David Shemano wrote:
> > 1. Why, with the exception of United Airlines, did every
> major interstate
> >airline testify against deregulation? And how come the legislation passed
> >notwithstanding their opposition?
I would guess that they opposed the legislation in order to make sure that
the kind of "deregulation" that prevailed fit with their perceived profit
needs. Of course, there were folks from other industries who lobbying for
other kinds of "deregulation" that served _their_ needs, so there's nothing
that says that the airlines' interests would automatically prevail. (This
was a stagflationary period and advocates of "deregulation" such as Alfred
Kahn touted their program as an anti-inflationary one. More generally, U.S.
capitalism wasn't working very well -- i.e., the profit rate was depressed
-- and a bunch of capitalist interest groups united in order to restructure
the system to boost profitability. This movement really took power with
Reagan.) The actual legislation that prevails depends on the interaction of
the vectors of interests (backed by money) of the various industrial blocs
and alliances.[*] (Actual citizens are woefully unrepresented in
Washington, DC and often end up aligned with one industrial bloc or another.)
In many ways, the established airlines -- that had been created by the
Federal government cartel (the CAB) in an earlier era -- had a lot to lose
from the kind of deregulation that was instituted, as new companies such as
People Express entered. And lose they did: many of the old airlines are
gone (TWA, Pan Am). Of course, most of the upstarts -- like People Express
-- are also gone. United seems to have correctly predicted that they could
survive the hurly-burly. They had the advantages of economies of scale, the
financial resources, the political connections, etc.
Despite the pretensions that "deregulation" would replace the old
government-sponsored cartel with universally-beneficial
competition, instead the final results seems to be a combination of local
monopolies (at hubs and low-volume routes) and oligopoly (on high-volume
routes). Workers and most consumers have been the losers, along with some
shareholders (though if they were smart they would have diversified, so the
losses were minor).
In response to David's questions above, Louis Proyect writes:
<Because they didn't recognize their own long-term class interests as well
<as bourgeois intellectuals such as Alfred Kahn did. This is the role of the
<intelligentsia, to raise such ideas. It is the role of the bourgeois state
<apparatus to then act upon it. FDR functioned in the same manner in the
<1930s when he pushed for regulation. The last of the "New Dealers", Ted
<Kennedy, was responding to the same class interests when he fought for
<deregulation.
David ripostes: >This is a very interesting theory you have. Whatever the
government does, by definition, is in the long-term class interests of
industry/business/bourgeois/guys who wear tophats/play golf, even if the
industry strenuously opposes the government action. No wonder Marxist
analysis is never wrong.<
I can't speak for Louis, but the idea that "whatever the government does,
by definition, is in the long-term class interests of" the bourgeoisie is a
very simplistic version of the Marxian theory of the state. It's absolutely
true, to my mind at least, that the state under capitalism works to serve
the class interests of the capitalist class under normal conditions. These
interests center around the preservation of class privileges, of capitalist
property. (Sweezy's chapter on the state in his THEORY OF CAPITALIST
DEVELOPMENT is very good.) However, beyond that, capitalist class interests
become vague, since the future is uncertain: no-one knew if Alfred Kahn's
scheme would serve the long-term interests of capital at the time. We still
don't know, but strictly speaking the nature of the long-term class
interests of the capitalist class can only be determined after the fact
(and the long-term implications of that scheme aren't all in yet).
This opens the state to two kinds of deviations from what's good for
capital. First, in the short run, in many cases, the short-term interests
of particular power blocs within capital can dominate, going against what
most people would agree are the long-term interests of capital. For
example, a lot of George Dumbya's programs seem to go against what's good
for capital. Continuing the slighting of public health by the Clinton
administration, for example, risks the rise of plagues that hurt
capitalists along with workers and could even shake the social order that
allows the capitalists to exploit workers (though frankly such is likely to
promote barbarism more than it does socialism). BTW, this picture of the
general interest of capital vs. the particular interests of capitals is
reflected (in a mystified form) in the mainstream liberal vision of the
"public interest" vs. special interests.
Second, if working class or other dominated groups can organize and gather
a lot of power, they can push the government away from serving the
short-term interests of capitalists and even the long-term interests of
capital. The latter was seen, for example, with the election of Salvadore
Allende to the presidency of Chile in 1971. But even though he had
governmental power, state power (Pinochet, the CIA, etc.) eventually
smashed Allende and the Unidad Popular government. The power of the working
class has to be widened and deepened in order to counteract the power of
capitalists and capital. Among other things, the state repressive power has
to be taken away from capital's lackeys. (I'm being nice to Pinochet by
calling him merely a "lackey.")
[*] Sometimes the way I think about politics is in terms of the physics of
motion. There are vectors of forces pulling on the government in different
directions in n-dimensional space. Each vector is given weight by the
amount of money and influence of its backers. The actual result is the
resultant of all those vectors.
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
