I live in the Canadian province of Ontario. A while back our disastrous Liberal party premier retired, and was replaced by the party, who chose a lesbian named Wynne.
Wynne wants to cut corporate taxes and lower taxes on the rich.
As with Obama, the fact that someone is part of an oppressed group does not mean that they, personally, are progressive or populist on economic issues. They’ll give you some social identity rights, even as they take away the foundation of prosperity for you. People can go on about Obama’s move to raise the minimum wage (which I support), but it is a fact that Obama has increased the wealth of the rich even faster than Bush II did, and that median household income in America has actually dropped under him. And this many years after his election, no, it’s not all Bush’s fault. Obama deliberately chose policies and personnel like Bernanke, Summer and Geithner who would, predictably (because I and others did predict it) increase inequality.
And that is what he wanted.
Neoliberals love offering left-wing voters identity issues, or the appearance of them. They may love the gay (or at least not mind it), but that doesn’t mean they don’t still intend to create a society in which there are aristocrats, and if the serfs want to marry same sex, let’em. Meanwhile, they’ll keep you under 24/7 surveillance in case you start acting actually subversive in ways that could actually hurt their power and wealth.
Oh, and African-Americans have done terribly under Obama.
If you enjoyed this article, and want me to write more, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.
Celsius 233
Maybe, just maybe, if we’re lucky, the voters will wake up and realize they’ve been snookered.
Nah! Sorry, just a dream I had once. But I’m better now…
john
“the fact that someone is part of an oppressed group does NOT mean that they”
typo?
Bill H
“Oh, and African-Americans have done terribly under Obama.”
As have Latinos, with undocumented persons being deported by Obama at unprecedented rates and employer raids twice as frequent as under any previous president, even as he’s giving lip service to them with his version of a token executive “Dream Act.”
Mandos
I have to partially disagree with you. No, there’s *certainly* no guarantee that voting for identity-politics reasons will also elect a left-wing politician. But there is at least one advantage that is underestimated in these arguments, which is the value of bringing an underlying conflict out into the open. Having a black president in the USA has had a catalytic/revelatory effect, forcing a certain level of racism to come out into the open. *Some* (but not all) of the problems for African-Americans that have come out during the Obama administration have come from the backlash and not from Obama himself.
CB
“As with Obama, the fact that someone is part of an oppressed group does mean that they, personally, are progressive or populist on economic issues.” Should there be a “not” btwn “does” and “mean”?
CB
Raising the minimum wage to $10.10 and then pegging it to inflation is a way of guaranteeing low wage jobs remain low wage. $10 10 doesn’t get near the rise in productivity, which Warren calculates at a minimum wage of $22.00/hr, and the gov directs the official calculations of inflation–which have been fiddled several times to suit an administration’s “optics.”
BlizzardOfOz
Because what’s the real worth anyway of a $17 trillion bailout, compared to the awesome power of the “catalytic/revelatory effect”. Hmm … it almost seems that if the Preferred Victim Class cult didn’t exist, Wall Street would have to invent it.
Pelham
I’ll provide a strong second to CB’s note on the $22-an-hour minimum wage. In fact, this should be the hard focus for everyone. Of course, the CBO would have a fit.
As to Ian’s main point, I wonder whether it couldn’t be taken a step further. I’d say that identity politics has served not only to bamboozle fuzzy-minded progressives but has also disarmed, discredited, divided and basically neutered the left — all beyond repair. Emphasis on “beyond repair.”
That’s why I think that any hope for a true and effective left may need to leave behind the cold, bland stew of progressive multi-cultis and focus on recruiting people who are currently just non-political and disgusted and maybe especially those who have energetically aligned themselves with the right and far right.
In other words, it may be the case that the most productive kind of leftward thinking would be devoted to how we can go about bringing over the tea-partiers and similar folk, as well as the mass of the disaffected. We could, perhaps, start by simply ceasing to call them nasty names.
Mandos
You’d have gotten the bailout either way. The whole system was agitating for it. The whole “Preferred Victim Class” rhetoric only in the end makes the division worse. It screams of the attitude, “wait for the revolution, THEN we’ll fix your problems. Maybe.”
Gaianne
Thank you Ian.
