Lisa, I don’t disagree with your point, but I see it as less relevant than you apparently do.
My perspective is Marxist - Leninist. I wrote a book that explains how capitalism, libertarianism, and anarchism all emerged from the same individualist ontology.
But most of the American Left considers anarchism to be Left.
I also have friends who know nothing of any of this, but are still interested in politics. They tend to be Republicans.
Distinguishing the Left from Democrats is just noise to them.
This leaves me either writing for people who already agree with me or trying to reach a broader audience.
It turns out we're all taught falsehoods. And this can irrefutably proven. It turns out the USA during the 1930s New Deal Era remained a thoroughly politically, economically, governmentally, and scientifically decentralized system where decision making was diffused across very large and dense corporate and governmental networks with deliberate redundancy and the governmental parts of it -- which by regulatory extension meant in small part to the corporate parts as well -- were still dominated by two decentralize and publicly accessible mass-member parties. What I just said can be thoroughly proven. Its very depressing to learn we --including a whole different kinds of people with whole different conceptualization of what happened -- can be made to believe different variants of the same lie. But this also means that the modern administrative state, as we understanding, was not created during the New Deal, its a product of the various forces of the so called Neoliberal Era.
Thank you Mike. I’ve previously shared Woodrow Wilson’s creation of the Committee on Public Information to sell WWI to a reluctant public in 1917.
The Committee acted as a ministry of propaganda. After the Germans gave a bad name to propaganda, Edward Bernays rebranded the effort ‘public relations.’
My point is the trajectory from decentralized state to highly concentrated power. This has followed the concentration of income, with the post-WWII period being the most democratic because the product of capital was distributed more broadly than either what preceded or followed.
With incomes re-concentrated in the present, all semblance of democracy has been exorcised in favor of oligarchy.
I think we’re saying the same thing, or something similar, in different ways.
Hi, Rob. Thanks for the interesting reply! Oh yeah, no I wasnt really disagreeing in what I wrote, I was just pointing our falsehoods we've all been taught. Re: WW1: foreign policy and domestic policy were always separated in the American system, this turned out to be a mistake once the continent was set up and the country had succeeded so much that its foreign policy could go global
RE the rest: I'm now confused by something here, you seem to be equating democracy with income distributions but thats not democracy thats income distributions, after WW2, in part because of simple global happenstance and in part because in the 1950s, despite being dismantled piece by piece, the old democratic system largely still remained, we had very broad based income growth (and their are key parts of that story that were done quite against the will of the then nascent elements of our then emerging technocratic dictatorship), but I'm talking about decision making which is what "democracy" relates to.
Democracy is about decision-making structures, who has a say and how power AND decsion making are distributed, whereas incomes distribution is an economic outcome that may or may not result from democratic governance. The USa. maintained a decentralized, decision-diffused system well into the latter mid-20th century, and the broad-based income growth after WW2 was in part a result of that, but also due to historical happenstance. Back to your WW1 ref for a sec, *one* on the key mistake in the American system was the artificial separation of foreign and domestic policy, which became untenable once the USA reached a position where its foreign policy could go global. This enabled for the rise of a managerial elite that reshaped both foreign and then via extension of that, domestic governance into a more centralized structure, paving the way for the current technocratic order. Your framework seems to assumes that democracy is defined by income distribution trends, but that's just an economic consequence, not the structure of decision-making itself. This confusing to me
While I’m educated in mainstream (Neoclassical) economics, the analytical frame I work from is Marxist, largely because Neoclassical economics is ideological nonsense and Marx makes sense to me.
I make the point about Marx because Marxism posits a wider definition of democracy than liberalism does.
The Marxist view is based in the idea of class struggle. With the American ruling class (barely) tamped down by the New Deal, room was made for working class voices.
Once working life is brought into the concept of political power, the elevation of the US working class (by the New Deal) took power from the bosses and gave it to workers.
I’m working from this broader, Marxist conception. Otherwise, the US was founded as a republic, meaning oligarchy.
Thanks for the clarification! But then almost all people lost all political power or even much of any semblance of basic political agency with the rise of the technocratic dictatorship after the war? And the New Deal itself was done with structures that had existed long before it, for example, most people think that the Neoliberal Era dismantled New Deal banking and finance structures, but with only a few exceptions the New Deal just continued what was already there, much of it went back a hundred years to the Jacksonians and some went back to day one of the country.
Also, this framing fails to account for the long history of democratic diffusion in the US before the New Deal. If the US was merely a total oligarchy before the 1930s, how does we explain the major victories of the Jacksonians which -- and this can be proves, we are thoroughly lied to about both their composition and their actions -- smashed the proto oligarchic dictatorship that was then emergent, or the hundreds of different discreet groups all across the country of the Populist Era, or the hundreds of different discreet groups all across the country of the Progressive Era that explicitly fought against concentrated power and in many cases won on a wide variety of issues?
We are lied to in our schools and in our media. We are lied to our whole lives. The reality is that -- while super far from perfect --- political and economic power in the USA had been far more diffused in the past than what we are taught, with decision-making authority spread across mass-member parties, local governments, heterogenous and diversified competitive industries, a diversified and pluralistic decentralized Academe, and even worker cooperatives in some regions, among other things.
