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In reply to the discussion: Hillary should forget about reviving the DLC playbook- the RW will *never* accept her [View all]friendly_iconoclast
(15,333 posts)38. Hillary has been a fine and dedicated servant of capital, and has profited accordingly
She is a dedicated neoliberal, Walter Benn Michaels explained it very well in
"Let Them Eat Diversity:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024572501
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2011/01/let-them-eat-diversity/
(emphasis added)
Walter Benn Michaels: The differentiation between left and right neoliberalism doesnt really undermine the way it which it is deeply unified in its commitment to competitive markets and to the states role in maintaining competitive markets. For me the distinction is that left neoliberals are people who dont understand themselves as neoliberals. They think that their commitments to anti-racism, to anti-sexism, to anti-homophobia constitute a critique of neoliberalism. But if you look at the history of the idea of neoliberalism you can see fairly quickly that neoliberalism arises as a kind of commitment precisely to those things....
...Stalin famously won the argument but lost the war over whether there could be socialism in one country, but no one has ever been under the impression for more than a millisecond that there could be neoliberalism in only one country. An easy way to look at this would be to say that the conditions of mobility of labor and mobility of capital have since World War II required an extraordinary upsurge in immigration. The foreign born population in the U.S today is something like 38 million people, which is roughly equivalent to the entire population of Poland. This is a function of matching the mobility of capital with the mobility of labor, and when you begin to produce these massive multi-racial or multi-national or as we would call them today multi-cultural workforces, you obviously need technologies to manage these work forces.
In the U.S. this all began in a kind of powerful way with the Immigration Act of 1965, which in effect repudiated the explicit racism of the Immigration Act of the 1924 and replaced it with largely neoliberal criteria. Before, whether you could come to the U.S. was based almost entirely on racial or, to use the then-preferred term, national criteria. I believe that, for example, the quota on Indian immigration to the U.S. in 1925 was 100. I dont know the figure on Indian immigration to the U.S. since 1965 off-hand, but 100 is probably about an hour and a half of that in a given year. The anti-racism that involves is obviously a good thing, but it was enacted above all to admit people who benefited the economy of the U.S. They are often sort of high-end labor, doctors, lawyers, and businessmen of various kinds. The Asian immigration of the 70s and 80s involved a high proportion of people who had upper and upper-middle class status in their countries of origin and who quickly resumed that middle and upper middle class status in the U.S. While at the same time weve had this increased immigration from Mexico, people from the lower-end of the economy, filling jobs that otherwise cannot be filledor at least not filled at the price capital would prefer to pay. So there is a certain sense in which the internationalism intrinsic to the neoliberal process requires a form of anti-racism and indeed neoliberalism has made very good use of the particular form weve evolved, multiculturalism, in two ways.
First, there isnt a single US corporation that doesnt have an HR office committed to respecting the differences between cultures, to making sure that your culture is respected whether or not your standard of living is. And, second, multiculturalism and diversity more generally are even more effective as a legitimizing tool, because they suggest that the ultimate goal of social justice in a neoliberal economy is not that there should be less difference between the rich and the poorindeed the rule in neoliberal economies is that the difference between the rich and the poor gets wider rather than shrinksbut that no culture should be treated invidiously and that its basically OK if economic differences widen as long as the increasingly successful elites come to look like the increasingly unsuccessful non-elites. So the model of social justice is not that the rich dont make as much and the poor make more, the model of social justice is that the rich make whatever they make, but an appropriate percentage of them are minorities or women. Thats a long answer to your question, but it is a serious question and the essence of the answer is precisely that internationalization, the new mobility of both capital and labor, has produced a contemporary anti-racism that functions as a legitimization of capital rather than as resistance or even critique.
...Stalin famously won the argument but lost the war over whether there could be socialism in one country, but no one has ever been under the impression for more than a millisecond that there could be neoliberalism in only one country. An easy way to look at this would be to say that the conditions of mobility of labor and mobility of capital have since World War II required an extraordinary upsurge in immigration. The foreign born population in the U.S today is something like 38 million people, which is roughly equivalent to the entire population of Poland. This is a function of matching the mobility of capital with the mobility of labor, and when you begin to produce these massive multi-racial or multi-national or as we would call them today multi-cultural workforces, you obviously need technologies to manage these work forces.
