¶ Historical Analysis of Christopher Lash's Writings
Hello and welcome to a bar and vlog where I talk Monthly ish to Elijah Emery , usually about Christopher lash . And today we are talking about Christopher lash , surprise , surprise .
But we are not talking about the period of lash which we have been digging into for the last couple of months , which is the middle to late lash of Cultural narcissism in the middle minimal self , late 70s , early 80s Period .
Today we go back to the prior decade of lash late 60s , early 70s period through the rise and fall of the new left which he was documenting up until there was nothing . Yeah , haven't . In a heartless world where , yes , and where there's nothing left to document of the new left , because it had Become the very thing that he writes culture of narcissism about .
But the other thing that that these books have , that the later books Don't have , is the clarity of being purely historical as opposed to historical , theoretical . The way that the two psychoanalytic books are and In some ways I think that's part of why they're not read as much is because they're clearer .
They . They're clearer and they seem irrelevant because they're discussing history rather than theory , but in fact they're in many ways more relevant because they're discussing history rather than theory right , and they actually have .
Even though that both these books are here are collections of essays , if you read them together and Throw in new radicals in there just for fun , you would actually develop , probably , I think , one of the broader spectrum views of American radicalism . There's a few other thinkers who write broad spectrum about American radicalism .
In fact I am literally reading one , the . You know the intellectual oracle of American radicalism , the life-state and lend , which is another good place to start if you are into such things . But lash is actually really thorough and includes a Kind of interesting and complicated class analysis which is partly informed by Marxism and partly not .
And that's gonna be relevant as we talk today . But I think one of the things that he sees that we've seen again . So what let's ? Let's frame this . And in this period of the rise of the new left and Right-wing populism , like George Wallace etc .
Who he doesn't focus that much on at the time , I think he he looms kind of hidden in the background of later lashes writings and Looms in the background here , but he's not going to detail with right and Lasses uncomfortability with the , with the conservatism of the 80s , which he writes quite scathingly about , even in the period where people think he's not
critical of the right , which they just aren't reading all the essays .
But In this period in the late 60s , early 70s , he's watching the new left die and he's watching , he's trying to contextualize that to a left generation that he thinks does not know its own history Right that it has , that it is not just disconnected from , like the broader working class or broader working class movements .
But he actually strongly implies , in both agony of the American left and world of nations , that part of this is deliberately buried in the progressive movement association with the New Deal and that there was a kind of ad hoc ideology made out of New Deal progressivism that took elements of socialism , elements of of what we might call now left populism or farmers
populism , elements of the prior Transpartisan progressivism and elements of like managerialism and smush them all together into a melange . That I think became kind of the myth of the New Deal that we were man-assized .
Now and I Find that interesting , because we've talked about this actually a good bit that the New Deal is weirdly a gaping hole in Lash's history of the Left , like he mentions it , a little bit in agony of the American left and then a little bit in the beginning of World of Nations .
And then a little bit and true and only have a little bit , and true and only heaven , but it's like something he doesn't really want to deal with in some ways because it in some ways it's a culmination of the death of the left that he was interested in , which is the American Old left and the early socialist movement , particularly the SPA , but also the
populist movement of the late 19th century , and Then he doesn't really have anything else to like . Compare it to till , the civil rights movement , which he sees as , broadly speaking , a kind of Righteous left populist movement that has a both a racial and a workerist origin .
But again , he doesn't actually say that until the 80s , like he doesn't actually say that at the time very much .
He mostly talks about how it's insufficient in these books .
Which I think he's right . The funny thing it's just one of the things that I feel interesting as we talk about these books . I'm just giving the long-duray context before we go back is Is that the true and only heaven ? Lash seems to be like . Well , I was too hard on these things in the time because , oh my god , it got so much worse .
He misses the heroic age of American liberalism right , which was what he set out to critique basically From his first book on the Russia , on the Russian Revolution , america's response to it forward .
And so you know , and he also meant that , but in true and only heaven , we also know that , like he misses the artists in America period which is even before his actual historical research . So it's like , you know , that's where I think , like mythic lash really comes into bed .
I just love history so much .
Yeah , and he does miss things and like , if you want like more , if you want like a good history of the SP USA or the US socialist movement , I would say these are places to get a broad overview but they're not a place to get like the detailed nitty gritty of what's going on . You know you actually need to read specialist histories on that .
But he seems to be starting with this like failure of liberalism perceived in the 60s . And I find it interesting because we are living through Another fail , men of liberalism , and this I've been reading , like Raymond Gois Gois , who also , like , writes about these time periods .
He kind of talks about when failure of liberalism in and when he's coming up in the , I think , 50s and 60s and then the one right now . And I find it very interesting because the current failure of liberalism as part of why Lash is popular .
But there's also , as we've talked about in late lash , anastasia , for the very thing he's critiquing , and these books , I think by the time we get to his last two books that were published during a lifetime , do you agree with me , elijah , like I ? Yeah , I do . I mean , I think that he gets .
I think , just like the rest of the American left , he gets more . There's a couple of things that change which are like Pretty substantial differences and one reason why people would become more favorable toward to this era .
So in this era there's the assumption that Capitalism has solved its fundamental economic and you know contradictions and there's gonna be no more recessions and Stagflation and the recessions of the early 80s or the late 70s and early 80s pretty decisively putting into that right .
He basically buys the , the the , the , the swissian baron Marxist conception , which to defend him was near universal In the 50s and 60s like , yeah , this is something which is totally reasonable at the time .