How much of the current system was chosen through a democratic process? The answer is none. The form of governance of the US has never been put to the American people.
And capitalist republicanism reads pretty much as I described, as a capitalist ruling class running the country for its own benefit.
The dispersion in income fell dramatically with the New Deal, largely through FDR ending the system that was producing financial oligarchy.
I believe that you are underestimating how transformative a systemic change this was. It prevented new financial oligarchs from being minted.
I laid this out with quite a bit of evidence two or three essays back.
Respectfully, this sidesteps my core points and continues to ignore very important history from prior to he 1930s. The New Deal did curb some of the specific financial excesses of the 1920s, but most of what it implemented was built on older structures, many of which go back to the Jacksonians. Also while it may have temporarily restrained new oligarchs from emerging, it also laid the the various seeds of structures that were later used to construct an increasingly technocratic system that centralized economic and political decision-making in ways that eventually enabled intensive de-democratization and the emergence of Neoliberal Era
I have some sympathy for your argument tat the US government was never chosen through a democratic process. But few governments ever are, and yet, historically, different segments of the American population were still able to exert real influence, sometimes dramatically reshaping governance. The Jacksonians, there were many different groups of the Populist and Progressive Eras that all successfully fought concentrated power in ways that forced meaningful systemic changes.
But the idea that the US gov was never “chosen” in a singular democratic moment isn’t unique as this applies to *at least* nearly all states throughout history. And that specific line in your argument comes across a conflicting because your using an almost liberal argument about democratic legitimacy while still holding onto Marxist class analysis but that world of theory holds that no state can be created through a singular mass participatory democratic moment of true mass consensus
And to be honest, your insistence on drawing a stark before and after line at the 1930s seems to ignores that these struggles were continuous and that political diffusion, though imperfect, was much greater before the rise of our modern system
Thanks for the link John. If you read this or recent pieces, I’ve argued that Bill Clinton was the closer match. If you go to the Counterpunch archives, you can find dozens of my articles on how Democrats are more effective Republicans than Republicans.
My purpose in citing Reagan was the similarity of his explanations of his policies to Trump. But explanations aren’t facts. It took Clinton to complete the Reagan Revolution. Reagan wasn’t able to.
Good piece but I have to object that Libs ain't Left and it doesn't help anyone to muddy the water that way
Lisa, I don’t disagree with your point, but I see it as less relevant than you apparently do.
My perspective is Marxist - Leninist. I wrote a book that explains how capitalism, libertarianism, and anarchism all emerged from the same individualist ontology.
But most of the American Left considers anarchism to be Left.
I also have friends who know nothing of any of this, but are still interested in politics. They tend to be Republicans.
Distinguishing the Left from Democrats is just noise to them.
This leaves me either writing for people who already agree with me or trying to reach a broader audience.
Thanks for your comment.
It turns out we're all taught falsehoods. And this can irrefutably proven. It turns out the USA during the 1930s New Deal Era remained a thoroughly politically, economically, governmentally, and scientifically decentralized system where decision making was diffused across very large and dense corporate and governmental networks with deliberate redundancy and the governmental parts of it -- which by regulatory extension meant in small part to the corporate parts as well -- were still dominated by two decentralize and publicly accessible mass-member parties. What I just said can be thoroughly proven. Its very depressing to learn we --including a whole different kinds of people with whole different conceptualization of what happened -- can be made to believe different variants of the same lie. But this also means that the modern administrative state, as we understanding, was not created during the New Deal, its a product of the various forces of the so called Neoliberal Era.
Thank you Mike. I’ve previously shared Woodrow Wilson’s creation of the Committee on Public Information to sell WWI to a reluctant public in 1917.
The Committee acted as a ministry of propaganda. After the Germans gave a bad name to propaganda, Edward Bernays rebranded the effort ‘public relations.’
My point is the trajectory from decentralized state to highly concentrated power. This has followed the concentration of income, with the post-WWII period being the most democratic because the product of capital was distributed more broadly than either what preceded or followed.
With incomes re-concentrated in the present, all semblance of democracy has been exorcised in favor of oligarchy.
I think we’re saying the same thing, or something similar, in different ways.
Hi, Rob. Thanks for the interesting reply! Oh yeah, no I wasnt really disagreeing in what I wrote, I was just pointing our falsehoods we've all been taught. Re: WW1: foreign policy and domestic policy were always separated in the American system, this turned out to be a mistake once the continent was set up and the country had succeeded so much that its foreign policy could go global
RE the rest: I'm now confused by something here, you seem to be equating democracy with income distributions but thats not democracy thats income distributions, after WW2, in part because of simple global happenstance and in part because in the 1950s, despite being dismantled piece by piece, the old democratic system largely still remained, we had very broad based income growth (and their are key parts of that story that were done quite against the will of the then nascent elements of our then emerging technocratic dictatorship), but I'm talking about decision making which is what "democracy" relates to.