Clear and concise.
This is how the left gets pwned, over and over.
I really wonder about the “left:” There is no learning curve. Most of my friends could be described this way: They do not and cannot learn.
–Gaianne
Steven Walcott
i don’t think this phenomenon has much to do with a learning curve. many fake democrats would prefer to define themselves in terms of social issues and social issues alone.
this leaves them free to make money in whatever way they please without giving thought to inequality and economic issues.
they may be willing to pay slightly more in taxes etc. but as howard zinn points out they’re just slightly less republican than republicans but don’t identify that way due to social issues.
that’s obama’s core.
Gonzo
While minimum wage does need reform, it needs local reform, not national reform. In many parts of the country, Wal-Mart pays a living wage, and this $22/hr is more than many seasoned professionals with degrees in in-demand fields make. New York City and other large metropolitan areas are where the cost of living demands a much higher pay rate.
There seems to be a misconception that one can raise the minimum wage and magically everyone below it will have an improved standard of living. We still live in an economy, and an economy is a system of managing scarcity through market forces. The paradigm of plenty, which is admittedly beautiful, rests on technology that still exists only in science fiction.
Until people are ready to completely eliminate the tax rebate structures that allow the wealthy to avoid paying taxes, these bottom-up redistribution tactics will invariably have the opposite of the intended effect.
cripes
Steven walcott: that sums it up pretty good. Liberals are the worst thing that happened to working class politics. Russians called them Menshiviks. It is amazing how thoroughly the oligarchs have subsumed left political agitation for what used to be called civil rights (now diversity) and turned it into their tool for class oppression.
Jessica
@ Steven Walcott
Thank you.
Bruce Wilder
Yes, there really was a time, when the economy was structured around managing scarcity, by means of identifying and oppressing certain identity groups.
Women could only work in a narrow range of occupations, most of them structured to be subordinate positions: secretary to the male boss, nurse to the male doctor, etc. I had some excellent teachers in public schools, because a public school teacher was one of the few professions open to educated and ambitious women.
Of course, blacks in the segregated South were not just disadvantaged, they were actively exploited, deprived of resources and worked, hard. For a long time, immigrant labor in the north was channeled into often brutal industrial work and slums.
Yes, we still live in an economy of managed scarcity, but that scarcity isn’t “managed” by impersonal “market forces”. (We do not live in a “market economy” — that’s a lie; this economy has very few actual markets. Learn to look, and you may begin to see.) That scarcity is managed by political institutions, and increasingly by managing the financial system and corporate business hierarchies.
When people were oppressed by means of identity — Catholic immigrant, woman, black, Jew, gay, etc., — humiliated and made to serve, then political organization by social identity, building a sense of solidarity around those markers of social identity made sense. A worker could trust a Samuel Gompers because he identified with his constituency — the skilled tradesman. The feminist could champion the cause of women, whether to get the vote or expand opportunities for divorce or birth control or education or employment. It made sense to build women’s colleges or negro colleges. Pride overcame humiliation and shame, which were means of oppression.
The structure of oppression, by channeling social association into compartments, created the means of social and political organization to overcome it. Marx saw this in the industrial proletariat. In practice, in the U.S., leadership often came from privileged quarters. Such was the nature of the Progressive Movement. But, the followers were drawn from their social identities, as oppressed groups, and their membership in social associations founded on their identities. A lot of political education and activism was founded on numerous membership organizations, formal and informal, many without an explicit political purpose, back in the day.
I don’t think people are fooled by social identity markers. There just isn’t much of a social structure around which to build any sense of consciousness or solidarity, no social association to coordinate action, or even to process information and learning. The Left in the U.S. has little resource base, which is why it is so easily corrupted. (When you’re dependent on an oil sultan and a Russian strongman and a supposedly eccentric tech billionaire to fund a news media, you’re in serious trouble.) Much of academia, once a liberal pillar, has been reduced to the status of a proletariat. What’s left of religion belongs to the conservatives.
Given the nature of our economic oppression, and the need for an institutional base, the logical thing for the left to do would be to build or capture some banks, or equivalent. There was a time when institutions like Fannie Mae or the Tennessee Valley Authority were significant political base camps for Democrats. Some of the regional Federal Reserve banks are hobby shops for right-wing economists, and their populist governance structures would make a takeover theoretically feasible. Turning the Post Office into a bank is an inspired thought.