But becomes Obsolete later and is one reason for a critical reevaluation of liberalism , which managed to , with a lot of unique conditions , deliver a much broader based economic prosperity Than later formulations of American capitalism .
Death , which is something lurking in the background in especially actually Revolta the elites where lash goes a little bit back to political economy , if you like ever did anything with it , basically just to be like huh guys , you know neoliberalism is really bad , and so that's one reason he goes back and likes it more .
Another reason is just the 80s are so bleak for the left and the 90s , the early 90s , are so bleak that he reflects on the fact that there was a you know possibilities Available in the 60s and early 70s that were not possible later , which is something he goes into in some detail here when he talks about Especially the need for a sense of camaraderie or
allyship between liberals on the left on civil liberties . And then I think those are two of the main , the main things . I don't know if that answers the question .
Yeah , yeah , one of the things I would actually add to that when you're reading his late writings is Is and even then these writings , there is some political economy , but it is always he's always careful with it One , because I think this is actually a problem , a field of study , and Shalom Bentin and I argue about this all the time because she's also a
cultural historian and I'm not , but I talk about well , lash doesn't think most dialecticians , particularly most Marxists , have a rich understanding of class cultures and culture in general , which I think is true .
But that seems to lead him to not do that much with political economy , except , weirdly , during his high theoretic phase , where he does tie Freudianism into political economic movements and as part of his analysis there he says that the basis of human culture is social reproduction and economic factors , but that they're also distinct , which is more than a lot of
theoreticians of culture are willing to say . Yeah , so he very much sees him as almost a feedback loop , where they are .
Whenever he talks about this , particularly in his critique of populism , he talks about populism degenerating from a political economy to follow the money into just basically conspiracy theories , which is why it's easy for nutters and racists to get into , and in these books he talks about that explicitly .
Now we've already talked about how he gets soft on this in late life and also defends the populists who are like no , they weren't all just racist , which is interesting .
Here he has some additional critiques which are great , like they were imperialists , which is true .
Right , they were imperialist .
Or they were at least not actively anti-imperialist a lot of the time .
Any points out that their ambivalence is about race , which he also points out in the socialist movement too , is a point of weakness , a real one , which is really interesting to me , as we've brought up a lot of times when people go to lush heron folk socialism , like he really cared about the integration of black people into the general public , Like a lot more
than his interest in like yeoman artists and bourgeois culture would indicate .
He's more favorable to black power than he is to the populists for most of his life .
Yeah , he considers , even though he considers black power insufficient . He's actually super interested in black nationalism for kind of creating a collective political actor , and by that we mean black cultural nationalism .
But he also points out the problems with that in this book too , like well , the other , the comparisons being made here to people who have clear nation states to which they might belong , away from this country and also have a prior national identity the Irish , the Italians and the Jews , particularly once Israel exists which you can't really do with black people and
like , except for maybe , pan-africanism , which itself also does not really have a huge appeal in Africa itself , although he doesn't talk about the latter part . So I guess this gets us to
¶ History of the American Left Revisited
. You know , in agony we start off God . Where does he start agony ? Like right after the Civil War , basically right , and we trace through agony . You know he's interested in a lot of different kinds of the feminist movements . He does , you know , do a kind of mini .
Well , no , this is more , I will admit , because these three books parallel so much , I sometimes put New Radicalism in America and the agony of the American left and like one master narrative in my head and I'm having to like make sure I don't do that right now .
So like there's people who he mentions Jane Adams and stuff which come up in both books but he does a lot more in New Radicalism than he does in agony .
I mean the agony is .
You know it's got several parts and the main thing is first the history of the populist , socialist and black nationalists , then basically like kind of the subsumption and suppression of all these things into the Cold War , with the Cultural Cold War , a reflection on black power and cultural nationalism , and then the revival of political controversy in the 60s , which is
about the New Left and its successes and failures , basically , Right and for people who know him from , culture of narcissism although he gets more credit to the New Left and culture of narcissism than people think one of the things I've actually gone back and reading and I'm like , no , he's really mad that they didn't listen to themselves .
Like he's often citing the New Left , you know from 65 against the remnants of the New Left in 74 , saying like they knew more in the 60s than the same people do now .
I mean , I think one thing he really goes into , especially in World of Nations , is the fissure between cultural and political radicalism , which was united very , very temporarily , he thinks , in the period basically between 65 and 68 , and then broke apart .
Well , and I think that's true even in our hagiography of the 60s . So like somehow in our heads , the New Left , the hippies which are kind of a separate thing , although there's now kind of a counter movement to read them totally as reactionary , which I think is also wrong kind of get merged in the American head .
Also because it parallels what happens in France , right , and we have this like French model .
He doesn't talk about this in this book , but it's something that we can kind of see from the vantage point of now is one of the ways that historiography of the 60s emerges is like , well , our 69 in America is like 60 May 68 in France , except it isn't at all , but the cultural radicalism and the like political , economic radicalism converged in both cases ,
right , and it was because of students and students being the particular driving force . And what he's interested in in agony of the American left is kind of showing , particularly again if you read it with new radicals in mind , I think , is showing like , look , this is not new .
And I think this is important for people to hear now , because there's a tendency now to either God , there's a really dumb tendency to pretend that , like , the American left was super Marxist until like 2018 and then it got infected with anarchists and totally fell apart .
And I'm like , motherfucker , were you alive in the 90s when the like I mean I know you weren't Elijah , but like I was like but a lot of these people talking when , like the only left there was was like anarchist and a couple of weird malice groups and like the ISO .
Well , these books are these books that we're talking about today are very important because they are from the last time before , like you know , 2010 or whatever that the American left was vaguely Marxist , right by and large .
