Re: European Union

[Andrew Wayne Austin <aaustin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 2 Jun 1998, James Devine wrote:

> In addition to the below, I want to reiterate that a one-dimensional
> "strength/weakness" continuum is too simple.

Absolutely. These are complex issues, and the tendency to simplify is
particularly strong in discussions on listservs. If I leave something out,
or to one side, it does not mean I disagree with it.

> The latter growth in inequality before 1929 is partly due to the weakening
> of the former strength of the workers' organizations, at least in the U.S.
> That is, the Left was in decline _before_ the New Deal, due to attacks by
> the Right.

The right and the Wilson Administration did go to war with the left in the
10s. The first world war facilitated the state in carrying out a program
that involved suppression of the socialist and communist movements. Also,
because labor organizations were not yet institutionalized, labor could
not mount much of an resistance against increasing inequality following
WWI, an increase that was particularly stepped up by the capitalist
state's tax and industrial policies during the 1920s.

> The power of the workers' organizations revived after 1929, as the system
> lost legitimacy for many.

Yes, this was part of the push behind Roosevelt. This was part of the mass
force that would form the subaltern side of the New Deal coalition.

> I think they've been doing this for a long time. But it's important to
> remember that there are big differences between competing segments of the
> ruling class, competing elites. The FDR elite got a hell of a lot of flack
> from the anti-FDR people. The "free enterprisers" were campaigning to
> manipulate public opinion just as much as the New Dealers.

Yes. Intraclass struggle is always present to some degree, and it was
heightened during this period. Various class fractions and political
factions where engaged in battle. But there developed a remarkable
consensus among elites. The compromise that emerged during World War II
strengthened the ruling class. The nature of intraclass struggle, always
present, does not undermine an argument for periods of consensus.  Such
periods are relative. The capitalist class agrees on more than they
disagree on.

> >During the Depression, the ruling class faced a real
> >bifurcation point, and the capitalism way of life was in real jeopardy.
>
> Yes, but it's important to remember that the threat wasn't simply from the
> left. The capitalist elites also feared the Nazis. The latter were seen as
> extremely unpleasant (declasse'), employing tactics that were to be avoided
> unless all else failed.

Some capitalist elites feared Nazis. But other capitalist elites supported
the Nazi movement. Roosevelt feared enraging the domestic German and
Italian communities and many fractions of the international capitalist
class over the question of Nazism, fascism, anti-Semitism; and his
behavior towards Jews and the war was in part guided by these
considerations. The pro-Nazi/pro-fascist sentiment among many US bourgeois
and popular fractions (such as the Bund) should not be underrepresented.
The Nazis had a lot going for them that many Americans appreciated, such
as their anti-Semitism and their anti-communism. And after the second
World War, factions of US political and military rule, particularly the
Republican Party and the military-industrial complex and the security
structure, formed alliances with global fascist forces that persist to
this day. The war with German was complicated, and we were dragged in at
the last minute as a bulwark to the future resurrection of capitalism in
the region.

> This is true in the US, but it wasn't simply New Deal co-optation that did
> the trick. The Truman-McCarthy era scared the commies out of the labor
> movement, allowing the rise of the "conservative, patriotic, and
> reactionary" labor-union bureaucrats.

Sure, this was part of it. All these are the threads that were used to
weave US domestic hegemony in the post WWII period. But the labor unions
were co-opted before this point. The labor unions were active in setting
up fronts in Europe under government and business direction, funded by the
Marshal plan, to undermine worker organizations there. US labor leaders
were actively working with US and Nazi intelligence *after* the war to
prevent the left from gaining any ground. Not only in Europe, but
throughout South and Central America, as well. In other places the US
military directly suppressed leftist movements in Europe.

> On the other hand, the New Deal should be seen as reflecting labor's power.
> Labor's power was able to get our rulers to grant some beneficial reforms.
> The reforms typically as good as the socialists and communists wanted
> (Norman Thomas said that FDR carried out his proposals "on a stretcher"),
> but they were partial and short-term victories.

They were pretty good, but they fell short of many of the goals of labor
prior to FDR. For example, one of the major pushes was for the 30 hour
work week. This was moving through Congress, and it had arrived in either
the House or the Senate after being pushed through one of them almost
unanimously (I cannot remember which one right now), in fact I think it
may have been in conference, before Roosevelt pulled it. In a meeting with
labor leaders friendly to Roosevelt, they agreed to other long-standing
demands, demands that were favorable to the capitalist class and the
institutionalization of the labor movement, and lost their bid for keeping
more of the surplus value they were struggling for. In fact, this event
had a paralyzing effect on the critique of the left in that the basic
understanding that labor produces wealth was eclipsed by the focus on
compromise and security. These measures fell short of what communists and
socialists were struggling for, far short, and in the long run served to
marginalize and co-opt the labor movement. These were straight-up
corporatist politics. But you are correct in saying that the worker's
welfare grew.

> In Europe, on the other hand, the commies did pretty well, helping to
> create social democracy rather than mere New Deal reforms, since they had
> been so active in the underground against the Nazis.

Again, the communists were systematically suppressed by occupation forces
in Europe in the period following the second World War, only slowly
gaining strength. Corporatist politics were instituted to an even greater
degree in Europe, and social welfare, security, etc., were heightened
because of the relatively weak position the ruling classes of these
countries were world-systemically, that is, they need to secure the
loyalty of the population. The socialist and social democratic parties
who governed in these periods were capitalist parties with human faces.
And this strategy worked.

> Did the majority ever have the capacity for critical reason? I do agree
> that socialist and communist organizations did encourage the use critical
> reason, but they didn't represent/organize the majority.

