Philip Bobbitt's Theories of Changes in the Constitutional Order

[sbarrera]

On another thread someone posted an article by Philip Bobbitt, in which he mentions his idea of how our constitutional order is evolving from the nation-state to what he terms the "market state." I noted in a comment that Bobbitt has this whole theory of how the constitutional order changes periodically and how his theory might be related to other theories of cycles of history. I was surprised that we didn't have a thread about him already on the forum (I mean, that's what we discuss here, right?), so I have created this one.

First, this is a blog post I published a few years back on his theory:

http://stevebarrera.com/category/strategy-review/

[A review of] The Shield of Achilles, by Philip Bobbitt. Bobbitt is a constitutional law expert, and this very long book (usually described as “magisterial”) formulates a theory of the evolution of the state as proceeding through periodic “epochal wars” which redefine the constitutional order. As each new form of the state is legitimized, the seeds are planted for the growth of the form which will come to replace it. Thus he describes a kind of historical cycle, to join many others which have been postulated.

Bobbitt traces the emergence of the state to Renaissance Italy and the philosophy of Niccolò Machiavelli. He then describes an evolutionary sequence from the first “Princely states” of the Renaissance to the modern nation state. Each time the state transforms, it is because after a constitutional order is legitimized by victory in the epochal war, the very factors which led to that victory proceed to undermine and delegitimize it as future events unfold. In the case of the “nation state” order, Bobbitt identifies its legitimization with the West’s Cold War victory, the culmination of a Long War against first Fascism, and then Communism, both constitutional orders competing with the Liberal Democratic Western order. It was advancements in high-speed computing and telecommunications which eventually secured this victory.

In the 21st century, these very advancements have empowered individuals, diminished the state’s ability to influence the economy, and generated new security threats which are immune to the nation state’s conventional means of deterrence. Now delegitimized, the familiar nation state of the 20th century is giving way to what Bobbitt calls the “market state.” A key difference between the two orders is that whereas the nation state serves the welfare of the nation through public services and social safety nets, the market state maximizes economic opportunity for its citizens, while protecting them from environmental degradation and network-infiltrating dangers such as infectious disease and terrorism. The state’s role has evolved from managing the system for the benefit of the people, in competition with other states with different ideologies (the Cold War status quo), to protecting the system’s perimeters while allowing the people to manage themselves in a loosely controlled consumer marketplace of global extent (the Washington Consensus and the “End of History.”)

There is even more to this work, as it covers not just constitutional orders but also theories about international law, which necessarily transform in accordance with the evolving forms of the state. Bobbitt identifies a boundary or membrane between the realm of law, which orders society within the state’s purview, and that of strategy, which orders the interactions among states. The victory which legitimizes an order of the state amounts to the successful application of strategy, but with it comes an alteration of the international milieu, which renders that strategy untenable. In competing for the new strategy which ensures survival and dominance, states must necessarily evolve their own internal orders.

So, for example, the nation state strategy of massive conventional armed forces became obsolete in an era of WMDs (which can take out massed forces) and advanced computers (which make smaller forces much more effective). The United States responded by switching to a volunteer armed force, and developing theories of network-centric warfare.

Bobbitt sees the 21st century War on Terror as the epochal war driving the transition from nation state to market state. Presumably one of the Great Power civilizations will discover a successful strategic response to the security threat created by network-exploiting “bad actors,” one which has eluded the world so far. Whichever power does so will determine the ideal model of the market state.

The Shield of Achilles was followed by the equally magisterial Terror and Consent, which elaborates on the interplay between strategy and law in the case of the challenge of combating global networked terrorism. Bobbitt’s opinion is always worth seeking, because of his erudition and legal expertise, so I always look for his latest opinion pieces and interview. He has no regular column or web site that I know of, but here is a recent interview. As the world order continues to transform radically, I will keep searching for more of his insights.

[sbarrera]

Bobbitt's theories have a cyclical nature in that they are fundamentally about the growth and decay of the constitutional order. Note that he is a legal scholar specializing in constitutional law. So his perspective is from a legal understanding of what a constitutional order is and how one is derived.

