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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsFalse claims of racism against Sanders are coming from neoliberals who fear his message
Walter Benn Michaels explained it nicely:
On the politics of identity.
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2011/01/let-them-eat-diversity/
Whats at the heart of your work is that equal-opportunity exploitation is what were moving towards, or at the very least its an ideological goal of the ruling class. So, what explains the shift in the way capital has historically acted using racial and ethnic divisions to better exploit the working class?
Well, I think theres absolutely no question that is true. Capitalism throughout the nineteenth century and through much of the twentieth was classically imperialist, which is basically impossible without racism, without a massive commitment to what amounted to European-American White supremacy. But one of the things thats become obvious leaving the racism question aside, leaving the discrimination question more generally aside, is that the condition of capital changed fairly radically in the twentieth century. Of course, people have different accounts of why that is. Even those on the Left who agree that the falling rate of profit is central dont agree on whether its a structural necessity or a contingent development. But almost everyone agrees that neoliberalism involved internationalization in a way that cannot be reduced to what imperialism was before and that it involved, above all, a kind of powerful necessity for mobility not of only of capital, but of labor.
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 US 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 US 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 US 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 US in 1925 was 100. I dont know the figure on Indian immigration to the US 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 US. They are often sort of high-end labor, doctors, lawyers, and businessmen of various kinds. The Asian immigration of the seventies and eighties 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 US. 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 filled or 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 poor indeed the rule in neoliberal economies is that the difference between the rich and the poor gets wider rather than shrinks but 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.
Major social changes have taken place in the past 40 years with remarkable rapidity, but not any in any sense inimical to capitalism. Capitalism has no problem with gay people getting married and people who self-identify as neoliberals understand this very well. So I think the main thing to say there is that, maybe in the book a lot of the examples tend to be academic examples, but I think you can find examples in American society everywhere of the extraordinary power, the hegemony of the model of anti-discrimination, accompanied by defense of property, as the guiding precepts of social justice. You can see this in the study that people have recently been making fun ofthe one that shows that liberals are not as liberal as they think they are. What it showed was that when people were asked about the question of redistribution of wealth they turned out to be a lot less egalitarian than they thought they were. People who characterized themselves as extremely liberal nevertheless had real problems with the redistribution of wealth. And someone pointed out, I think he teaches at Stanford, that thats the wrong way to think of this, because yes its true that especially as people get more wealthy they tend to become less committed to the redistribution of wealth but there are lots of ways in which they become more liberalwith respect to gay rights, antiracism, with respect to all the so-called social issues, as long as these social issues are defined in such a way that they have nothing to do with decreasing the increased inequalities brought about by capitalism, which is to say, taking away rich liberals money.
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)However, don't be mislead by those of The Third Way. They are Conservatives that have learned that if they support social change, somethings that don't effect their bottom line, they can get support from those that don't have the sense to look behind the curtain.
The Third Way is willing to concede social changes for the small price of our wealth and democracy.
BrotherIvan
(9,126 posts)What gains have we had in the social arena? I would say marriage equality is one that we can point to and say the PEOPLE, not our leaders--and especially NOT our leading Democrats--were the driving force. It was the activists who fought for change and showed that their cause was just. We had to wait for our leaders to evolve, which is codespeak for the polls.
A candidate who is now running as the champion of immigration is on tape completely against illegal immigrants. A total 180 in order to pander for votes. That's not social justice, that is exploitation. Our current president does not have a stellar record either for civil rights for African Americans on his watch either. They have to mean what they say or it's just more campaign rhetoric.
BainsBane
(53,066 posts)NEVER. They always co-opt. Social change does not originate from above. It is always begun by people's movements, and the state only co-opts them when they reach a critical mass so they are left with no alternative. I challenge you to find one example in history that shows otherwise.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)The lesson was learned after 2008.
Would you agree, though, that you'd always have fewer victories and gains and greater difficulty organizing from below when you're trying to do that under a less-progressive adminisration than a more-progressive one?
It was much harder, for example, for the black freedom movement to organize and grow under a "centrist" and obsessively anti-Red set of administrations like those of Kennedy and Johnson than it would have been under a president whose values were closer to those of Henry Wallace, for example.