If you want political leaders to stand for something, you must find them a place to stand that is consistent with the desired message. Their message has to be their ticket to ride, because they are in the game to ride. The politician wants the office; her closest supporters want the patronage and the power; it is only the more distant and diffuse support, that wants policy, and to get policy, must be organized to supply the means for the politician to achieve office. It’s the invention of the markers for the organization of that diffuse support to which we need to attend.
guest
I was thinking something along the lines of Pelham’s comments this morning.
Certainly the charade of culture war progress masks the real kleptocrat agenda, hiding it from those who identify as liberals or conservatives almost equally, and Obama gets to hide a lot of super nasty policies behind his Cosby aura.
But I think a lot of it has to do with how comfortable people feel with confrontation. Most liberals are deathly afraid of it and chose leaders who are passive at best (or at worst are neoliberal wolves in sheeps clothing, like Obama). “Liberals” who are always giving ground, compromising and appeasing the rabid and implacable conservatives.
I was wondering this morning how much of the attraction angry white males have for the Republican party has to do with ideology and racism, and how much of it has to do with revulsion for the passivity of the left. It’s a lose/lose situation, so of course it must be more psychologically rewarding for them to be on the side that almost always gets its way. At some level, not even very deep down, they have to know they are getting screwed. If the left would actually fight back and get nasty like the right does (no matter how much it upsets Cokie Roberts), I’m sure it wouldn’t bring them all to their senses, or even a majority, but definitely a significant number of them might find their way into joining the populist rabble.
Mandos
And? What other things would they have to throw under the bus to do it?
Mandos
Thank you for putting so eloquently what I have been trying to tell people — poorly-expressed and ham-handedly — since way back when. Far too often leftazoids think of this question solely in terms of “punishing wrongdoers”, which is how the entire discussion around Obama is framed including in places like this. How in a representative democracy a political career comes to be is simply ignored.
Guy Andrew Hall
If Obama were truly a dictator you could lay the blame for the increased income disparity at his feet. However, he has to contend with another branch of the government. A branch of government that has not even allowed him to hire the people he wants to work in his branch of government.
I’m not a rabid Obama supporter; I believe he is wrong about drone use, as well as not getting behind reigning in the NSA fast enough. However, as an American I’d rather it be recognized that more people than Obama are responsible for crafting and implementing the laws in our country. Had Obama had to deal with a progressive, left-leaning congress, perhaps we would be seeing less of an income disparity.
Bill H
I will agree with you to a degree, Guy Andrew Hall, but not completely. There is something called “leadership.” The first thing he did in office was a “stimulus” that was far too small and was far too heavily composed of tax cuts, and he did not fight for anything better.
Before even beginning negotiations on “health care reform” he made a secret deal with big pharma the drug reimportation and Medicare drug price negotiation would be left off of the table as part of the reform. He made a deal with hospital corporations that mandatory price cutting would not be part of the deal. So before the package was even discussed it was weighed in favor of the corporations.
The first tax deal extended the entirety of the Bush tax cuts for two full years and it was Obama’s proposition that did that. That bargain was Obama’s initial proposal.
The second tax deal involved a miniscule increase on the top income bracket and dropped the payroll tax cut. Again, Obama was on board.
To paraphrase your last sentence, if we’d had a progressive left leaning president, perhaps we would be seeing less of an income disparity.
montanamaven
@ Guy Andrew Hall – The answer is not “more and better Democrats”. It is what Bruce Wilder recommends, building something by pushing for a Post Office Bank and maybe a Debt Jubilee starting with Student loans.
You should read Matt Stoller’s article “The Progressive Case Against Obama.”
http://www.salon.com/2012/10/27/the_progressive_case_against_obama/
After the election of 2008, Hank Paulson wanted that TARP money and he offered a deal to Barney Frank “to force banks to write down mortgages and stem foreclosures if Barney would speed up release of the TARP money.” Part of the deal was that incoming president Obama had to sign off on it too. Barney signed off on it, but to his surprise, Obama vetoed the deal.