Ultimately, law rests on strategy; that is, a government can only enforce its laws and maintain its legal system so long as it retains its monopoly on the use of force. When social or technological changes occur which undermine this monopoly then the order must shift to adjust. In other words, the order ages over time and becomes less effective, and a new order rises to replace it. A familiar narrative to students of historical cycles.

Bobbitt does not link these changes in the constitutional order to generational change specifically. And he's not bound by the length of generations in identifying when these shifts occur. So he doesn't theorize any kind of regular cycle, or two- or four-stroke pattern or anything like that. He just identifies "epochal wars" which forge a particular constitutional order, and appear at different times in history.

Now the concept of an "epochal war" sure sounds like a Fourth Turning. And some of Bobbitt's epochal wars are in fact wars during S&H 4Ts, which is not surprising, since both Bobbitt and S&H are looking at wars connected to major political transformation.

Here are Bobbitt's epochal wars and the constitutional order which came out of each one:

• 1515-1555 Hapsburg-Valois Wars THE KINGLY STATE (this was the end of the concept of Christendom as one secular domain with King's subservient to the Holy Roman Emperor and the Pope; instead each King was in charge of his own Kingdom completely)
  
• 1618-1648 Thirty Years War THE TERRITORIAL STATE (Peace of Westphalia, from which came the idea of territorial integrity of states. Many historians identify this treaty as the beginnging of the nation state, but Bobbitt reserves that term for a more specific period)
  
• 1667-1713 Wars of Louis XIV THE IMPERIAL STATE-NATION (after this you saw the global imperial struggle between Britain and France)
  
• 1792-1815 Wars of the French Revolution THE NATION-STATE (it's not the same as the State-Nation, Bobbitt gets very quibbly in his definitions)
  
• 1914-1990 The Long War THE MARKET STATE (after the triumph of the U.S. in the Cold War, we ended up in the current era of the Market State)
  

As you can see, he doesn't fit his epochal wars into a generational pattern, since some of them are a generation long, but others last almost a century!

[sbarrera]

There's no way I can dive deeply into Bobbitt's thinking in this forum, though I did read both of his very long books, "The Shield of Achilles" and "Terror and Consent." I'm not sure how much I successfully absorbed, but I think I got the gist of what he means by the transition from the nation-state to the market state here in this excerpt from my blog post:

Quote:the familiar nation state of the 20th century is giving way to what Bobbitt calls the “market state.” A key difference between the two orders is that whereas the nation state serves the welfare of the nation through public services and social safety nets, the market state maximizes economic opportunity for its citizens, while protecting them from environmental degradation and network-infiltrating dangers such as infectious disease and terrorism. The state’s role has evolved from managing the system for the benefit of the people, in competition with other states with different ideologies (the Cold War status quo), to protecting the system’s perimeters while allowing the people to manage themselves in a loosely controlled consumer marketplace of global extent (the Washington Consensus and the “End of History.”)

But read it carefully: he seems to be talking more about the transition to a Third Turning, not to a new constitutional order. He's describing the breakdown of the old order, and mistaking it for the emergence of the new order! Granted, this is my interpretation of his work; these aren't his words exactly.

He's a smart guy so he must still be on to something. When he discusses the breakdown of the old constitutional order, he gives specific reasons at the level of strategy. What undermines the nation-state order and makes it untenable are essentially:

1. Weapons of mass destruction (good luck fighting "conventional war" now)
   
2. High tech information networks (they empower individuals over governments)
   

So the way I see it, in this Fourth Turning the "New Order" that successfully emerges will be one where the state is able to exercise power within the strategic constraints above. If that's possible.

[sbarrera]

Bobbitt's market state has sometimes been called the "informational market state" or even the "neoliberal market state." Arguably, all that Bobbitt is talking about with the "transition to the market state" is the rise of neoliberalism.

