02-02-2021, 02:13 PM
(02-01-2021, 02:39 PM)Einzige Wrote:(02-01-2021, 02:06 PM)David Horn Wrote:(02-01-2021, 12:58 PM)Einzige Wrote: Can any of you describe the political economy of Team Fed or Team Blue in any systemic way?
For this, you must paint with a sprayer, because it's all over the map.
I can pretty well do so.
Team Red theoretically supports free markets and low taxes.
Practice means more than theory. "Team Red" no longer believes in free markets. If it can use Big Government, as in lavish subsidies and lucrative contracts with the government it does. If it can favor monopolies and cartels over small businesses it does. If it can bring about wars to secure captive markets, cheap labor, and economic resources it does. It is perfectly happy to 'liberate' countries like Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela only to subject the people of those countries to America's most rapacious capitalists. It may have made peace with welfare because Big Business has found a reliable market among the poor for food, housing, fuels, and medicine.
Quote:In actuality it subsidizes domestic manufacturers and extractive industries, with roots in the Army and Marines (of course the military skews conservative in general, but these are the political mainstays of the GOP there), as well as agriculture. This creates contradictions between its social base and theoretical superstructure.
Technically, the Marines are under the command of the Navy. It is easy to see the Army and the Marines as brute force in warfare, but that is becoming obsolete. See further.
Quote:Team Blue ostensibly supports leveling social programs and unions.
Not really.
Quote:In actuality it subsidizes foreign trade oriented industries and the emerging green and IT sectors; in the military its strength mostly lies in the Navy and Air Force. This produces contradictions between its social base and theoretical superstructure.
You may get this idea from the connection of the Navy and Air Force to high technology. It is worth remembering that the high technology of Silicon Valley depended upon
(1) the engineering department, especially the electrical-engineering section of the University of California at Berkeley
(2) the analogue at Stanford University
(3) the analogue at San Jose State University
(4) the analogue at California Polytechnic, which although isn't in in the San Francisco Bay Area but is about as close to the Bay Area as "Ell Ay", with the Bay Area much more attractive to "nerds"
(5) well-trained electrical engineers from the US Navy who completed their military terms
You would be surprised how important the fifth was at least in the 1970's.
......
There are other areas with high-tech booms, and what is most essential is that the places be attractive places in which to live and have excellent universities with great engineering departments, like the Route 128 corridor near Boston, "Silicon Prairie" which is Austin, Texas but to a lesser extent Dallas and San Antonio (Waco seems somehow to be missed), San Diego (which is a hotbed for biotech), and arguably Ann Arbor. Detroit, Flint, and Toledo may be urban Hells, but Ann Arbor is very nice. I'm going to guess that Madison, Wisconsin is much like that. It is obviously harder to attract technologically-adept people who recognize the value of learning (and high technology relies heavily upon learning) who would find it hard to relocate to places like... well, Detroit, where nothing seems to work. Right now, even its major-league sports teams are awful, and don't let me start on the Detroit Independent Fool District.
Quote:The interplay of these contradictions drives the dialectic of American politics.
That's Hegel for you. History never quite comes to an end, does it? History is largely how Humanity deals with contradictions in everything important, from religion to economics to partisan politics to culture to technology.
Quote:Marxism works.
You tell me -- which Marxist school? I am sure that someone can tell me that there is some perfect form of fascism that would solve all problems. Yes, cull Humanity until the only people still are the ones who adore the Greatest Political Leader of All Time. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, the Chilean and Argentine military regimes, Apartheid figures in South Africa, and Satan Hussein are much more similar than they might have said they were.
Humanity is terribly flawed, but what else is there? Maybe we must accommodate some of the flaws in people who have no choice and put the squeeze on people who have the choice and do wrong (like Donald Trump).
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.