And he , but he's tracing that what we tend to start with the new left as a simp , like a lot of people now will sit , will go back and say , ok , well , isn't like just anarchist coming in 2017 ? Guys , really , it goes back to the new left . Like Matt , matt Nair , I'll do that .
Sometimes it's like , oh , the new left , it's mixture of Maoist , anti revisionism and anarchism and cultural , as I fair , led to .
Yeah , the attitude about the relationship between the new left and the contemporary left is , you know , first , as far as the last tragedy , Right , whereas I think lash actually pretty clearly illustrates in this book .
No , this has been a tendency specifically in America going all the way back to the 1890s . There are countervailing other tendencies such as the Black nationalist movement , the populist movement and the socialist movement , which all have large class bases Interestingly , one of the things he doesn't talk about in his critique .
There's two things that actually , interestingly , don't come up in his critique of populism . That I find fascinating that they don't . One , he doesn't talk about William Jennings Bryant's conceding to the Democrats and what that meant . He doesn't do that at all . And two , he doesn't really talk about .
He kind of hints at it but he doesn't really talk about the disappearance of sharecropping as part of the reason why the populist party lost its base and thus by the 1910s . Really it's kind of .
You know , you have people who emerge out of it like Huey Long kind of , but it's really increasingly becoming more and more paranoid because it's getting more and more into like a very vulgar understanding of follow the money analysis which he points out and doesn't have a very rigorous understanding of culture according to him .
But then he doesn't really go into like what . And also the sharecroppers disappeared and that was like the other base , and then the workers went into the socialist movement for the most part , or they became Democrats , depending on whether or not they went with William Jennings Bryant or not , and he doesn't actually talk about that .
So , like I , do consider that a flaw in the book . But he does , you know pretty clearly a new radicalism in the first chapters of this book . Point out that , like you , have the emergence of this kind of rebellious but managerial section of intellectuals . We have to call them intellectuals .
They're the children of the bourgeoisie but they're not the bourgeoisie themselves . And eventually they get tied into the academy . But in the late 19th and the early 20th century that was not the case yet . They are more tied up until , like the New York literary scene , and they are primary drivers going all the way back .
And he kind of shows it like the only difference now in the 60s is one , the energy created by the end of the Eisenhower era with the JFK election . And two , this mass base of students is created after the GI Bill .
And he seems very skeptical of all these multiversity theories of the students as a new revolutionary subject , theories that's emerging in the new left . But he does pretty clearly trace like no , this isn't the first time this has happened . This is just the first time it's been mass .
I don't know how to Mass attached to that . That's skeptical about it . He definitely gets more skeptical leader . But he's also optimistic about the possibility of students to be a component of a new left politics .
I think maybe we disagree on interpretation here , because he's so critical of the educational apparatus which produces these students even this early . I mean , john Dewey is a person that , like Chris Rolash , hates yeah Deep in his soul .
I mean , I think mostly it's just that , like a lot of , there's a lot of students . They are very alienated and he says that if they had harnessed that into more serious work they could have been very compelling and very potent , but unfortunately they did not do . That Is big . I mean , it's basically his take , right ?
Well , it's interesting because he has a critique like he has in the middle of World Nations . His critique , well , not critique , his question , the open question that he doesn't completely answer about revolutions , right , and and he starts off reviewing a book which is actually clearly it clearly I actually haven't read the book he's talking about .
It's kind of a loss , not lost , and then you can't find it . But it's like not referenced ever anymore . About , like clearly , some Marxist being super excited about national liberationist movements and in the 60s and he doesn't use this language .
But I think he strongly implies that they're just like bourgeois national revolutions , chill out and they aren't actually the kind of insurrection that we have in mind from the 19th century either , because there's like agreements and geopolitics going on and that Thus they can't really be something that it would make any sense to build out into .
And the United States or Europe , because not only are these areas or areas where , where , like their colonial states were in the periphery of the colonies , where also state was , just a state in general , either colonial or local , is weak , and that can't be said to be true anywhere in the developed world in the 1960s , and so like , okay , well then , what we've
noticed in these alternatives to liberalism that's emerging as revolution increasingly becomes metaphorical , because we don't know how to deal with what we mean by , like , insurrectionarily overthrowing a government once you have post-war or two weapons systems , surveillance , welfare state , etc .
And he doesn't even think that all these things exist in existence , are bad , like clearly he doesn't think the welfare it's instance is bad , it's just like . But what are you gonna do when you like , like you're dealing with a nuclear armed government , with , with major state power the size of which was not even comprehensible , you know , a century ?
prior or 30 years prior right .
So , and so you know , you have more revolutionary talk going on and less Ability to even conceive of what it means . So that's one thing that comes up .
He also talks about how all these movements and so much that they still exist , like he basically thinks the socialist movement and the and the populist movement you know what little good of them is still existing by the 1930s gets swept up in the new deal .
I will point out one of the weaknesses I find in the agony of American left is he doesn't deal with the history of the Communist Party of the United States . Hardly at all . And If you look at what actually happened to the SPA , what destroys it it's it is its inability to deal with the Russian Revolution as much as anything else .
And well , I should already written a book about that kind of . But he read he's written a book about the liberal response to that . He hadn't really written a book about , like , what that did to the socialist , and he doesn't really deal with it in this book either , and that is a weak point , I think .
But but he doesn't think still pretty much strongly indicate that like by the time you get to the 1930s . And he doesn't talk about the popular front at all in this either . But he basically proves it that all these groups get some get subsumed into FDR's New Deal Coalition and he does not like .