Now, what is happening in the Fourth Turning? Is it the end of neoliberalism? One blogger at least (who is familiar with Bobbitt) made the argument that Trump's rise was exactly that:

https://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/glo...alism.html

SUNDAY, 29 JANUARY 2017
Trump's Rollback of the Neoliberal Market State
What is Trump doing?
Trump is rolling back neoliberalism and everything connected to it.
To understand what this means, here's a narrative of Trump's insurgency.   It explains what he is doing and what he is likely to do.  It starts with the rise of neoliberalism.

THIS SCENE CAPTURES THE MOMENT (FROM FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS)
The rise of Neoliberalism
Neoliberalism is an ideology of extreme free market capitalism that was popularized by Thatcher, Reagan, and Pinochet.  By the end of the cold war in the 90's, it became the default economic ideology of the United States when both the Republicans and the Democrats adopted it.  Neoliberalism improved the world.  Unfettered access to US markets (the most valuable in the world) led to twenty plus years of rapid economic globalization that lifted billions of people out of poverty and made many countries rich.  However, neoliberalism came at a cost to the US.   Worse, it destroyed the only engine of prosperity and political stability in the US, the US middle class.  It did this through:

• Asymmetric competition.  The US was, and still is, the only major nation in the world to fully embrace neoliberalism.  Every other country or economic bloc, from China to the EU, has barriers in place to rig the market to create or protect good jobs at home (think:  Germany, China, South Korea, Japan...).  These barriers work and incomes in these countries has zoomed while US incomes stagnated.  
  
  
• The Neoliberal Trade (jobs out, wealth in).   For decades, the US traded millions of good jobs in manufacturing and services for tens of thousands of amazing jobs on Wall Street (NY) and Silicon Valley (CA).   This inflow of wealth at the topline created a sense of prosperity even though the median income and the quality of life of the middle class collapsed.  
  
  
• Non-cooperative elites.  It didn't take long before the power and the wealth of the elites benefiting from unfettered globalization became immense.  In fact, these US neoliberal elites became so powerful, they were able to completely opt out of the US system of taxation -- none of the elites, from Apple to Google to Wall Street banks/funds to the wealthiest American citizens pay taxes.  With most of the wealth generated by the US immune to taxation, the US government quickly became a bankruptcy in progress ($20 trillion in debt and growing fast).  Worse, this perpetual fiscal crisis eliminated any chance that government services (like in health care, retirement, etc. proposed by Bernie Sanders) could be formulated to cushion the damage done by neoliberal economics.
  

The Neoliberal Market State
The effects of neoliberalism put US political elites in a bind.  Neoliberalism made it impossible for the US, as it had for two centuries, to grow the middle class economically anymore.  The US economy didn't provide good jobs to the middle class anymore due to the neoliberal trade and it didn't have the funds to cushion the loss of income with services due to the tax avoidance of non-cooperative US elites.  So, it decided to double down on neoliberal ideology by applying it to US cultural identity.   Cultural neoliberalism now became the primary political good of the state.  By making this shift it became what my friend Philip Bobbitt predicted in his epic 2002 book, The Shield of Achilles: a market state.   A market state, in contrast to the nation-state's focus on broad economic prosperity and cultural integration, focuses on providing opportunity to the individual.  Although Bobbitt couldn't articulate it fully at the time (none of us could), the US market state provided opportunity to individuals through:

• Open borders.  Low barriers immigration.  H-1B visas and green cards galore.  Citizen of the world.  Work and live anywhere.  Borders controls should be lax.  Extreme version:  sanctuary cities, illegal immigrants become undocumented immigrants
  
  
• Expanded identity.  Become whoever you want to become. LGBTQIAPK....  >>  Intersectional feminism.  Affirmative action and associated efforts at compensating past discrimination.  Extreme version: patriarchy, cis gender, "old white men"  
  
  
• Multiculturalism.  Anti-assimilation.  All cultures celebrated.  Expanded cultural identity revered (hyphenated).  Cultural resurrection and diversity.  Extreme version:  traditional US culture was/is inferior to all other global cultures, deprecation of tradition as biased/flawed
  

