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Well, if we manage to fend off a depression I don't think the regulatory regime will have that much longevity unless we do something very clever.
by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Fri Oct 10th, 2008 at 07:51:48 AM EST
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A liberal Shock Doctrine approach.

Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.
by Drew J Jones (pedobear@pennstatefootball.com) on Fri Oct 10th, 2008 at 08:13:57 AM EST
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That's it, but that requires commitment to fundamentally alter the prevailing economic ideas that are the superstructure of the global economy.

You have to be willing to accept that nationalization rather than being verboten may be the answer. You have to recognize that markets are not self-regulating, they require state intervention in order to ensure that they don't destroy the means by which societies provide for their material needs. It means accepting the proposition that the concentration of wealth is detrimental to the economic health of societies, and arguing for income redistribution as a means to attack wealth inequality in the long term.  It means recognizing that decision making rules that constitute the electorate as a function of ((individual * wealth) +(individual * wealth)) rather than individual + individual are fundamentally flawed and in contradiction to democratic principles.

This is a tall order.  I really doubt that either of the current US presidential candidates can pull it off.  Historical sequence matters, and the consequences of sequencing are drastic.

Consider the Great Depression in the United States and the 1928 election.

Al Smith vs Herbert Hoover.  The parallels are striking.  Al Smith was a "historic" candidate, the first Catholic who might become president of the United States.  Herbert Hoover was a "moderate" Republican often at odds with his own party.  Both believed that the use of popular government as a means to battle the excesses of big business was nothing less than communism.  

Smith would later become a bitter rival of FDR, supporting an attempted military coup attempt against him in the 1930s and the presidential candidacies of Republican candidates in 1936 and 1940.

Now consider a counterfactual.  What if Smith had won in 1928?  The ability of the party of the center left to move to the left evaporates.  The inability to move left within the existing party system means no Democratic New Deal, reform must occur outside of the system rather than within it.  Social liberalism must yield to one of two worlds: 1) Social Democracy, 2) Fascism.

Social Democracy arising from outside of the system means that conservative reactionaries are able to attack policies promoted by the working class to protect themselves as communist revolution against the "natural" order.  If in opposition action by the Left is crushed following the example of the Asturian revolt of 1934 in Spain.  If in power, the presence of party originating from outside of the system leads economic elites to conservative revolution to restore the order they prefer, i.e. conservative military uprising.  Civil war. Death, destruction, etc.

All this because there was no way to make the needed change in the system, requiring a change of the system.

If Obama wins this election and is "Smith-like", the change of the system must occur, because change in the system has been excluded as a possibility.

As for the possibility of reactionary revolution in America, consider that this possibility is more plausible now than it was at any time in the 1930s.  Because in the 1930s, military power was the preserve of the state.  When the coup leaders approached Gen. Smedley Butler, he turned the tables on them.

If latter day coupsters approach Blackwater's Erik Prince, will we be so lucky?

Sleep on that one, if you can.

And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg

by ManfromMiddletown (manfrommiddletown at lycos dot com) on Fri Oct 10th, 2008 at 04:20:04 PM EST
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Dare you post that as diary on dKos?...

Even if not, methinks you should diarise it on Booman at least.

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.

by DoDo on Fri Oct 10th, 2008 at 05:29:11 PM EST
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I do plan to diary on it at Economic Populist, where I spend most of my time on this side of the Atlantic.

I guarantee you that posting this on Kos would get me banned.

They don't get it.  They never will, until it happens.  And the biggest problem is that they all think that the current system is sustainable.  Ecologically and socially.

And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg

by ManfromMiddletown (manfrommiddletown at lycos dot com) on Fri Oct 10th, 2008 at 05:42:28 PM EST
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I guarantee you that posting this on Kos would get me banned.

Uh... why?

Daily Kos is not a republican web page is it?

<confused>

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

by Starvid on Fri Oct 10th, 2008 at 05:50:25 PM EST
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reread my earlier post.  I'm suggesting that it would be better for the right to rule than for real solutions to be pushed straight out of the political system because the Left won with policies that will do no good.  And will deny the opportunity for the call for real state intervention to come from a party of the Left inside the system.

In short I'm suggesting that in the long term it may be  more preferable that McCain win than that Obama and his followers get their victory.  That is what would get me banned from Daily Kos.

Because  Kos is political site, not a policy site.

And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg

by ManfromMiddletown (manfrommiddletown at lycos dot com) on Fri Oct 10th, 2008 at 05:59:16 PM EST
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I had no idea that dailykos is such a homogeneous group that nobody "gets it" over there.

Other than that ... beware of the people who save capitalism for itself.

by mimi on Sat Oct 11th, 2008 at 08:07:41 PM EST
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Colman:
Well, if we manage to fend off a depression

That's a big if. The current system is against the wall. And even if it manages to come back (which we'll know by Monday), the point that it is fucked up has been made abundantly clear to even the most vested insider:

U.S. Stocks Gyrate After Global Selloff - NYTimes.com

"This is atrocious," said Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at Standard & Poor's. "People are scared. Nobody believes what is coming out of the mouths of politicians, chief executives."

Consequently, I think the chances for a New Deal moment are higher than I've ever seen them in my adult lifetime.

The fact is that what we're experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. -Paul Krugman

by dvx (dvx.clt ät gmail dotcom) on Fri Oct 10th, 2008 at 10:31:11 AM EST
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