I don't know about this. I might have qualified this to say that even more
of a majority. However, there was a considerable degree of consciousness
at the time about world affairs and political ideologies. Voting
registration and participation was very high, people were active in their
communities, and the secular intellectual base of society was expanding.
My intent in the statement was to stress how much more the grip of the
elite had increased over the people.

> >The military-industrial complex emerged
> >and became a dominant feature in our society. The ruling class
> >orchestrated a shift from apartheid to racial hegemony to strengthen the
> >position of the historical bloc.
>
> This is too much of a conspiracy theory for me. The "shift from apartheid
> to racial hegemony" was partly a victory by the Civil Rights movement.

Things generally don't happen without real people somewhere doing things.
And nothing more clearly illustrates this than the conscious elite
organization of the shift from apartheid to racial hegemony through the
controlled development of civil rights. This is not a conspiracy, since it
was out in the front generally, and those elements which were hushed up,
such as the coaching of civil rights leaders by the government early in
the 1960s, particularly by the Kennedy Administration, have now come to
the surface. In fact, it was so necessary for the ruling class and the
continued development of the capitalist mode of production, not only
domestically but globally, that civil rights proceed, that the Democratic
Party pushed it with the ultimate consequences of destroying the New Deal
coalition. That is, Democrats sacrificed political power for the common
good of the capitalist class.

The history behind these developments is clear. Emerging from world war,
internal and external pressures forced white elites to dismantle
apartheid. Internal pressures to do so came from political and economic
directions. You are correct that the civil rights movement played a key
role in the dismantling of apartheid. The urbanization of blacks raised
political consciousness about second-class citizenship. The War experience
had a profound impact on blacks and whites alike. It was difficult to
justify racism in the US after having confronted racial states like Nazi
Germany and fascist Italy. A coalition of black and white progressives
elites emerged and challenged apartheid.

There were deep economic reasons for this transformation.  Melvin Leiman's
theory that the shift from competitive to monopoly capitalism created a
different set of needs for ascending fractions of the capitalist class is
compelling. He writes that "Studies have established a strong link between
the extent of industrial concentration and the capital intensiveness of
the production process.  High capital to labor ratios in the monopolistic
sector suggests high labor productivity and relative high wages, which in
theory suggests a high proportion of skilled to unskilled labor. By
reducing the size of the skilled labor pool, racism raised the wage costs
for monopoly capital."  Coupled with the tremendous expansion of the
economy during the Vietnam War, the shift in the balance between
competitive and monopoly capitalism, and the shift in the labor input mix
(skilled-unskilled), created a situation where "For the first time, a
significant divergence of economic interests developed between the
monopoly and competitive sectors on the issue of racial discrimination.
The economic and short-run political dysfunction of discrimination for the
monopoly sector temporarily overrode their long-run political need for
using racism to politically divide the working class. Profit maximization
demanded a change in racial policy."

And there were external forces that created a political context where
hegemonic elites found benefit in permitting a degree of racial justice.
In her article, "Desegregation as a Cold War Imperative,"  Dudziak (1995)
documents in detail the concern among US elites that Soviet propaganda was
having far reaching effects not only on the international class struggle
with world communism but on imperial interests in the Third World. These
concerns translated into a concerted state strategy. The Truman
Administration argued before the Supreme Court that recognizing the civil
rights movement was vital to world peace and national security. After the
1954 decision by the Supreme Court to dismantle apartheid (Brown v. Board
of Education), the Republican National Committee (RNC) issued a statement
claiming that "the Court decision falls appropriately within the
Eisenhower Administrations many-fronted attack on global Communism. Human
equality at home is a weapon of freedom."  Dudziak writes: "Following the
decision, newspapers in the United States and throughout the world
celebrated Brown as a blow to communism and as a vindication of American
democratic principle. As was true in so many other contexts during the
Cold War era, anticommunist ideology was so pervasive that it set the
terms of the debate on all sides of the civil rights issue."

The dismantling of apartheid was a carefully cultivated historical moment.
After Eisenhower, the Kennedy Administration took an active role in
institutionalizing, and thereby in effect neutralizing, open racial
struggle. The Administration was successful in persuading the leaders of
the 1963 march on Washington to eliminate from the speaker pool radicals
who were critical of the United State political economic system, and
several of the speakers cleaned up their speeches and softened their
rhetoric. The government pursued compromise so they could subvert the
movement from within, containing civil rights within parameters beneficial
to capital.

No conspiracy at all. This is not to say there are not conspiracies; there
certainly are. It is just that this one was not, but rather was in keeping
with the goals of the ruling class during the 1950s and 1960s.

> reforms weren't typically as good as the movement wanted, but they were
> partial and short-term victories. The fact that racial hegemony prevailed
> represents (1) the strength of the resistance to the movement's efforts and
> (2) the weakness of the movement. It also reflected the way in which the
> movement's victories were bureaucratized, which weakened grass-roots support.

All this is true, except for the idealism about the state of civil rights
today. But the failure, and this failure is about to be completed when the
enabling legislation and policies that make civil rights a reality are
finally removed, is also the work of elites actively suppressing the black
movement.

> Right, the civil rights, labor, and other anti-establismentarian movements
> have largely faded, unable to win reforms or even to defend old ones.

Not faded, but defeated, suppressed, imprisoned, murdered, isolated, their
institutions dismantled, and so forth. The working class stands at this
low point in history because the past 50 years represented an organized
attack first against global socialism, and then against working people
everywhere, and because of world-historical change that has seen the
capitalist juggernaut emerge as the first truly global economic regime.

Thanks for your post,
Andy