“Yup, you heard that right–the Bush administration was willing to write down mortgages in response to Democratic pressure, but it was Obama who said no, we want a foreclosure crisis.”
Classic Shock Doctrine. So, there should be no pardon for these crimes.
montanamaven
And it’s not about more “fightin’ Democrats”. I thought that for a time. I remember a cover of “The Nation” in 2005? with a fire breathing Donkey. Yes, we weren’t going to be namby pamby, we were gonna fight. ha, ha, ha, ha. Just another way to herd groups like environmentalists, gay activists, civil rights activists, etc all into the Roach Motel called the Democratic Party.
I moved here to a small town of 1500 from New York City. This county is rabidly Republican/Libertarian. They aren’t fighters. The vocal ones aren’t going to pick up arms and fight a Revolution. They are hunkered down with their rounds of ammo and their canned goods in their bunkers. They aren’t fighters, but they are mean spirited. But they aren’t really the majority either. They are want are called “big mules” in Southern states. Real estate brokers and car dealers. So they are loud, but not the majority. The majority are mostly conservative regular people who go about their business and if you talk to them about something like the Post Office, they just might be willing to listen.
I’m going to write another story about conversations at the bar. Last night “Blackie” asked why were there so many more churches but at the same time so many more cops. Something to chew on.
David Kowalski
Unfortunately, Matt Stoller learned his lesson a little late, montanamaven. He was for Obama in 2008 when there was a chance of possibly getting a better alternative. The answer, when we can, is not to settle. It’s hardly politically correct but we used to have a term for people like Obama: oreo. It was short hand for black on the outside, white on the inside. Unfortunately, too many of the decision makers are oreos and bananas. I’ll end it there.
People are people once you get past some of the facade. I find some of that in this town which is, like yours, full of mostly conservative regular people. It’s in NJ in the NYC suburbs about 25 miles from the city.
I notice the churches more when we are on vacation or away for the weekend. By now the local ones blend into my woodwork. One thing I noticed in parts of the south was that the churches seemed so much newer and better maintained than the regular businesses. Now that’s another thing to chew on.
The neoliberal response to gays is that they welcome gays who share their own economic and social background but not so much others. That means throwing a bone of civil rights and accomodation to free up their natural allies and to allow them to join in with the neoliberals. What a crock. But it works and does get minimal progress.
Badtux
I examined Obama’s policy proposals as published on his web site in early 2008 and told everybody that I could that the man was not a liberal. They refused to believe me, because everybody knows that all black people are liberals. Except they’re not, I knew that because I’d taught at two all-black schools and those teachers were as conservative as the Bible Belt could produce, they voted Democrat because the Republicans had morphed into the party of the KKK, not because they were personally liberal. They were all believers in traditional marriage, Jesus in the classroom, and so forth. If not for the color of their skin, eavesdropping in the teacher’s lounge you would have thought you were at a Republican convention. And that is, by and large, the black middle and upper class… they’re even more conservative than their white counterparts. Liberal? Obama? It was ludicrous from day one, but nobody would believe me, because of reverse racism — the notion that somehow his dark skin made him liberal.
I voted for the dwarf in the primary, so don’t blame me for Obama…
But anyhow: People need to quit going on surface impression and start researching the people they vote for. I know that’s hard to do with so many candidates being spammed at us every election period (I mean, we even vote for the frickin’ dog catcher?!), but at least for the major offices people should, like, actually see what those people are proposing to do when they get into office. When Obama got into office he did exactly what his candidate web site said he was going to do. Obama didn’t lie to his liberal supporters, his liberal supporters lied to themselves. Funny how that works, eh?
Celsius 233
@ Badtux
February 22, 2014
But anyhow: People need to quit going on surface impression and start researching the people they vote for. I know that’s hard to do with so many candidates being spammed at us every election period (I mean, we even vote for the frickin’ dog catcher?!), but at least for the major offices people should, like, actually see what those people are proposing to do when they get into office. When Obama got into office he did exactly what his candidate web site said he was going to do. Obama didn’t lie to his liberal supporters, his liberal supporters lied to themselves. Funny how that works, eh?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Well, you pretty much nailed that one.
Nice post and to the actual point. Kudos for that.