Bill, maybe the shorter way if not better to answer Hedges and Leopold is by just citing Brinkley's "The End of Reform" - the eulogy for a whole range of federal interventions on behalf of labor, full employment, regional suffering and the whole slew of troubles from the collapse of capitalism, let me be blunt, between 1929-1932. Brinkley died in 2019. The New Deal died with Bill Clinton's 1996 pronouncement on "Big Government."
The West democracies have had a long and varied list of interventions to get at what Heges and Leopold are talking about. The more ambitious interventions all got fierce resistance even after the collapse of capitalism and we've had nothing like that since then, not 2008-2009 nor 2020 with Covid coming close in the sense that the Federal Reserve stepped in to save the financial system and the top 10%... There are ideological tides Bill, despite what Lenin demanded, and they limit what can be done if the advocates have the burden of winning a majority of voters for policy changes. Sanders movement never gained the full voice needed in mass culture to create the tide he was hoping for. And key members of the Democratic constituency in SC under James Clyburn - the older church going black ladies who are very conservative vis a vis Sanders talking points - helped do him in. As did the young protestesters who stormed his campaign platform that one day where i think he was too accomodating. I see no wave of concentrated left ideology built around labor reform and the environment capable of overcoming all the other fracture lines in the society. And the very division of labor which grows every decades under modern capitalism mean more and more people have no idea what others experience at work or in their neighborhoods. If rallying around the environment's destruction couldn't do it, nothing else in the short run can short of another economic collapse and even there as in Germany it may be the Right this time which can take advantage of it.
Right now among dems the most unifying force is the fear of Trump. That doesn't take them much beyond the election.
Bill, maybe the shorter way if not better to answer Hedges and Leopold is by just citing Brinkley's "The End of Reform" - the eulogy for a whole range of federal interventions on behalf of labor, full employment, regional suffering and the whole slew of troubles from the collapse of capitalism, let me be blunt, between 1929-1932. Brinkley died in 2019. The New Deal died with Bill Clinton's 1996 pronouncement on "Big Government."
The West democracies have had a long and varied list of interventions to get at what Heges and Leopold are talking about. The more ambitious interventions all got fierce resistance even after the collapse of capitalism and we've had nothing like that since then, not 2008-2009 nor 2020 with Covid coming close in the sense that the Federal Reserve stepped in to save the financial system and the top 10%... There are ideological tides Bill, despite what Lenin demanded, and they limit what can be done if the advocates have the burden of winning a majority of voters for policy changes. Sanders movement never gained the full voice needed in mass culture to create the tide he was hoping for. And key members of the Democratic constituency in SC under James Clyburn - the older church going black ladies who are very conservative vis a vis Sanders talking points - helped do him in. As did the young protestesters who stormed his campaign platform that one day where i think he was too accomodating. I see no wave of concentrated left ideology built around labor reform and the environment capable of overcoming all the other fracture lines in the society. And the very division of labor which grows every decades under modern capitalism mean more and more people have no idea what others experience at work or in their neighborhoods. If rallying around the environment's destruction couldn't do it, nothing else in the short run can short of another economic collapse and even there as in Germany it may be the Right this time which can take advantage of it.
Right now among dems the most unifying force is the fear of Trump. That doesn't take them much beyond the election.
Bill - did we hear anything along the lines of this analysis by Les Leopold?
Wall Street's War On Workers
https://scheerpost.com/2024/04/08/the-chris-hedges-report-billionaires-are-striking-back-against-workers/