tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6679900905356691531.post895072297210483203..comments2024-03-28T17:26:00.653-07:00Comments on ZZ's blog: The Collapse of the Center, Where is the Left?zoltan zigedyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09376602245528691381noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6679900905356691531.post-85872318864114356902018-03-12T17:55:17.245-07:002018-03-12T17:55:17.245-07:00This an important point in dispute. If it is merel...This an important point in dispute. If it is merely a question of policy and the failure to defend a policy or the betrayal of a policy, then social democrats (Democrats in the US) will argue that we can simply go back in time and restore the post-war Keynesian consensus and the welfare or semi-welfare state. After all, Lyndon Johnson thought that we could have guns and butter, too. <br /><br />But he was wrong. The deficit spending of the 1960s produced waves of inflation and economic stagnation. The revival of European and Japanese industrial competition in the 1970s attacked the rate of profit, a rate only restored with the attack on labor and living standards mounted by the right (and supported later by the "New Democrats").There was no clear-cut way for capitalism to escape stagnation, inflation, and sinking profitability without squeezing the working class. <br /><br />Liberals answer "But if..." and go on to describe a Utopian scenario impossible to achieve within the historical constraints of that moment given a backward labor movement and a Democratic Party realigned by the loss of the South and a dependency upon the social liberalism and economic conservatism of its new-found suburban constituency, a reality that constrains the party even today.<br /><br />I regret I didn't explain this better in the article.<br /><br />Greg zoltan zigedyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09376602245528691381noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6679900905356691531.post-44227182348806522792018-03-11T12:16:45.790-07:002018-03-11T12:16:45.790-07:00"Faced with shifting alignments and the 1970s..."Faced with shifting alignments and the 1970s failure of Old Labour/New Deal policies "<br /><br />Which "old labour New Deal policy" , "failed" ? In What way did it fail? (given what it was intended to do?) ..No.The failure was of "old left/new deal" politics, not the social policies it enacted.solersohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14384736286615189367noreply@blogger.com