Democracy is about decision-making structures, who has a say and how power AND decsion making are distributed, whereas incomes distribution is an economic outcome that may or may not result from democratic governance. The USa. maintained a decentralized, decision-diffused system well into the latter mid-20th century, and the broad-based income growth after WW2 was in part a result of that, but also due to historical happenstance. Back to your WW1 ref for a sec, *one* on the key mistake in the American system was the artificial separation of foreign and domestic policy, which became untenable once the USA reached a position where its foreign policy could go global. This enabled for the rise of a managerial elite that reshaped both foreign and then via extension of that, domestic governance into a more centralized structure, paving the way for the current technocratic order. Your framework seems to assumes that democracy is defined by income distribution trends, but that's just an economic consequence, not the structure of decision-making itself. This confusing to me
While I’m educated in mainstream (Neoclassical) economics, the analytical frame I work from is Marxist, largely because Neoclassical economics is ideological nonsense and Marx makes sense to me.
I make the point about Marx because Marxism posits a wider definition of democracy than liberalism does.
The Marxist view is based in the idea of class struggle. With the American ruling class (barely) tamped down by the New Deal, room was made for working class voices.
Once working life is brought into the concept of political power, the elevation of the US working class (by the New Deal) took power from the bosses and gave it to workers.
I’m working from this broader, Marxist conception. Otherwise, the US was founded as a republic, meaning oligarchy.
Thanks for the clarification! But then almost all people lost all political power or even much of any semblance of basic political agency with the rise of the technocratic dictatorship after the war? And the New Deal itself was done with structures that had existed long before it, for example, most people think that the Neoliberal Era dismantled New Deal banking and finance structures, but with only a few exceptions the New Deal just continued what was already there, much of it went back a hundred years to the Jacksonians and some went back to day one of the country.
Also, this framing fails to account for the long history of democratic diffusion in the US before the New Deal. If the US was merely a total oligarchy before the 1930s, how does we explain the major victories of the Jacksonians which -- and this can be proves, we are thoroughly lied to about both their composition and their actions -- smashed the proto oligarchic dictatorship that was then emergent, or the hundreds of different discreet groups all across the country of the Populist Era, or the hundreds of different discreet groups all across the country of the Progressive Era that explicitly fought against concentrated power and in many cases won on a wide variety of issues?
We are lied to in our schools and in our media. We are lied to our whole lives. The reality is that -- while super far from perfect --- political and economic power in the USA had been far more diffused in the past than what we are taught, with decision-making authority spread across mass-member parties, local governments, heterogenous and diversified competitive industries, a diversified and pluralistic decentralized Academe, and even worker cooperatives in some regions, among other things.
How much of the current system was chosen through a democratic process? The answer is none. The form of governance of the US has never been put to the American people.
And capitalist republicanism reads pretty much as I described, as a capitalist ruling class running the country for its own benefit.
The dispersion in income fell dramatically with the New Deal, largely through FDR ending the system that was producing financial oligarchy.
I believe that you are underestimating how transformative a systemic change this was. It prevented new financial oligarchs from being minted.
I laid this out with quite a bit of evidence two or three essays back.
Respectfully, this sidesteps my core points and continues to ignore very important history from prior to he 1930s. The New Deal did curb some of the specific financial excesses of the 1920s, but most of what it implemented was built on older structures, many of which go back to the Jacksonians. Also while it may have temporarily restrained new oligarchs from emerging, it also laid the the various seeds of structures that were later used to construct an increasingly technocratic system that centralized economic and political decision-making in ways that eventually enabled intensive de-democratization and the emergence of Neoliberal Era
I have some sympathy for your argument tat the US government was never chosen through a democratic process. But few governments ever are, and yet, historically, different segments of the American population were still able to exert real influence, sometimes dramatically reshaping governance. The Jacksonians, there were many different groups of the Populist and Progressive Eras that all successfully fought concentrated power in ways that forced meaningful systemic changes.
But the idea that the US gov was never “chosen” in a singular democratic moment isn’t unique as this applies to *at least* nearly all states throughout history. And that specific line in your argument comes across a conflicting because your using an almost liberal argument about democratic legitimacy while still holding onto Marxist class analysis but that world of theory holds that no state can be created through a singular mass participatory democratic moment of true mass consensus
And to be honest, your insistence on drawing a stark before and after line at the 1930s seems to ignores that these struggles were continuous and that political diffusion, though imperfect, was much greater before the rise of our modern system
Here is a link to those who wish to join the battle in Ukraine, courtesy of Caitlin Johnstone.
The Ukrainian Foreign Legion is still accepting volunteers. https://ildu.com.ua/
Thank you Michael. I posted the old link about half a dozen times starting in 2022. I’ll put this up soon.
https://open.substack.com/pub/johnnogowski/p/being-ahead-of-the-curve-aint-that?r=7pf7u&utm_medium=ios
Thanks for the link John. If you read this or recent pieces, I’ve argued that Bill Clinton was the closer match. If you go to the Counterpunch archives, you can find dozens of my articles on how Democrats are more effective Republicans than Republicans.
My purpose in citing Reagan was the similarity of his explanations of his policies to Trump. But explanations aren’t facts. It took Clinton to complete the Reagan Revolution. Reagan wasn’t able to.