On 9/22/06, Michael Hoover <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
... analyses of the u.s. presidency often focuses on the constitutional balance of power between the congress and the white house - a focus that resistricts analysis to questions of "means." rare are examination of more unsettling questions of the "ends" of the presidency and american public policy. even rarer are the times a president might perceive his (perhaps in the future, her) options as being imprisoned by the ends of a capitalist economy. "voluntary captivity" most accurately
describes the circumstances of the presidency.
the ability of corporate capital to register its displeasure with government policy involves what political scientist charles lindblom calls the "automatic punishing recoil" of the market economy. public policymakers, chief among them the president, are publcly accountable for economic performance, even while the health of the economy is dependent on the perceptions and actions of largely unaccountable private individuals. businesses occupy a "privileged position" with capitalist economies, and the resulting situation of the president and other policymakers is comparable to that of a prisoner - they are, in effect, prisoners of the market.<
that's right, but the state still has relative autonomy. That autonomy helps explain the differences between Clinton and Bush2. It's true that the market constrained Clinton: he allegedly complained that the bond market was pushing him to be an Eisenhower Republican. But I don't think the market constraint created the coalition of hard-line right-wingers of various sorts which forms the basis for the Bush League and for its electoral manipulations. Politics represents not just the constraints of a capitalist economy but also the relative power of different fractions of the capitalist class (and their allies), along with the coalitions they form. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.