Even if he thinks the New Deal and is like a net benefit , he clearly like it's it was designed to save a Brahman class of Hot bourgeoisie From you know the dangers of their own class existence , and it did and gave them some relevance to a bunch of working class people . But it also effectively kills the movement .
So then we move over to the black nationalist movement right , and Then he talks about , like the problem with black power , which he clearly actually sees as one of the better left movements . I mean , I guess we do have to talk about his attitude towards feminism after After the 1920s .
But he he clearly seems to think that , like the black power movement itself doesn't really know what it wants . Like it's no longer really a nationalist movement or a cultural nationalist movement . It's it's nominally kind of socialist but not clearly so it can't figure out .
Like do we consider black people part of the working class or some kind of surplus population to it ? Like , if that's true , how is this not damaging the old class ?
Like so you know structure of socialist arguments and how do we deal with the fact that so many Critics of the USSR In the in the 1940s , who may have been good Marxist , you know , in the prior decade , had all liquidated into ? You know Things clearly run by the OSS and the CIA .
And we say clearly because now we know they were , but it was even pretty obvious back then . And so you know , after that liquidation into , you know , the Congress for cultural freedom and anti-communism and also you know the progressive education system contributing so much to like the managerial state and the war state . What do you do ?
Because the two prior leftover things . And so after that , and then black nationalism has mutated into black power because , well , not a lot of black people actually think that there could have been a nation in the United States which they could belong , separate from the US . You know which he's actually kind of right about .
I mean like one of the things I was interested to discover when I was a black nationalist and I think that's one of the things I was interested in . You know which he's actually kind of right about .
I mean like one of the things I was interested to discover when I was , you know , reading about the communist organization of the black community in the south is , while the leadership was really into the black belt theory and you know , you know the kind of black belt black nationalism Most of the rank-and-file black workers were not actually .
There's not an evidence that ever had strong black support in the common , even in the Communist Party , much less than the Communist Mahdi affiliated unions and the and the CIO and the T and the T you UL .
So Anyway , a lot of this is referencing the parts of the book I didn't review , unfortunately , before this .
And I'm just covering it also . We can now get to that port . So we get to the crisis of liberalism in the 60s . We get to the crisis of liberalism in the 60s .
So in in this part of this is Intimately related to what you mentioned with the black power movement and black nationalism , though lash distinguishes that from the new left and focuses on the new left , as you know , in a couple of different renditions .
So in the agony of the American left , he focuses on the new left In the context of its attempt to take over of the Democratic Party right , in the context of the student movement and the free speech movement , at Berkeley especially , and then in the world of nations he focuses again on the student movement but also on the you know cultural revolution , cultural ,
what's it called ? The , the counterculture ,
¶ Comparing Leftist Movements and Political Contexts
the .
He focuses on socialism in the form of Harrington's , you know foundation of the DSA or its precursor the precursor , the DSA , yeah , but although in this time it's not even that like , this is just Harrington Trying to form a quote left populist coalition to enter the McGovern campaign and when that fails he starts the .
The Democratic Socialists are Not the Democrat , a social Democrats of America or whatever . The pre , the pre-organization when the SP .
So I think in the timeline of Harrington when he's writing about this and this isn't in the book is this stuff I know this is right after Harrington and Shackman in the SPA formally like the SPA is just disbanded and it's before Harrington starts trying to form the precursor organization to the DSA or or the other organization that emerges out of the ashes of the
SPA . The SP USA doesn't exist yet either and Also , as kind of background context , lash was working with Barbara Aaron Like and a few other people during this time period to start a workers party which doesn't go anywhere , and he doesn't write about you one of the essays associated with it is in World of Nations .
Right that calls for a more cultural politics . Basically , right . You know he wants to wage a culture war . I'm joking , of course he does not want to do that . He kind of doesn't want to do it actually in in the end of wants it to be about , about work and a reorienting , and of cultural questions to questions of work rather than questions of leisure .
So it's a very different type of Cultural politics and culture war than what we think of as culture war right , it's not about religious questions or about , or about , like , campus freedom or any of that .
He thinks that like okay , that's fine , but that's not really what we need to be hill for , and the wrong focus of what a left-back should try to do and I think he's also pretty critical of this cultural revolutionism , counterculture , and we have to say it because at this time period these things kind of , even in some of their their proponents and an antagonist
heads , are almost the same thing , like cuz . Like , for example , if you read Slouching torch , bethlehem , bethlehem , by Joan Didion , joan Didion clearly sees the hippie counterculture and the anti-revisionist Maoist as like , clearly related . So it was definitely in the zeitgeist of the time even that they were related . So I find that I find that interesting .
There's also an interesting thing in this part of the book where Lash doesn't say this , but he implies it , that this movement is cut off from where most Americans are at the time .
He identifies it as based in the student movement , which he says is distinguished in some ways for most Americans but not in others . So it focuses on the ways in which it is distinguished , which is its temporary existence as a leisure class , but it's not focused on the way it's not distinguished in that they're future workers .
Future workers , and about a good portion of them are also from workers , is what he points out .
And a good portion of them are from our GIs , from we are or whatever , especially in , I guess not Korea . It would be in the early 60s .
Early 60s it would have been Korea and the late 60s it would have been Vietnam .
Yeah , so these people have seen American foreign policy intimately .