It was much harder under Jimmy Carter than it would have been under Ted Kennedy or Frank Church.
And we both know it will be much harder to be an activist with HRC as president, on any issue(including "social issues" than it would be under a Sanders or Warren presidency.
BainsBane
(53,066 posts)What is your response to it?
uponit7771
(90,364 posts)... same thing Kerry did during the 2004 elections with CoC; Be the DNC during non presidential elections.
Response to friendly_iconoclast (Original post)
peecoolyour This message was self-deleted by its author.
Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)lovemydog
(11,833 posts)Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)gollygee
(22,336 posts)What I have seen, and see again here, is dismissal of people of color, women, and LGBT posters. We are not neoliberals or "third wayers."
I see one other thread with an OP saying he hasn't said enough about these issues, but I haven't seen anything saying he's racist.
sendero
(28,552 posts)... so now it's not what you say it's what you don't say? Welcome to ignore.
I won't miss your word salads. No idea what you're talking about.
BainsBane
(53,066 posts)First, that article is not about Sanders. I have seen it before. Perhaps it was the OP or someone else who promoted it for some other conservative agenda they were advancing at the time.
So now we see claims that people who care about their basic rights, who are not born with the class, race, sexuality. and gender privilege, are "neo-liberal."
The other day I saw someone argue that "corporations" had planted women and people of color in the Democratic party to divert it from its true purpose of serving the working class (presumably white and male).
You all keep trying to make the party smaller and smaller. This isn't leftism. You are attacking the most reliable voters in the Democratic party and working to exclude the majority from consideration for the benefit of the minority, white men.
I find it interesting that people here have consistently avoided any crtique of capitalism itself but instead talk about the recent rise of "corporatism" and Third Way Democrats. People hearken back to the time of FDR and JFK, great capitalists, extremely rich men, who presided over a party that, in addition to many good accomplishments, supported Jim Crow. Now we see a supposed critique of capital marshalled for the purpose of excluding the majority of the population from political consideration, to delegitimate their voices and their lives.
White supremacist ideas counched under the pretense of a critique of capital is still white supremacism. If you read Marxist sites like the International Socialist Review, they have sophisticated analyses that incoroproate race, gender and sexuality into Marxist crtiques of capital. What you have above is not that. It is reactioinary and exclusionary. This is the politics of exclusion, that seeks to remake the Democratic party in the demograhic image of the GOP.
I have not seen anyone claim Sanders is racist. I have seen questions about what he will do for equal rights. Yet in defending against supposed allegations of racism, you provide evidence of your own politics of exclusion. This is completely in keeping with the profound conservatism on this and other issues I have seen you and some other posters advance.
There already is a party that addresses the demographic you care about. It's the GOP. They also promote the pro-gun agenda, unfettered profits for the multi-billion dollar corporate gun industry, and it's efforts to subvert democracy. Certainly you can try to remake the Democratic party in its image, but the fact is, that while you might be in the majority on this site, you are not in the party or in America at large. The Democratic Party is not the party of conservative white men. It belongs far more to the women, people of color, and LGBT Americans who make up the majority of Democratic voters, the very ones you disparage as neoliberals.
I am sorry you have so much resentment toward the majority of the American public. It must frustrate you very much to see your privilege slipping away. Posts like these tell me that privilege can't disappear fast enough.
MohRokTah
(15,429 posts)Anybody who isn't a Bernie backer MUST be a neoliberal third wayer.
At least on DU any way.
BainsBane
(53,066 posts)It isn't about Bernie at all. Sanders is simply his pretext for his ongoing war against diversity.
friendly_iconoclast
(15,333 posts)I'm sure you have some examples of my "ongoing war against diversity" to hand
for all to see.
Or not...
BainsBane
(53,066 posts)is it not? It has NOTHING to do with the election. You simply used that title to repost the same crap from some reactionary relic of a scholar, pissed off that he has to compete on a somewhat even playing field. Believe me, I know the type. There aren't many of them left anymore and most are at minor schools, but I knew some in grad school.
gollygee
(22,336 posts)It says anyone who talks about diversity is a neoliberal third-wayer. Way to shut down all discussion of racism, sexism, LGBT equality, and any other kind of oppression.
