Re: [Marxism] Blacks versus the New Deal

[Greg McDonald <sabocat59@xxxxxxx>]

Louis Proyect wrote:

<This barely scratches the surface. To really get to the depths of  
the naked racism that pervaded the Roosevelt administration, you must  
read Kenneth O’Reilly’s “Nixon’s Piano”, a book that derived its  
title from a racist minstrel-show performance in which Nixon at a  
piano and his vice president Spiro Agnew mocked their “Southern  
strategy” before journalists and guests at a 1970 Gridiron Club  
dinner. Basically, the book is a study of how both Democrats and  
Republicans always considered Black people’s interests as secondary  
to their own political ambitions unless political exigency forced  
them to bend to the pressure like bosses acceding to the wage demands  
of a militant trade union. In the sad state of electoral politics in  
the U.S., very few progressives are able to see things this way.  
Instead of regarding an LBJ as a boss caving in to a powerful mass  
movement that amounts to a kind of strike, they prefer to see him as  
a kind of beneficent father figure.>

This may be true with regard to progressive "intellectuals", who want  
to play nicey-nice with policy prescriptions  and petitions, but most  
working-class people I know, progressive or not, have no illusions  
about the influence of power and money on the political elite who  
govern the country. And they certainly understand, almost implicitly,  
that the converse holds true as well: they have little or no power.  
Most working people are simply cynical about the whole thing.  The  
cynicism is the real issue in trying to get people to come out to a  
demo, or to talk about joining a union. Indeed, most are so convinced  
of the overwhelming power and self-interest of the politicians and  
the bosses that they really don't understand their own potential for  
demonstrating real power to effect change. At least that's been my  
experience.

Greg McDonald
________________________________________________
YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
Send list submissions to: Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Set your options at: 
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40archives.econ.utah.edu