The Crisis of the Neoliberal Market State
As we now know, the rise of the neoliberal market-state didn't actually solve the internal contradiction of the neoliberal economics -- that barrier free trade allows a few people to take everything at the expense of everyone else.  Like its economic cousin, cultural neoliberalism only benefited a minority of Americans (particularly those already benefiting from economic neoliberalism in NY and CA) while offering nothing but increasingly acrimonious identity politics to the majority.  All of this might have continued indefinitely, but for the financial crisis of 2008.  That crisis set in motion a deep unrest within the majority.  An unrest that powers Trump's socially networked insurgency.  An insurgency that is now actively dismantling the neoliberal market state through the following:  

• Reversing economic neoliberalism by actively support job creation domestically like all other countries (from China to Germany).  More mercantilist.   Success measured in good jobs created instead of extreme wealth accrued.  Trump to workers:  "I'm fighting for you"
  
  
• Reversing cultural neoliberalism by building strong borders, controlling immigration, and demanding integration with traditional culture.  Provoking  identity politics to create confusion.  Trump tells his insurgency:  you are "the best"
  
  
• Finally, and most importantly to me, Trump isn't dismantling neoliberalism to return to the old nation-state.  He's building, with the help of social networking, a new model of governance for the US.  One that operates more like Russia and China does (a reactive authoritarianism).
  

Sincerely,
John Robb
PS:  Here Bobbitt's book on the market state.  

[Eric the Green]

(08-23-2022, 09:45 AM)sbarrera Wrote: Bobbitt's market state has sometimes been called the "informational market state" or even the "neoliberal market state." Arguably, all that Bobbitt is talking about with the "transition to the market state" is the rise of neoliberalism.

Now, what is happening in the Fourth Turning? Is it the end of neoliberalism? One blogger at least (who is familiar with Bobbitt) made the argument that Trump's rise was exactly that:

https://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/glo...alism.html

SUNDAY, 29 JANUARY 2017
Trump's Rollback of the Neoliberal Market State
What is Trump doing?

Trump was the final expression of the neoliberal market state, it's climax and most-concentrated expression in the presidency (it continues in legislatures, the states, etc.)

Any statement to the contrary is pure obfuscation and lies.

Trump's presidency showed where neoliberalism leads. It discredited neoliberalism enough so that trickle-down economics (neoliberalism) could begin to be dismantled by a non-neoliberal president, Joe Biden. But this rollback is only a bare beginning. Congress, in the person of two DINO senators, watered down the break with neoliberal policy tremendously. So, it's influence continues, but may not fully survive the 4T.

Policywise, Trump's only anti-neoliberal action was to opt out of the trans-pacific partnership and make small revisions to the NAFTA free trade agreement. That was it. Otherwise, his policies were neoliberalism on steroids. Extreme and destructive deregulation of the coal industry, for example. Rollbacks of national monuments. Opening federal leasing to drilling and mining. Destruction of auto emission regulations. Requiring that 2 regulations be removed for every 1 new regulation approved. Attacks on the post office. Massive new tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, lauding them as meaning "jobs jobs jobs". Resistance to any minimum wage increase. This is all textbook trickle-down economics (= neoliberalism). He did propose federal infrastructure projects, but did nothing to get them approved by congress, and they weren't. Destruction of democracy and replacement with autocracy, as Trump is proposing and creating, is explicit neoliberal policy.

Most costly to his chances for re-election was his interference with needed health measures against the covid pandemic. He did not organize any federal response and left such matters to the states. When states ordered lockdowns, he organized public demonstrations and attacks on officials who ordered them. He interfered with recommendations by his health officials. Leaving decisions to the states when federal action was needed was a neoliberal approach to the pandemic, and it failed.