BainsBane
(53,066 posts)couched in the language of leftism.
friendly_iconoclast
(15,333 posts)26. WOW. This may be the most DISHONEST AND DISGUSTING post I've ever seen on DU
Quoting a white woman and fellow BOGger as expert on civil rights and admonishing Sanders? And linking those disgusting stories and pictures with Bernie Sanders IS THE FUCKING HEIGHT OF DISHONESTY. You complain about low blows and and attacks? This is an attack, pure and simple. This is white people trying to co-opt the black struggle to prop up their candidate and it makes me SICK.
Hillary Clinton has not done a single concrete thing for people of color. She's said some stuff, big deal. But she has not written any legislation or done anything of ANY political import for people of color. Not a damn thing. And if you look at the link to "on the issues" it's all lip service. "She argued with Bill?" That's a thing? That's being a civil rights warrior??
If you think this wins any arguments or makes your candidate look better, then I'm here to tell you it doesn't. It is dishonest and disingenuous and the fact that it is trying to tie Bernie Sanders to racial hatred is just SO LOW I don't even know how much further you can go.
BainsBane
(53,066 posts)The article isn't about Sanders or Clinton. It's about your resentment of diversity. That poster doesn't like Clinton. That's his right. It has nothing to do with the garbage you are promoting in your article. You posted click bait for Sanders supporters for your reactionary garbage, which in fact has noting to do with the election. Using Sanders in the title is dishonest, as is claiming opposition to Clinton has anything to do with the shit you are shoveling in your OP. That filth is on you.
friendly_iconoclast
(15,333 posts)Instead, you've indulged in argumentum ad repetitum
Judging by the virulent response from certain posters, I'd say the OP was spot-on...
BainsBane
(53,066 posts)and the fact you misrepresent it as being about the election.
friendly_iconoclast
(15,333 posts)...the points he brought up.
friendly_iconoclast
(15,333 posts)...some of whom are DUers, one of which was of the reasons I reposted this:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=6737025
who reposted that screed from an undoubted neoliberal:
http://immasmartypants.blogspot.com/2015/05/not-good-enough-bernie.html
Some more of Nancy LeTourneau's ...work, from her blog
The U.S. Conference of Mayors Endorsed TPP
When "Populists" Are More Interested in Fighting the 1% Than in Protecting the 99%
gollygee
(22,336 posts)and I'm opposed to TPP. But there seems to be an assumption on DU that anyone who has concerns about diversity is not progressive and is a neo-liberal third-wayer. Your OP seemed to speak to that.
friendly_iconoclast
(15,333 posts)This *is* what set me off:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=6737025
Frankly, Michaels seems a rather tetchy sort who came up with one good idea
TheKentuckian
(25,029 posts)other areas sure is, particularly the "socially liberal but fiscally conservative" wing is looked at rightfully with a jaundiced eye when they start "having questions" and message bullying.
bigtree
(86,005 posts)"interesting that people here have consistently avoided any crtique of capitalism itself but instead talk about the recent rise of "corporatism" and Third Way Democrats. People hearken back to the time of FDR and JFK, great capitalists, extremely rich men, who presided over a party that, in addition to many good accomplishments, supported Jim Crow. Now we see a supposed critique of capital marshalled for the purpose of excluding the majority of the population from political consideration, to delegitimate their voices and their lives."
White supremacist ideas counched under the pretense of a critique of capital is still white supremacism..."
...very, very good.
friendly_iconoclast
(15,333 posts)You seemed to have missed it. Here is the link to that repost:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026737025
Not Good Enough, Bernie
...in which a crude attempt (by a white woman) was made to link Sanders to a 19th Century painting and a photo of two Chicago cops brutalizing a black man
BainsBane
(53,066 posts)It is an argument against diversity.
"A neoliberal." You see her as a neoliberal. I see you as a right-winger. You post a far-right wing white supremacist piece dressed up in the language of leftism, and you are allied completely with the GOP and the NRA on guns. I don't find your insults of a poster who consistently and regularly posts about issues related to African Americans and is well received in that group on DU to be particularly persuasive.
