This is a very important and inciteful article. I especially note this:
"proletarianization of white-collar work". This cuts against the class
notions mostly ascribed with Marxist-Leninism, but reflect the reality of
new class divisions or definitions in a post industrial society, or in an
information/knoledged based system.
In my opinion however, that doesn't invalidate all that Marx wrote about
these things in general.
Moreover, there is something not mentioned here. But, just as the class was
energised during the Great Depression the youth of today have come of age in
the Great Recession.
That is why they are open to socialist ideas, or at least why they have
grave misgivings about capitalism. Frankly in the bubble burst capitalism
failed youth gravely.
.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Miriam Vieni" <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, July 18, 2016 6:45 PM
Subject: [blind-democracy] The Millennial Revolt Against Neoliberalism
The Millennial Revolt Against Neoliberalism
Published on
Monday, July 18, 2016
by
Common Dreams
The Millennial Revolt Against Neoliberalism
by
Jake Johnson
A cheering crowd greeted Sanders at a Pennsylvania rally in April. "The
driving force of the Sanders campaign, contrary to the fantasies concocted
by Clinton surrogates," writes Johnson, "has been a diverse coalition of
voters revolting against the inequities produced by global capitalism - a
system that has handsomely rewarded a select few while producing stagnant or
declining incomes for everyone else." (Photo: Penn State/flickr/cc)
We have been told a story about the presidential candidacy of Senator Bernie
Sanders, a story perpetuated almost exclusively by centrist Democrats
vehemently opposed to his progressive agenda.
This story has many variants, but each features a central component: The
Sanders campaign, the narrative goes, is merely masquerading as an ambitious
political revolt dedicated to improving the material conditions of the
public. In reality, contrary to its facade of progressivism, the Sanders
campaign has largely served as a vehicle through which angry white males can
freely express their fury at the expense of Hillary Clinton, President
Obama, and the rest of the liberal political class.
Joan Walsh has perhaps been the most vocal proponent of this view; she has
claimed, on many occasions and with varying degrees of nastiness, that the
Sanders movement is nothing more than the embodiment of white male angst.
"I don't accept the presumption of moral and ideological superiority," Walsh
wrote in a column for The Nation, "from a coalition that is dominated by
white men, trying to overturn the will of black, brown, and female voters or
somehow deem it fraudulent."
Walsh went on to lament a perceived "growing element of male entitlement"
within the Sanders campaign, and in a tweet linking to her column, she
accused Sanders of abandoning his status as a "movement leader" and warned
that, if he continues "trashing" Democrats, he risks becoming "the messiah
of an angry white male cult."
"Sanders's support among the young has mystified those who take a
superficial, identity-based approach to politics. But from an ideological
perspective, the fact that millennials have overwhelmingly backed Sanders
couldn't be less surprising."
Despite the flailing nature of these smears, the narrative Walsh and others
have attempted to ingrain in the national psyche has served several crucial
purposes.
First, and perhaps most obviously, it attempts to present Hillary Clinton,
the candidate overwhelmingly (almost unanimously) favored by the
establishment, as the underdog - Clinton, in the minds of Walsh and other
peddlers of the "Bernie Bro" narrative, is a vulnerable target of unfair and
relentless harassment from this uniquely powerful white male socialist
coalition.
Another, and far more pernicious, effect of the narrative constructed by
Walsh and endorsed by Paul Krugman and many others is that it erases the
support Sanders has garnered from young voters, including women and people
of color. Former Demos blogger Matt Bruenig, who was fired from his writing
job after a widely discussed online spat with Walsh and prominent Clinton
ally Neera Tanden, has been one of the more forceful critics of the "Bernie
Bro" narrative for this reason.
"It's really about old people versus young people, but you know that,"
Bruenig wrote in response to Walsh's article, in which she expounded her
claim that the Sanders coalition is "dominated by white men."
Bruenig's point was, of course, one that everyone who has paid attention to
the polling data, and the voting results, must concede.
As Conor Lynch summarizes, "the most revealing demographic divisions between
Sanders and Clinton have not been gender or race, a narrative that
Democratic partisans and the media have pushed incessantly, but age and
generational divides."
"More young people voted for Bernie Sanders than Trump and Clinton combined
- by a lot," reported the Washington Post's Aaron Blake in June.
And contrary to the Walsh thesis, Sanders's young supporters are not all
white males. Polling data throughout the primary process consistently showed
that young women favor Sanders over Clinton, sometimes by wide margins.
Polls have also shown that young black and Latino voters favor Sanders,
further contradicting Walsh and company.
"I think the big takeaway," said Edison Research's Randy Brown, "is that
whether it's among whites or African-Americans, Bernie Sanders does
significantly better among the youngest voters in the Democratic primary."
