Dear Jim and list,

Jim, I don't think this gets to the heart of what happened in the 1970s.
You put it down to neo-liberalism, but neo-liberalism is merely a policy at
the level of the State, and it is not an ontological change in the structure
of capitalism.  But there WAS a major change that took place in the
structure of not only American, but world, capitalism in the 1970s.  That
change was that in the 1970s for the first time in history TRANSNATIONAL
capitalist corporations emerged which are so large in terms of turnover and
product that they economically dwarfed all but the few richest nations, and
they, for the first time in history, had come to collectively dominate
economy and policy on a world scale, i.e. even the richest and most powerful
nation-state - the USA - became in the 1970s very much subordinate to the
transnational capitalist corporations.  The age of capitalist nation-states
dictating their own national economic policy completely died in the 1970s.
Along with this, any attempt at reform on a merely national basis became
utopian, if one takes account of this shift in power to the TRANSNATIONAL
capitalist corporations.  This has all been usefully summarised and
theorised by Leslie Sklair in his books since 1990, though Sklair probably
goes too far in suggesting that there is (already) a transnational
capitalist class.  That seems wrong, but the shift to transnational
capitalist corporations now largely controlling economy and policy (instead
of the State controlling them) is a fact and is a major change of which
socialists need to take account if they are not to be starting from mistaken
assumptions about the ontology of the world economy.

Phil Walden

   

-----Original Message-----
From: marxism-thaxis-boun...@lists.econ.utah.edu
[mailto:marxism-thaxis-boun...@lists.econ.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Jim
Farmelant
Sent: 31 January 2010 16:35
To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu
Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Setting the record straight


 
On Tue, 26 Jan 2010 08:55:44 -0500 Ralph Dumain
<rdum...@autodidactproject.org> writes:
> Looks like the real story to me. Notice the entry ends with Gerald 
> Ford. Social liberalism was killed off during the Carter 
> administration. The secret of all mysteries lies in the '70s.

One of the ironies is that probably the greatest
philosophical defense of American social liberalism,
John Rawls's *A Theory of Justice* came out
just as social liberalism was beginning to die out.

I don't think that it is any great mystery what
happened in the 1970s.  In the mid-1970s,
we had the greatest economic crisis since
the Great Depression.  It became clear that
the institutional framework which modern
capitalism had been working under since
the 1930s and 1940s was no longer
politically viable.  It, therefore, came
under challenge both from the left
and the right.  But as things turned
out, the right (which was rapidly
gaining the support of big business),
was much better positioned to institute
a new political framework than was
the left.  Hence, from the mid-1970s
on, we see the rise of neo-liberalism,
with the state attempting to promote
economic expansion by holding down
wages.  Thus, the efforts to unravel
the social safety net that that had
been put in place under the New Deal
and the Great Society.

Jim F.
http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant

> 
> At 05:39 AM 1/26/2010, CeJ wrote:
> >Sometimes in the American political lexicon, a 'liberal' is 
> someone
> >who espouses a very weak form of
> >'social democracy' European style. Classical liberals, an
> >understanding most Americans know nothing of,  have ended up over
> >amongst the libertarians I suspect. I suspect the contradiction 
> that
> >lies within Barrage Obushwa is warpigism vs. social 
> internventionist
> >liberalism. A religious belief in America and its right to 
> dominate
> >the world is always the glue that keeps such incoherence going.
> >
> >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_liberalism_in_the_United_States
> >
> >History of modern liberalism in the United States
> >...
> 
> 
> _________________________________________
> 
> "If you don't know the '70s, you don't know shit!" 
> 
> 
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