Response to BainsBane (Reply #31)
friendly_iconoclast This message was self-deleted by its author.
BainsBane
(53,066 posts)at least twice. It is an argument against diversity. That is its point.
You have been very clear on guns. I'm not interested in reading your resume. I assume that is intended for others anyway.
Response to BainsBane (Reply #33)
friendly_iconoclast This message was self-deleted by its author.
DanTex
(20,709 posts)Starry Messenger
(32,342 posts)"Capitalism has no problem with gay people getting married and people who self-identify as neoliberals understand this very well."
This is so breathtakingly privileged, I hardly know where to start. The author knows he can sneak something like this in because people on the left would be more apt to call him out if he wrote "Capitalism has no problem with Black people sitting at lunch counters..."
Bluenorthwest
(45,319 posts)cost anything, so the PTB don't really mind extending civil rights'. It's stunningly ignorant and amazingly narrow minded.
Starry Messenger
(32,342 posts)I might have to write a total rebuttal to this horrible article.
bettyellen
(47,209 posts)hifiguy
(33,688 posts)Neither stands as a roadblock to the rule of the plutocrats and their total control of the economy, which is their sole goal.
TheKentuckian
(25,029 posts)being fleeced and squeezed to a worn out pulp and for getting Democrats to accept about anything in exchange for anything from any support no matter how do nothing rhetorical it is to just not getting in the way too much no matter how much or a rob Peter to pay Paul dynamic one is forced to swallow by screwing over on one hand the same people helped by the other.
The game is to set up a general balance but not a fixed one so the ebbs and flows shift who is on their heels and sometimes both at once like now where we see strong progress on gay rights while their is an all out assault on women's health and minority voting rights undoing much of the previous decades efforts with little movement on immigration either way.
By the time we can get on to anything else we'll be well into the mother of all dystopias so we can't trade one for the other or any such nonsense. It is the whole ball of wax or there will actually be nothing.
el_bryanto
(11,804 posts)I don't think it has much to do with the specifics of why people are done on Bernie Sanders.
Bryant
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)woo me with science
(32,139 posts)Rex
(65,616 posts)woo me with science
(32,139 posts)friendly_iconoclast
(15,333 posts)Did you notice all the distortions of what Michaels's (and my) positions?
Which is, in short: Diversity and anti-racism are undoubtedly good things that should be supported
by all, but these good things are being used as a sop by certain economic elites to mollify
the masses. As Michaels put it:
In other words, people who would like to pretend the last year of
Martin Luther King's life never happened. As Bill Moyers so eloquently put it:
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2010/04/03/dr-kings-economic-dream-deferred
...A year before, at Riverside Church in New York, he had spoken out -- eloquently -- against the war in Vietnam. King said, "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death," a position that angered President Lyndon Johnson, many of King's fellow civil rights leaders and influential newspapers. The Washington Post charged that King had, "diminished his usefulness to his cause, to his country, and to his people."
With his popularity in decline, an exhausted, stressed and depressed Martin Luther King, Jr., turned his attention to economic injustice. He reminded the country that his March on Washington five years earlier had not been for civil rights alone but "a campaign for jobs and income, because we felt that the economic question was the most crucial that black people and poor people, generally, were confronting." Now, King was building what he called the Poor People's Campaign to confront nationwide inequalities in jobs, pay and housing.
But he had to prove that he could still be an effective leader, and so he came to Memphis, in support of a strike by that city's African-American garbage men. Eleven hundred sanitation workers had walked off the job after two had died in a tragic accident, crushed by a garbage truck's compactor. The garbage men were fed up -- treated with contempt as they performed a filthy and unrewarding job, paid so badly that 40 percent of them were on welfare, called "boy" by white supervisors. Their picket signs were simple and eloquent: "I AM A MAN."...
...This is a perilous moment. The individualist, greed-driven free-market ideology that both our major parties have pursued is at odds with what most Americans really care about. Popular support for either party has struck bottom, as more and more agree that growing inequality is bad for the country, that corporations have too much power, that money in politics has corrupted our system, and that working families and poor communities need and deserve help because the free market has failed to generate shared prosperity -- its famous unseen hand has become a closed fist.
Response to friendly_iconoclast (Reply #42)
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