. <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:
> 
>> In addition, everyone should watch the 12 minute interview with Snowden
>> posted on the Guardian.
>> 
>> It's one of the most impressive things I've ever seen.
>> 
>> Joanna
>> 
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> I just thought about and then watched an old movie, Enemy of the State
>> (1998), with Mister Clean, Will Smith, Mister Grit, Gene Hackman, Mister
>> Asshole Jon Voight, and Lisa Bonet who looks like Michelle Obama.
>> 
>> It's free here:
>> 
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0MX38ShoCI
>> 
>> If you haven't seen it, it's a fun flick.
>> 
>> CG
>> 
>> 
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> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Wojtek
> 
> "An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."
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