When I was younger, the big joke was that conservatives want to return to the 1950's

[alcibiades_mystery]

Now, the big joke is that liberals do.

Both views of the Glorious Post-War Settlement are, of course, equally nostalgic - which is to say, false - but that makes the ironic reversal no less comical. In their version of pushing back the clock, conservatives invented a historical image of the so-called nuclear family to which we would presumably return. They were rightly excoriated for both historical inaccuracy and ignorance of the actual conditions of real families during their so-called Golden Age. Today, we see the same phenomenon, but on the liberal side. Instead of the family, the liberals invent a version of "regulated capitalism" (presumably the high tide of Keynesianism), together with a laughable construction of a robust manufacturing base ("We have to go back to making things!"). Where the conservative view is nostalgic for an invented social world, the liberal view traffics in nostalgia for an invented economic world.

In fact, these views are two sides of the same coin. Just as the conservatives ignore that their invented social world largely excluded minorities, and rested on the brutal psychic and physical exploitation of women, the liberal view ignores the fact that the so-called wresting of a "middle class" through the labor movement and other means was equally dependent on massive exploitation of minorities and women (it's still virtually a truism in American political talk that "blue collar" signifies "white male"), and especially on the relentless exploitation of the Global South (once called the "Third World"). The so-called middle class in America and Europe was an illusion effected by the displacement of exploitation on to others. It's no surprise, then, that the short puff of historical smoke of the Post-War Settlement fades into neo-liberal viciousness precisely at the moment that these others - in post-colonial contexts, as well as through civil rights and activism in the US and Europe - demand an end to exploitation: the very exploitation that allowed a "middle class" to emerge in the first place. (Those who quote Chomsky endlessly on this board often leave out his extensive analysis of the American union movement's collusion with imperial power, especially in Latin America).

The nostalgia of the left and the nostalgia of the right both show up the same tendency: the utter inability to invent new social forms that deal with the specificity of today's conditions of exploitation. Rather than face the present head on, they retreat into Leave it to Beaveresque nonsenses or Keynesian fantasies, the "true joy" that was the Fordist factory, and other pure idiocies. These are both - both - deeply conservative tendencies.

[racaulk]

1. I would be happy with a return to the 1990s.

The economy was good, unemployment was low, the deficit was being reduced, * still hadn't gotten his grubby hands on the White House, 9/11 hadn't happened, and we weren't involved in two long-term unwinnable foreign wars.

Oh, and the music back then was much better too. :)

[Demeter]

2. I'm Thinking Poland

even with the clergy in control, at least Geithner isn't there.

[fishwax]

3. okay then, what decade do you propose we return to?

Just kidding.

k/r.

:kick:

[ellenfl]

4. nothing wrong with going back to a time of safeguards.

did you author this? if not, please attribute it. sounds like an attempt to validate conservative revisionism to me.

ellen fl

[alcibiades_mystery]

6. I wrote it, indeed

Reading it as "an attempt to validate conservative revisionism" is ideological swill.

[ellenfl]

15. imo, the conservative effort to take us back to the

50s socially is quite different from the liberals taking us back to a time of industry regulation.

ellne

[HughMoran]

18. amen

[DavidDvorkin]

5. For today's conservatives, it's the 1850s.

[IDemo]

21. I was thinking 1650's

[Johonny]

7. I totally disagree

liberals want to return to the post great society after Johnson left office, but before Ronald Reagan took office in terms of government functionality. I no way do I see liberal wanting to return to a world without the civil rights act, medicare, EPA, clean water bill, OSHA etc... At least not many on this board. Sorry.

[alcibiades_mystery]

9. Whether you want to go back to 1956, 1966, or 1976, the point remains the same

The relatively short reign of the post war settlement collapsed precisely because it always rested on a false bottom of exploitation. It's the only reason that the crisis that allowed the despicable neo-liberal social order (represented, I suppose, by the ascent of Reagan, if we want to descend into personalities) occurred at all. It's nostalgia all the way down.

[Johonny]

13. The point of a regulated society is to prevent exploitation as best we can

There is no ideal world where exploitation does not exist. I do not think many DUers buy into your false premise. I don't think has anything to do with nostalgia and has everything to do with making peoples lives here and now less sucky. People care about the here and now.

[CanonRay]

8. Rethugs still want to go back to the 50's

the 1850's

[hobbit709]

10. Some of them seem to prefer the 1750's

[Cleita]

11. If only, when it turned out that what they really wanted was to go back

to the turn of the century or the age of the robber barons.

[Yavin4]

12. All Politics Are A Battle Between the Forces of Regression and Progression

It's a battle between people who want to return to an earlier era because the past is always better than the present, and those who, believe that the future, if planned for correctly, will be much better than the present and superior to the past.

You have liberals who strongly believe that bringing back noisy, toxic, dirty factory jobs is the path to revising the middle class, and this notion is based on some nostalgic view of the past, not the ugly truth that those factory jobs benefitted undereducated White males who would exclude minorities and women from employment.

[hootinholler]

14. Care to join in a round of Happy Trails?

Remember to follow the bouncing ball.

Dum dee doo doo
Dum dee doo doo
Dum dee doo doo
doodle dee doodle doo
Happy trails, to you
until we meet again...

-Hoot

[CBR]

16. Great post. nt

[HughMoran]

17. What a great analysis

You've really hit on an issue that impedes us in discussions on how to move forward in this country. It sure is difficult to see where we're going while we are constantly looking over our shoulders.

K&R!

[The Magistrate]

19. Well said, Sir

Something similar emerges as a theme from Orwell's essays heading into that time, an appreciation that even the left and the working class in the West owed much of their relative prosperity to the sweating of coolies under the Imperial thumb.

[DevonRex]

20. Very well thought out. Thanks for a great read. K&R. nt