By attempting to frame the Sanders-Clinton divide as one determined solely
by race and gender, Clinton surrogates have tried not only to remove from
view Sanders's support among the young, but also to avoid any discussion of
class - an element of American society that is inextricably linked to issues
of race and gender.
And when they have allowed class to enter the discussion, it has been to
disparage Sanders as a "single issue" candidate, as Hillary Clinton herself
did on the campaign trail in February.
Neoliberals, as Adolph Reed has noted, have long used gender and racial
politics to divert attention away from class divisions.
With the emergence of Sanders, the use of identity politics by corporate
liberals as a substitute for class politics has become more urgent and,
often, more ridiculous. It is easy, however, to see why they would choose
this path: Democrats, as Thomas Frank and others have documented, have
increasingly moved to the wrong side of the class war, opting to fight for
the professional class over the working class, for the needs of corporate
America over those of organized labor.
(To see how far Democrats have shifted to the right, contrast their current
posture with the words of Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who was certainly no
radical. While Schlesinger was wary of class conflict "pursued to excess,"
he argued, "Class conflict is essential if freedom is to be preserved,
because it is the only barrier against class domination.")
But while Sanders has done much to intensify the class language of his
coalition, he was not the one to bring class politics back to the fore - the
inequities of the economic order, perpetuated by both Democrats and
Republicans, did that on their own.
"It was the fall in real wages, the rise of precarious labor, the
proletarianization of white-collar work, the rise in real unemployment, the
persistence of underemployment, and the dramatic rise in income and wealth
inequality that have brought class back," Dustin Guastella observes.
And Sanders, throughout his presidential campaign, has confronted these
issues with striking success. By integrating racial and gender issues into
his broad critique of "establishment politics and establishment economics,"
Sanders has offered a more appealing way forward, particularly when
contrasted with the elite identity politics and incrementalism of the
Clinton campaign.
"While Sanders has done much to intensify the class language of his
coalition, he was not the one to bring class politics back to the fore - the
inequities of the economic order, perpetuated by both Democrats and
Republicans, did that on their own."
As Liza Featherstone has noted, "the number of ways that access to
healthcare, education, higher-paying jobs, and wealth are intertwined with
race and gender can't even be counted."
Democrats have consistently stood in opposition to the ambitious reforms
Sanders has put forward, and, for their efforts, they have earned the
repudiation of young people facing increasingly grim economic prospects,
from stagnant or declining incomes to absurd levels of student loan debt.
"The paradox," Guastella notes, "is that today millennials are both
better-educated and less well-positioned in the labor market than their
older counterparts."
Given this picture, it's no surprise that young people - including women and
people of color - have overwhelmingly backed the candidate who has addressed
income inequality and its consequences with admirable, and disturbingly
rare, persistence.
But it's not about Bernie; it's about ideology.
Young people - particularly poor minorities - tend to be more progressive on
economic issues than older Americans. Some data has shown that a growing
number of millennials have a negative view of capitalism.
Further, millennials, more than any other generation, self-identify as
working class.
Sanders's support among the young has mystified those who take a
superficial, identity-based approach to politics. But from an ideological
perspective, the fact that millennials have overwhelmingly backed Sanders
couldn't be less surprising.
The first of a series of polls conducted by the Black Youth Project at the
University Chicago and the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found
that "black millennials favored Bernie Sanders to Hillary Clinton 53 to 39
percent. That's not too far off from the split among non-Hispanic white
millennials, which was 62 to 32 percent in favor of Sanders, and it
challenges the stereotype that Sanders solely appeals to white liberal
voters. Among millennials who are Democrats, Sanders commands majority
support across ethnic groups."
Further, young minorities "are more likely than whites to support increases
in the minimum wage and free tuition at colleges," and they are "more likely
to agree with the idea that wealth in America should be more evenly
distributed."
So the driving force of the Sanders campaign, contrary to the fantasies
concocted by Clinton surrogates, has been a diverse coalition of voters
revolting against the inequities produced by global capitalism - a system
that has handsomely rewarded a select few while producing stagnant or
declining incomes for everyone else.
It is a coalition that has embraced class politics and mass organization as
ways of placing pressure on a complacent and corporatist Democratic
establishment, one that has made friends of the nation's oligarchs and war
criminals; it is a coalition that is pushing back against the business
takeover of the political system, against environmental degradation, and
against endless interventionism abroad.
It is a coalition, in short, that has great potential, one that can
transcend the successes or failures of individual politicians. As Matt Karp
and Shawn Gude have written, though the Sanders campaign has effectively
come to an end, "class politics isn't going anywhere."
This is bad news for those who have dedicated their political careers to,
and have benefited greatly from, sustaining an economic system that -
embedded within a political machine fueled by corporate cash - places profit
over people, exploitation over solidarity, and party unity over principle.