I think one thing that really interests me about this section and we've talked about before , but I always want to talk about more is the way in which a lot of these essays explain a lot of the developments of the American left in our own time and repeat , very exacting , a lot of the tendencies there , including in a temporary turn to Marxism , activated in part
by the election of a non non left wing but inspiring political leader During a time of a new form of economic crisis and or economic situation , and resulting finally in an attempt to fail and a failed attempt to take over the Democratic Party , with the result of fissure and a focus and retention only of a cultural leftist leftism , rather than a holistic political
focus on reorienting American politics right .
One of the things it feels like that does oddly feel . I mean there's even other parts of it that we can parallel . For example , a one term right wing leader who inspires a whole lot of so was kind of useful and dismantling parts of the American war apparatus . I mean it's like the amount of rhymes between the early 70s and now are creepy .
Well , this is . This is one thing , though , which is the biggest difference , and it's the thing that sticks with me and that I don't know what to do with . So , you know , let's think of this is focusing on two elections and the intervening space between them 1968 and 1972 .
Right , and in our own time , there's been two elections which have shaped the American left base . I mean , you know , there's way more , because it's all history but 2016 and 2020 . And the big difference between the two of them , I would also say 2012 .
I mean it's like been like a whole , you know a whole narrative , but these are the two that , like a left politician , was active within the Democratic Party . Basically Correct , yeah yeah , so 68 and 16 have some interesting parallels in the sense of there's a movement by the Democratic Party to purposely reduce the power of the left within the party .
It's done really overtly in 1968 because that can happen , and in 2016 , it's done less overtly and is less necessary , you know honestly , because Bernie was not as popular or good at winning primaries as Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy were .
In comparison , tom Frick , I mean it's a different animal on what the party is , but basically you get a mainstream liberal who is defeated in a close election by a right-winger .
But the difference there's a pretty profound difference between the context of 72 , where the new left continues organizing and takes over the party in the form of the government or at least a subset of the new left does , and 2020 , where the party is not taken over by the left . In fact , it nominates a centrist and then the centrist wins .
And then you know , in 1972 , of course , nixon cruises to an unbelievable victory for telling what would have been a strong right-wing turn in the early 70s that was eventually arrested only by Nixon's you know own paranoia and failures to recognize that he didn't really need to spy on the McGovern campaign at all .
And this to me is a pretty crucial difference that in one instance the period of left-up swing is ended by a strong victory for the American right and in the other it's ended by a real , if not as vast , victory for the American center .
So one thing I think we have to continue with now that's different than then is counter-psycholic politics emerge in the 80s . Yeah , so one of the things that comes after what we can call the long 70s which you know is this period that Lash is writing about , in the cultural narcissism up to the minimum self is there's just a general , there's political chaos .
I mean , how many one-term presidents do you have during this time period , like you have Johnson ?
you have Ford , you have Carter .
Right and Nixon doesn't get their fully service second term , so like you don't actually have a you don't have eight years from Eisenhower until Reagan Right and I think people under and this stabilizes where we only have one one-term president in the intervening period for 30 whole years , and even then it's probably because of a spoiler , frankly , although it's hard to
really understand exactly why George Bush senior lost . George Bush senior lost yeah , I mean , there's so much going on there but to but it's a period until the end of the Bush administration really kind of cracks it , of remarkable political consistency , even when parties change .
So even when you get a year of plea from what would have otherwise been like a straight Republican domination of the executive , you do see a real crack Like there is a there is a majority , especially in terms of monetary policy and foreign policy .
But you do see real differences in domestic economic and social policy Right that are not super broad but are substantive .
Domestic policy in what way ? I actually find this very interesting because Between , because a lot of the Reagan agenda is actually implemented by the Clinton administration .
Oh . I was talking about between Bush and Obama .
Oh yeah , no , no , no , I actually do think there is . You're right there . So when we get to this first brick at the end of the Bush administration , when things really crack .
The Clinton does have like minorly higher tax rates for wealthier nurse , but that's not like , that's not that much . But he also gots welfare and Well , that's why I'm saying for Clinton it's not really anything , except you know safe , legal and rare and go and control differences , actually Right , but those are not like again , substantive but not substantial .
But I mean , I would even say they're less substantive than even the Obama administration , where in the Obama administration , you have a huge cultural domestic policy change on the orientation of a gay marriage and like that happened .
I was abroad when it happened , but the world when I left the United States in 2009 and the world when I came back in 2017 were so fucking different on those fronts in particular .
Yeah , but the basic point stands is that huge portions of the American political , american political discussion were basically settled questions from Reagan until the end of Obama's tenure .
Right . Well , I would actually say , though , obama's , when you do see some other shifts , but they're not done by the presidency .
¶ Monetary Policy and Political Shifts
So there's massive change in monetary policy . Massive change in monetary policy in the terms of quantitative easing being picked from the end A lot of those you see at the end of the Bush administration .
Actually , it's just the financial crisis , right ? Well , I mean people forget that Lindsey Graham called for the nationalization of America's banks , right ?
Well , this is what I was actually going to point out . It's forced on them , kind of like COVID forces , the first things on both Trump and Biden . When I see someone from , I've seen people from one side try to argue oh , all the benefits for Trump , and I'm not just talking , I could even hear some socialists make this argument .
And then I've heard from the other side well , biden's a neo-progressive , but Trump isn't , and I'm like they were both forced onto this from emergency , just like in 2006 , 2007 , and 2008 . So what you have is the administrative state taking action , but the executive's kind of stable .
There is a dying back of American force or an Obama in some ways and not others . So you actually see the acceleration of drone policy .
It's in the Libyan intervention . You see the Syrian intervention . Right , you see the purchase , but you do see the troops leave a rock .
