Reckon you're making this out to be a little simpler than it is, Lou! The
ruling class need not be particularly united on a host of particular policy
issues (China's gonna present 'em with some pretty divisive stimuli, I
reckon), there are often different ways to do someone's bidding (allocating
cuts, for instance), and then there's the little matter of the
superstructure sometimes preponderating in shaping particular events (as per
that famous Bloch letter).
I also think a lot of work had to be done to get America ready for Reaganism
- the competitive pains of which you speak were, after all, more than
evident to US capital nearly a decade before. Even the mighty US ruling
class needs time, planning and patience to get big things (like the reversal
of a political culture) done. And the more time it takes, the more luck you
need (chaos, complexity, uncertainty etc). As things speed up, room for
manoeuvre and time for planning/preparing the punters shrink, I reckon.
Mebbe that'd be the forces of production falling out of kilter with the
relations of production?
Some of those qualifications are sorta Marxist in tone, no?
And anyway, the lesser of two evils might come to mean anything in times
where there is absolutely no other thing, good or evil, on the horizon.
That said, I'm in search of views here, and am happy for my speculations to
be convincingly contradicted.
Cheers,
Rob.
>Society is divided into classes. The state is the executive committee of
>the ruling class. Gore or Bush take their marching orders from the ruling
>class. If the ruling class sees the need to get rid of aid to dependent
>children, they will give Clinton his marching orders. If it sees the need
>to implement affirmative action and end the pariah treatment of China, it
>will give Nixon his marching orders. The Reagan counter-revolution was not
>some kind of rightist coup. It conformed to the needs of the US ruling
>class during a period of increased global competition. For the US economy
>to take off, it had to suppress the working class--hence Reagan's assault
>on the airline controllers.
>
>It is often advisable for Marxists to give critical support to social
>democratic candidates, such as the Labor Party in the immediate post-WWII
>period in England. But there is a class line that should not be crossed
>when it comes to a party like the Democratic Party. This is the party of
>the bosses. Before the 1930s, endorsing bourgeois candidates was considered
>class treachery. But with the advent of Stalin's Popular Front and the
>rightward shift of the mass social democratic parties, this no longer was
>the case. Essentially, the "lesser evil" strategy which helped to
>facilitate Hitler's rise to power became central to the reformist left.
>
>Of course, all of this is immaterial to non-Marxists.
>
>Louis Proyect
>
>(The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
>