But expanding progressive movements from below are unlikely to force a
collective change of heart among a Democratic establishment so deeply
ensconced within such a lucrative ideological and material fortress.
As John Kenneth Galbraith understood, "People of privilege will always risk
their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their
advantage."
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0
License
Jake Johnson
Jake Johnson is an independent writer. Follow him on Twitter:
@wordsofdissent
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The Millennial Revolt Against Neoliberalism
Published on
Monday, July 18, 2016
by
Common Dreams
The Millennial Revolt Against Neoliberalism
by
Jake Johnson
. 40 Comments
.
. A cheering crowd greeted Sanders at a Pennsylvania rally in April.
"The driving force of the Sanders campaign, contrary to the fantasies
concocted by Clinton surrogates," writes Johnson, "has been a diverse
coalition of voters revolting against the inequities produced by global
capitalism - a system that has handsomely rewarded a select few while
producing stagnant or declining incomes for everyone else." (Photo: Penn
State/flickr/cc)
. We have been told a story about the presidential candidacy of
Senator Bernie Sanders, a story perpetuated almost exclusively by centrist
Democrats vehemently opposed to his progressive agenda.
. This story has many variants, but each features a central component:
The Sanders campaign, the narrative goes, is merely masquerading as an
ambitious political revolt dedicated to improving the material conditions of
the public. In reality, contrary to its facade of progressivism, the Sanders
campaign has largely served as a vehicle through which angry white males can
freely express their fury at the expense of Hillary Clinton, President
Obama, and the rest of the liberal political class.
. Joan Walsh has perhaps been the most vocal proponent of this view;
she has claimed, on many occasions and with varying degrees of nastiness,
that the Sanders movement is nothing more than the embodiment of white male
angst.
. "I don't accept the presumption of moral and ideological
superiority," Walsh wrote in a column for The Nation, "from a coalition that
is dominated by white men, trying to overturn the will of black, brown, and
female voters or somehow deem it fraudulent."
Walsh went on to lament a perceived "growing element of male entitlement"
within the Sanders campaign, and in a tweet linking to her column, she
accused Sanders of abandoning his status as a "movement leader" and warned
that, if he continues "trashing" Democrats, he risks becoming "the messiah
of an angry white male cult."
"Sanders's support among the young has mystified those who take a
superficial, identity-based approach to politics. But from an ideological
perspective, the fact that millennials have overwhelmingly backed Sanders
couldn't be less surprising."
Despite the flailing nature of these smears, the narrative Walsh and others
have attempted to ingrain in the national psyche has served several crucial
purposes.
First, and perhaps most obviously, it attempts to present Hillary Clinton,
the candidate overwhelmingly (almost unanimously) favored by the
establishment, as the underdog - Clinton, in the minds of Walsh and other
peddlers of the "Bernie Bro" narrative, is a vulnerable target of unfair and
relentless harassment from this uniquely powerful white male socialist
coalition.
Another, and far more pernicious, effect of the narrative constructed by
Walsh and endorsed by Paul Krugman and many others is that it erases the
support Sanders has garnered from young voters, including women and people
of color. Former Demos blogger Matt Bruenig, who was fired from his writing
job after a widely discussed online spat with Walsh and prominent Clinton
ally Neera Tanden, has been one of the more forceful critics of the "Bernie
Bro" narrative for this reason.
"It's really about old people versus young people, but you know that,"
Bruenig wrote in response to Walsh's article, in which she expounded her
claim that the Sanders coalition is "dominated by white men."
Bruenig's point was, of course, one that everyone who has paid attention to
the polling data, and the voting results, must concede.
As Conor Lynch summarizes, "the most revealing demographic divisions between
Sanders and Clinton have not been gender or race, a narrative that
Democratic partisans and the media have pushed incessantly, but age and
generational divides."
"More young people voted for Bernie Sanders than Trump and Clinton combined
- by a lot," reported the Washington Post's Aaron Blake in June.
And contrary to the Walsh thesis, Sanders's young supporters are not all
white males. Polling data throughout the primary process consistently showed
that young women favor Sanders over Clinton, sometimes by wide margins.
Polls have also shown that young black and Latino voters favor Sanders,
further contradicting Walsh and company.
"I think the big takeaway," said Edison Research's Randy Brown, "is that
whether it's among whites or African-Americans, Bernie Sanders does
significantly better among the youngest voters in the Democratic primary."
By attempting to frame the Sanders-Clinton divide as one determined solely
by race and gender, Clinton surrogates have tried not only to remove from
view Sanders's support among the young, but also to avoid any discussion of
class - an element of American society that is inextricably linked to issues
of race and gender.
And when they have allowed class to enter the discussion, it has been to
disparage Sanders as a "single issue" candidate, as Hillary Clinton herself
did on the campaign trail in February.