But you also see basically the what you see is , and so much that the poverty draft was ever a thing . It was a thing in the late Bush administration and that is ended because it's politically a liability . So there's this big push to automate the military . So in that sense it's different .
And the other thing that we have to point out , in a way and maybe this is how people understand , we think about the post-work consensus . That's lasting a very long time , but that's only because we didn't live through it . It's actually really fucking short . It lasted from 1947 to 1963 . Right , that's not even 20 years .
The neoliberal consensus lasts for almost a full 30 years and in some ways , if you look at when it really begins , which is actually , you know , the Ford Carter transition , to when it is in what it's currently in , which is some new form , but it hasn't totally gone away , which is right now and it might not go away , I don't know .
It's like pretty clear that it's definitely happening from 1976 until 2008 .
But we don't have . What is not clear is , unlike 1976 , like , the interim period between the post-war consensus and a new government is only like seven , eight years . I mean a new form of managing capital , not a new . There's all kinds of new governments , but is like seven or eight years .
This one now , this interim period has now gone on for 15 , like almost 15 years . Like you have lived what like more of your life in this interim period than not , and I say interim as if we know that this is ending and going into something else . Maybe this is a new period , but it's not clear what this is .
We'll know in about 10 years , hopefully , right , I mean to be fair , like people started realizing what neoliberalism really was after it had been around for 20 years almost .
Yeah , so , like I mean , I think that a lot of this , well , a lot of what happens is that there's a shift in a lot of the political bases associated with these different forms of managing capital , which is much more rapid from Fordism into neoliberalism , because all of the like , so much of the construction , takes place under Fordism .
So what I mean by this is like that's when the highways get built , that's when the suburbs get made After , in the period from like roughly 1945 until 2000, .
80% of America's built structures are constructed and most of those the groundwork is laying in , like the Fordist period , because that's when the highways are being made , that's when home policies expanding the construction of single family homes , and so you create the new political basis of American politics , which is a suburban majority that nobody foresees coming and
winds up voting for the right wing . And now , in our own period , that's a much more . It's much less clear that the sub there's a suburban-exurban divide , there's different subsets within the suburbs , as housing needs have shifted people away from these core suburbs .
And all of this is to say that , like , you're rapidly changing the composition of the material composition of the American voting base in the Fordist period in a way that's much less rapid in the neoliberal period , and so I think that stretches out changes in their response and in the politics you see associated with that .
I would agree with that and that has led to . Why can the late 60s a consensus that the liberal consensus is over although it's a different liberal consensus now than it was in the 60s Like that liberal consensus was Fordism , fordism in America's weak social democracy in Europe , a kind of Britain , woods , kansy and Ron transatlantic integrated super state .
Now the transatlantic super state thing that's been . That's still kind of true . It's like it was weakening at the end of the Obama-Trump era , but this current situation in Russia has definitely reintegrated that .
There's been a couple of times when it's weekend but which are very like . For example in the late 90s when Japan and Germany were out competing American companies so or no when America was starting to out compete German and Japanese companies and so they needed to switch that up and outsource jobs and do asset bubbles instead to tie them together .
And then when Trump just like kind of pissed off every leader in the American sphere and so they needed to do a diplomatic blitz and then do Ukraine . I mean they didn't do Ukraine , but Ukraine happened . So it's proved remarkably resilient despite economic and diplomatic and military pressures .
Yeah , I mean even with , like , even with France threatening to go rogue all the time since , like , iraq war one , it is maintained , and that is something that's very interesting . So , on one hand , you have something that looks a lot like the 60s . On another hand , as we've stated , let's talk about some other differences .
One students are in decline , not expanding , both in like , there's no baby boom and the size of the millennial generation was maintained largely through immigration , which significantly changed both the racial and , frankly , religious way out of the country .
And it lends itself to a different politics and different pension points .
Right .
¶ Generational Shifts and Political Fragmentation
Another major difference is , I think people need to understand , while the multiversity that Lash was writing about man , I had to look that up . I was like who used that word I don't remember fucking her Was talking about .
You know , he's making fun of that concept , but he's talking about this increasing use of the university for so many different social functions which , he's right , is only gonna get more intense and we're just gonna replay over and over again .
I mean it's still true , which is nobody thinks it's significant anymore . They're just like oh this is the way it works .
One of the things , though , that's really changed is the Zoomer generation . Your generation is actually quite small , and there will be no immigration relief for its size , at least not if either party has anything to do with their undercurrent conditions .
Yeah , that's the reason actually we're so strict on no age gap relationships . It's self-preservation .
Sure , it's also a generation that's relationship to an American identity and dream of any sort left wing or right wing is highly fractured . And I see this as a teacher because you know we talk about the fragmentation of pop culture and all that that really begins in the early 2000s . But there is a high fragmentation of American identity beyond racial grounds .
That makes talking about American politics now kind of difficult . So , for example , when we talk about left wing attitudes , towards , toward in , like generation Z , there are some things which I think everything bears it out . There are other things where I'm like , but the meaning of left wing has changed .
That's mostly been because in generation C has moved further left , but not on everything , and many of these things are contested . And so with your generation , for example , not identifying with conservatism may not mean the same thing as it has in the past , because frankly no one wants to fucking identify with conservatism under probably 45 .
Like that does not like eat but like this doesn't mean there isn't a right wing , it doesn't mean they're still reactionary , is it like ? In fact there's probably you know like ?
They have like 20 Twitter names which are like Harry Bird and Joy ? Are you know like ?
Right , I mean I think we can . You know , the most dramatic thing was like a Tiny sliver of the population becoming the outright which was who's ? But there is this kind of right wing movement In the United States which is further right then has been common .
