Our economic system is called neoliberalism or the Washington Consensus... which is really the latest iteration of predator capitalism but on a global scale. It is a bipartisan effort. Both parties are dedicated to this notion, developed after the end of the cold war, of the American elite’s domination the world.Whether it is democrats through economic imperialism or republicans through military imperialism, both are expressions of American elites out of control to the complete detriment of the working class not just in the world but within our own borders.
NAFTA was the beginning and has been a template for much of what has followed. Bush I started it and Clinton finished it. It fundamentally changed the capital/labor equilibrium and 100 years of social and “labor” progress has been destroyed or is being destroyed.
It is free movement and protection for goods and money but no protection for workers or environment. No concern or benefit for ordinary people whatsoever, the people at the top benefit and everyone else pays.
Clinton sold out the democratic constituency. The people who lost were the unionized industrial sector and environmentalists. The party went down in the next ('94) election and has never recovered. The objectives of the Democratic Party are not working class but rather the class system that has developed with globalization. The democrats and republicans are working for the same people. Nothing proves that better than GWOT.
What I am trying to say is that a real “prog” who doesn’t think the dems are the root of the problem is a dem who has either secured a paycheck in the realm or has been put to sleep by the MSM. I suggest you ask for your pay in Euros and sleep lightly.
Comments (4)
It's interesting how contributions in agreement with JMS and JSP get quoted at length, while those that challenge them do not.
Posted by Anonymous | June 20, 2006 11:45 AM
Posted on June 20, 2006 11:45
I don't edit comments as such, but yeah. the ones I turn into posts in their own right are the ones I like.
The site exists to promote a certain point of view -- no pretension to neutrality here. I like having critical and dissenting comments -- it keeps things lively -- but I don't feel any obligation at all to the doctrine of equal time.
Posted by MJS | June 20, 2006 7:41 PM
Posted on June 20, 2006 19:41
I agree with most of what JR wrote above, except that it didn't begin with NAFTA and the end of the Cold War. I think the opening salvo was Bretton Woods (which produced GATT, which begot WTO). The World Bank and the IMF were also crucial post-WWII instruments of predatory capitalism, as well as, dare I say it, the sacred Marshal Plan.
Posted by Tim D | June 20, 2006 11:20 PM
Posted on June 20, 2006 23:20
I can sympathise with the Marshall Plan, insofar as it was at least in part an attempt to avoid the sort of retribution against Germany that stoked the fires of Nazism in the first place.
What I can't sympathise with is any jackass who calls for such a Plan now, anyplace more exotic than, say-- New Orleans. There's no way we can finance such junkets while we're shovelling all that money into the war machine's maw in any case-- which is one more reason to mock Democrats who think it's hunky-dory to spout their flimsy little six-point plans while not mentioning the war at all...
Posted by ms_xeno | June 21, 2006 11:51 AM
Posted on June 21, 2006 11:51