Neoliberals, as Adolph Reed has noted, have long used gender and racial
politics to divert attention away from class divisions.
With the emergence of Sanders, the use of identity politics by corporate
liberals as a substitute for class politics has become more urgent and,
often, more ridiculous. It is easy, however, to see why they would choose
this path: Democrats, as Thomas Frank and others have documented, have
increasingly moved to the wrong side of the class war, opting to fight for
the professional class over the working class, for the needs of corporate
America over those of organized labor.
(To see how far Democrats have shifted to the right, contrast their current
posture with the words of Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who was certainly no
radical. While Schlesinger was wary of class conflict "pursued to excess,"
he argued, "Class conflict is essential if freedom is to be preserved,
because it is the only barrier against class domination.")
But while Sanders has done much to intensify the class language of his
coalition, he was not the one to bring class politics back to the fore - the
inequities of the economic order, perpetuated by both Democrats and
Republicans, did that on their own.
"It was the fall in real wages, the rise of precarious labor, the
proletarianization of white-collar work, the rise in real unemployment, the
persistence of underemployment, and the dramatic rise in income and wealth
inequality that have brought class back," Dustin Guastella observes.
And Sanders, throughout his presidential campaign, has confronted these
issues with striking success. By integrating racial and gender issues into
his broad critique of "establishment politics and establishment economics,"
Sanders has offered a more appealing way forward, particularly when
contrasted with the elite identity politics and incrementalism of the
Clinton campaign.
"While Sanders has done much to intensify the class language of his
coalition, he was not the one to bring class politics back to the fore - the
inequities of the economic order, perpetuated by both Democrats and
Republicans, did that on their own."
As Liza Featherstone has noted, "the number of ways that access to
healthcare, education, higher-paying jobs, and wealth are intertwined with
race and gender can't even be counted."
Democrats have consistently stood in opposition to the ambitious reforms
Sanders has put forward, and, for their efforts, they have earned the
repudiation of young people facing increasingly grim economic prospects,
from stagnant or declining incomes to absurd levels of student loan debt.
"The paradox," Guastella notes, "is that today millennials are both
better-educated and less well-positioned in the labor market than their
older counterparts."
Given this picture, it's no surprise that young people - including women and
people of color - have overwhelmingly backed the candidate who has addressed
income inequality and its consequences with admirable, and disturbingly
rare, persistence.
But it's not about Bernie; it's about ideology.
Young people - particularly poor minorities - tend to be more progressive on
economic issues than older Americans. Some data has shown that a growing
number of millennials have a negative view of capitalism.
Further, millennials, more than any other generation, self-identify as
working class.
Sanders's support among the young has mystified those who take a
superficial, identity-based approach to politics. But from an ideological
perspective, the fact that millennials have overwhelmingly backed Sanders
couldn't be less surprising.
The first of a series of polls conducted by the Black Youth Project at the
University Chicago and the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found
that "black millennials favored Bernie Sanders to Hillary Clinton 53 to 39
percent. That's not too far off from the split among non-Hispanic white
millennials, which was 62 to 32 percent in favor of Sanders, and it
challenges the stereotype that Sanders solely appeals to white liberal
voters. Among millennials who are Democrats, Sanders commands majority
support across ethnic groups."
Further, young minorities "are more likely than whites to support increases
in the minimum wage and free tuition at colleges," and they are "more likely
to agree with the idea that wealth in America should be more evenly
distributed."
So the driving force of the Sanders campaign, contrary to the fantasies
concocted by Clinton surrogates, has been a diverse coalition of voters
revolting against the inequities produced by global capitalism - a system
that has handsomely rewarded a select few while producing stagnant or
declining incomes for everyone else.
It is a coalition that has embraced class politics and mass organization as
ways of placing pressure on a complacent and corporatist Democratic
establishment, one that has made friends of the nation's oligarchs and war
criminals; it is a coalition that is pushing back against the business
takeover of the political system, against environmental degradation, and
against endless interventionism abroad.
It is a coalition, in short, that has great potential, one that can
transcend the successes or failures of individual politicians. As Matt Karp
and Shawn Gude have written, though the Sanders campaign has effectively
come to an end, "class politics isn't going anywhere."
This is bad news for those who have dedicated their political careers to,
and have benefited greatly from, sustaining an economic system that -
embedded within a political machine fueled by corporate cash - places profit
over people, exploitation over solidarity, and party unity over principle.
But expanding progressive movements from below are unlikely to force a
collective change of heart among a Democratic establishment so deeply
ensconced within such a lucrative ideological and material fortress.
As John Kenneth Galbraith understood, "People of privilege will always risk
their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their
advantage."
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0
License
/author/jake-johnson
/author/jake-johnson/author/jake-johnson
Jake Johnson is an independent writer. Follow him on Twitter:
@wordsofdissent