In the U.S. this all began in a kind of powerful way with the Immigration Act of 1965, which in effect repudiated the explicit racism of the Immigration Act of the 1924 and replaced it with largely neoliberal criteria. Before, whether you could come to the U.S. was based almost entirely on racial or, to use the then-preferred term, national criteria. I believe that, for example, the quota on Indian immigration to the U.S. in 1925 was 100. I dont know the figure on Indian immigration to the U.S. since 1965 off-hand, but 100 is probably about an hour and a half of that in a given year. The anti-racism that involves is obviously a good thing, but it was enacted above all to admit people who benefited the economy of the U.S. They are often sort of high-end labor, doctors, lawyers, and businessmen of various kinds. The Asian immigration of the 70s and 80s involved a high proportion of people who had upper and upper-middle class status in their countries of origin and who quickly resumed that middle and upper middle class status in the U.S. While at the same time weve had this increased immigration from Mexico, people from the lower-end of the economy, filling jobs that otherwise cannot be filledor at least not filled at the price capital would prefer to pay. So there is a certain sense in which the internationalism intrinsic to the neoliberal process requires a form of anti-racism and indeed neoliberalism has made very good use of the particular form weve evolved, multiculturalism, in two ways.
First, there isnt a single US corporation that doesnt have an HR office committed to respecting the differences between cultures, to making sure that your culture is respected whether or not your standard of living is. And, second, multiculturalism and diversity more generally are even more effective as a legitimizing tool, because they suggest that the ultimate goal of social justice in a neoliberal economy is not that there should be less difference between the rich and the poorindeed the rule in neoliberal economies is that the difference between the rich and the poor gets wider rather than shrinksbut that no culture should be treated invidiously and that its basically OK if economic differences widen as long as the increasingly successful elites come to look like the increasingly unsuccessful non-elites. So the model of social justice is not that the rich dont make as much and the poor make more, the model of social justice is that the rich make whatever they make, but an appropriate percentage of them are minorities or women. Thats a long answer to your question, but it is a serious question and the essence of the answer is precisely that internationalization, the new mobility of both capital and labor, has produced a contemporary anti-racism that functions as a legitimization of capital rather than as resistance or even critique.
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Hillary should forget about reviving the DLC playbook- the RW will *never* accept her [View all]
friendly_iconoclast
Aug 2014
OP
She is more trustworthy than Mitt Romney- not like that's any achievement
friendly_iconoclast
Aug 2014
#3
Oh please wait, we haven't finished "shit" and "shitier" in the midterms.
TheNutcracker
Aug 2014
#52
The fact is most voters are in the middle, and they decide presidential elections
BainsBane
Aug 2014
#5
I support a vigorous challenge from the left, and hope Liz Warren runs
friendly_iconoclast
Aug 2014
#11
Gun control isn't a left wing issue. It's an urban issue. Rural liberals oppose more gun control.
w4rma
Aug 2014
#40
I suspect voters are biased in their perceptions of their political position
HereSince1628
Aug 2014
#21
Hillary has been a fine and dedicated servant of capital, and has profited accordingly
friendly_iconoclast
Aug 2014
#38
I refuse to give a dedicated corporatist and war hawk a pass because "she's one of us"
friendly_iconoclast
Aug 2014
#57
The old 'you're all dirty hippies' charge that comes NOW both from the far Right, AND from the Third
sabrina 1
Aug 2014
#44
Well said. Support for gun control is NOT a marker for progressivism...
friendly_iconoclast
Aug 2014
#47
You are so right. The 'only reason neocons express any support for Second Amendment
sabrina 1
Aug 2014
#48
And a big chunk of us on the left were pushed to support John Edwards, instead of Obama or Hillary..
cascadiance
Aug 2014
#34
Ya....maybe we'll finally get that obliteration of Iran Hillary has been clamoring for
Cali_Democrat
Aug 2014
#16
"And what's left of the Left doesn't trust her any further than they can throw her "
NCTraveler
Aug 2014
#29
As if they'll just ignore her corporate ties and what she said about Iraq?
friendly_iconoclast
Aug 2014
#37
"I am a part of the left..". If that's true, work on persuading Liz Warren to run
friendly_iconoclast
Aug 2014
#45
I don't trust war-mongers of any party. I don't think anyone should ever totally trust any
sabrina 1
Aug 2014
#49
Funny thing -- the RW never accepted Bill Clinton either...he still got elected.
brooklynite
Aug 2014
#39