There's a good example of this on , like most major issues , but a good example is abortion , where the people who most want abortion to be totally banned Are young anti-abortion people who are also this us , like the tiniest subset of the anti-abortion movement . So it's just that the youth are like , if they're , you know , sickos already , they're real sickos .
Yeah , I mean and this is also true of like racialism where , like when I was coming up , low key racialism was everywhere , but explicit racialism was for like wash generation weirdos .
Yeah , and now people are like you know , they're like what's your haplot group ?
or whatever right and now it's like you . For example , all the racial nationalist in the 90s and odds hid . They use code words like human biodiversity or something you know . They would borrow words from the left even to hide themselves , except for like out and out super Nazis . But those people are really , really , were really really , really , really , really rare .
I mean the , the clan had declined significantly from the 80s into the 90s , like when I was growing up . Now you know these movements are much more out in the open , much you know . I still think they're , they're probably smaller . They're tiny .
They're just more vocal and more willing to be vocal , in part because of anonymity and in part because the Republican Party is more receptive to them . Frankly , right .
I love just saying , like there's so many talking points that used to be far right talking points that you would .
You know , like right wing , yeah , like the Republican Party has gone is not a cooperative participant in maintaining American capitalism in the way you know under in in terms of neoliberalism .
Yeah , I saw someone like take Rhonda Santas quotes and David do quotes and put them side by side . It was kind of eerie .
I Mean they're like big cultural stuff now is like banning books and like arresting teachers , practically like yeah , you know that that might be a little over the top , but not much like .
No , and like out and out lying on , like about cultural things . It's in outside of Florida , it doesn't have a lot of pool .
Although , as I will say , and I've said many times and and this is something that we talked about , but it was not true when last was writing we do have a counter-siculic Independent majority , and what I mean by that is there's a group of people who in the past would have been centrist our Centrist independence they might not have identified with the party .
Those people now seem to radically shift politics against whatever's happening in the White House , and so during a Trump administration , a lot of them are radically Anti-Trump . And then those same people Are people adjacent to the same people .
It's like the same areas of the country at least will become radically anti-biden too , and even if it's not literally the same person , it's like in the same regions of the country . Now , interestingly , right now , for example , the Supreme Court seemed to have bought that off , so it happened after the midterms this time instead of dearing . But that's predictable .
But that actually , and why I talk about that ? That's like . So two generation trend that really kind of starts with generation X Becoming a voting . Well , with With generation X and younger baby boomers becoming a voting age in the 80s and has been maintained since then , and it's probably generation X is driving a lot of the flip-flopping .
Frankly , they're the most conservative generation right by a lot but and and as I've argued with people , it makes sense that they are , if you kind of think about it , like they came under Under Reagan at a time when Reaganism appeared to be working right and and they do not like the cultural turn because their left , in so much that existed , was a , was a
cult which a cultural libertine left . It was kind of a descendant and a kind of right-wing descended in some ways of the counterculture . And and you know , while , yes , the 90s campus wars had complaints about political correctness , most , even left-wing people Would complain about that . That was like an uptight centrist thing , I Mean .
I do remember growing up in the 90s it was like super common to to complain about .
But One of the things that I have seen now , I mean also like the left-wing politics they grew up under , it wasn't just Reaganism like it , it's , it's also Clinton to Obama , where , like , the left doesn't change anything anyway , actual change seems to come from the right almost always , and I think that's that that explains a lot , plus the fall of the Soviet
Union , plus , you know , the plus , like Europe's left-wing Looking so neoliberal to they . Just it really did seem like , oh , there is no other way for that generation , and then they , they really come into power under Bush , right , so you know they're , they're , they're products of a right-wing Council culture on culture war , and so that's .
That's different too , like the generational divides . For all that we think about the 60s is like there's a huge divide in generations and there
¶ Exploring Generational Wealth and Political Shifts
was . If you went to college it it was not Interestingly , it was perceived as endemic in society . But like the work of Rick Perlstein , etc . Actually makes it pretty clear that like we're just over focusing on the 20% than what the college why .
Yeah , yeah , yeah yeah whereas I just like to point this out when they're like oh , it's a minority of people who have school degrees . I'm like , if you're under 40 , you are 60% likely to at least have an associate's degree level of education .
Yeah , I mean that's . Another big difference is that and that is one of the differences between the Reagan and Bush and Clinton , as Clinton pushed a massive expansion in the number of people who went to college through , like you know , student loan programs .
Basically , I mean that started under Johnson , but Clinton , you know , really used a lot of it and a lot of it really accelerates and then all the other forms of aid fall away too . So , like the Pail Grant hasn't , like I think the Pail Grant cut off has been $50,000 now for like 40 fucking years .
Home ownership is another form of aid which never goes away , basically , but it's , you know , it's going away though .
Yeah , it is going away , I mean we are becoming a lot more like continental Europe and our home prices and availability .
So yeah , well , that's .
That's one reason why the generation gap is so intense , though in purely the UK and the US and not continental Europe is that , first of all , two party system in both you know , both the UK and the US , but not most of Europe and then also there's a much stronger generation gap in terms of wealth and income , though that's also going to go away when you know
the great passing on of the boomer wealth occurs over the next 20 years .
Well , here's the thing , though . One of the things that complicates that and the firm point is that to me is a lot of the boomer wealth is gone . So so what I mean by that ?
Like , like , we started seeing millennials get their inheritance in the last 10 years , and that's led to some fragmentation amongst millennials , but it's been less than even I thought , because a lot of the baby boomers live so much longer that they really have exhausted a lot of their , their wealth and yeah , there's definitely some that there's .
There was a New York Times piece that came out tracking this like a month ago or two , which was really interesting and basically what it said is mostly the boomers are still alive and there's a serious most of the wealth is concentrated , as you'd expect , in a tiny minority of the boomers , but it's a lot of money basically .
Well , yeah , so . So there , there , there is kind of the children on the BLEESO Bleach who are just going to get richer when their grandparents die , but it's the like . One of the interesting things about the trends amongst the boomers is before 2007 , boomer wealth was actually fairly not evenly distributed that's crazy .
But it was not as unequal as the other generations had experienced it , including Gen X . And one of the things that happened and the boomers you know , after 2007 is like they start seeing more and more of the inequality themselves too . But they're already so old so they're in .
They're in a better state in some degree , unless they're poor already to weather it . But if there are also the recipients of the last major expansion of the American welfare state right , Well , and this is the other thing , like this is even true in Britain , when you know people like , oh well , why are you winding about 16% homeowner thing ?
We did 17% and I'm like , yeah , but houses costs like one hundredth in Britain of what they do now .
Yeah .
And I hate to explain to you 3% of a large number can be more than 16% of a small number . But and that's also true here Like , like , for example , we never hit the kind of height of the 80s and 90s interest rates that the UK did . But you know a lot of our parents like my , like we'll talk about .
Well , when I first got my house , I had a 9% mortgage , and you're not that high and I'm like , yeah , but your house was literally $50,000 . And this house now is $500,000 . Like that's a huge like difference . And like I hate to tell you that even with high , even with high inflation , that does not bear that out Now .
So , for all the superficial similarities that we see in Lash , I guess we've now spent a good half an hour saying like there's a lot of deep things that aren't the same .
Well it's , there are new that . Well , for me , that's that's the strange thing is the economic conditions and the political conditions are so different now , so why is it that it still sounds the same when we talk about the left ?
Well , we've basically seen four cycles in the 20th century to the early 21st century of a left trying to take over the Democratic Party , and the first one is the one that's hardest to justify , that's the populist and William Jr Bryant moving from the people's party into the Democratic Party , when the Democratic Party then clearly is a reactionary post of a war
party , of a hodgepodge bunch of interest , most of which are not in the interest of sharecroppers . And so that way and we tend to read William Jennings Bryant's concession there as well that's what we always done . We've always entered . I'm like no , we didn't .
But but when people I think I have insights with the like purging of the like AFL right in the 1890s , like which is and last mentions in here , like Buddy , there's no coming back from that one Like that was really bad for socialism in the US .
So .
So then you have the consolidation under and last doesn't call it this , but that's what it was the left in the socialist movement and then the popular front with the Communist movement , with the Democrats in the 40s , which still Only makes sense in the terms of kind of the New Deal and the World War two coalition Like that's the only way that really makes sense
.
We have in between , like a I wouldn't call them left , but certainly like a way of changing the Democrats from being a purely reactionary party , with the ascent of the progressive movement in both parties .
Right . So say the progressive movement was bipartisan , so it was an attempt to realign both parties . Yeah , and it succeeded .
Yeah , temporarily , and but yeah then . So by the time you have the popular front . I just wanted to say like the Democratic Party is no longer purely reactionary . No , no , no , point of no .
I think the the the thing about and it's also interesting I think Michael Lynn points this out and I don't love Michael Lynn politics , we're not wrong about this Like the Republican coalition until the basically , until basically the Bush administration , almost it is , although it starts to change and I think last writes about this when it does start to change .
It starts to change in the 80s , but the Republican really is a bourgeois party and when the bourgeois progressive , it's progressive and the bourgeois not progressive , it's not progressive Like it .
And it kind of falls initially kind of on the lines you'd expect in Marxism Right , like , like when the bourgeois are fighting the more reactionary self there you go and it's . you know it's hard to explain people to people Like Americans , even though they'll go .
Well , you know , before the 60s the parties were before FDR the parties were opposite , or before the 60s parties were opposite . You know both and I'm like no , but that's not really true either . Like before .
I mean , the big dream in the 60s of a lot of liberals and I'm talking mainstream liberals was to make the parties corresponds to ideology , Because before that it was just like kind of vibes .
Yeah , no , it was . It was regional vibes and regional interest and kind of like southern interest , whether they were progressive or
¶ Political Parties in Southern States
aggressive . We're in the Democratic Party which , at the state level , I might add , did not until the year 2000 .
Like , like that process , you know when people talk about Nixon and the Southern strategy or whatever , but that process is not consolidated till George Bush , which I think people don't have I mean like Obama's the senators voting for the Affordable Care Act or voting against it .
It's all like Louisiana . You know we're in this year . There's a Democratic governor of Louisiana who's like a good old boy , basically , who is anti abortion and anti gun control , who yeah , yeah , the last gasp of the Dixie crats , but they for the most part have been dead for since for about 20 years . Absolutely .
It's just that there's like a long tail to these things .
And it would be Louisiana . I mean Louisiana and Mississippi's were the most backwards , but I mean it's . It is interesting because also it explains a little bit like if , like if you do a Republicans in the West they can be kind of reactionary and a libertarian bent , but you don't see Ron DeSantis shit out here , you just don't .
You might see it from from like individual state , like Congress people , but there's not a Western governor who's picked up that kind of talking points of coalition . So I think that's interesting on a lot of levels . I suppose we should kind of pivot back to the , to the last pieces , but I'm going to do that . An episode two .