One of the best definitions of neoliberalism and its effects has been given in articles and videos by George Monbiot. In this one he mentions that Trump, though too incoherent to be explicitly labeled as neoliberal, is the outcome of neoliberal policy over the last 40 years, and is the ideal leader that at least two of the neoliberalism founders, Frederick Hayek and Ayn Rand, envisioned and worshipped. Neoliberalism's aim and effect is destruction of the democratic power of the people and its replacement by the power of money. This has robbed politics of its relevance, and paved the way for an atomized and frustrated citizenry to opt for an anti-politics of mere sensations and slogans instead. That is what Trump offered.





https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/a...ge-monbiot
https://philosopherswheel.com/freemarket.html

[Eric the Green]

In this brilliant takedown of neoliberalism and its effects of inequality by Nick Hanauer, he mentions how Republicans and Trump carried out the neoliberal trickle-down economics program and its false justification.

[Eric the Green]

To say that neoliberalism created any economic prosperity for anyone, as Bobbitt asserted, except for its wealthy promoters, is pure lies and obfuscation. Rachel Maddow straightens out anyone who bothered to pay any attention, which Bobbitt did not.

[sbarrera]

(08-23-2022, 01:27 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: To say that neoliberalism created any economic prosperity for anyone, as Bobbitt asserted, except for its wealthy promoters, is pure lies and obfuscation. Rachel Maddow straightens out anyone who bothered to pay any attention, which Bobbitt did not.

Bobbitt doesn't say that about the market state, though. He says it creates economic opportunity. Whether or not you can turn opportunity into prosperity is up to you (that's essentially Reagan's message too). That's why I say he's more identifying the shift to the Third Turning mindset than a new kind of order that will last. That order has to come now to correct for the excesses that the market-driven era created.

But again, Bobbitt is on to something with his basic premise that the strategic landscape has changed, and the state has to change with it. I think the big change is with the growth and density of information networks. And the lesson of these past years is that government has not done well in the context of these networks. The videos you posted make the point about how democracy has eroded, to the point of allowing a mountebank to become President for a term. That was in part because social media was used to manipulate the election!

The Covid-19 pandemic is another area where the market state has not coped well. If the market state offers opportunity while also offering protection, it runs into a big problem with a highly infectious disease, since preventing the spread of the disease entails restricting economic activity (and hence opportunity). In the case of Covid-19, the market state basically gave up, and is set to accept a constant death toll that's four or five times more than the death toll from car accidents.

[Eric the Green]

(08-23-2022, 03:37 PM)sbarrera Wrote:

(08-23-2022, 01:27 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: To say that neoliberalism created any economic prosperity for anyone, as Bobbitt asserted, except for its wealthy promoters, is pure lies and obfuscation. Rachel Maddow straightens out anyone who bothered to pay any attention, which Bobbitt did not.

Bobbitt doesn't say that about the market state, though. He says it creates economic opportunity. Whether or not you can turn opportunity into prosperity is up to you (that's essentially Reagan's message too). That's why I say he's more identifying the shift to the Third Turning mindset than a new kind of order that will last. That order has to come now to correct for the excesses that the market-driven era created.

I stand corrected to a degree. I was seeing his quote that "Neoliberalism improved the world. Unfettered access to US markets (the most valuable in the world) led to twenty plus years of rapid economic globalization that lifted billions of people out of poverty and made many countries rich." So what he meant there was that the USA adopted neoliberalism pretty-much unilaterally which allowed other countries to take advantage of US markets and do better while the USA did not.

If he said that the neoliberal market state creates economic opportunity, I would disagree; it only creates opportunity for the rich to exploit everyone else and keep them poor.

Quote:But again, Bobbitt is on to something with his basic premise that the strategic landscape has changed, and the state has to change with it. I think the big change is with the growth and density of information networks. And the lesson of these past years is that government has not done well in the context of these networks. The videos you posted make the point about how democracy has eroded, to the point of allowing a mountebank to become President for a term. That was in part because social media was used to manipulate the election!

As the videos I posted showed, most people did poorly under neoliberalism in the 1980s even before social media and information networks got going, so it is a largely irrelevant factor in the failure of neoliberal free-market economics policy.

There were many factors that allowed Trump to win, though, and use of social media (especially by folks like Alex Jones, who had been largely excluded from the older media, but also by other manipulation led by a foreign company) played a role, along with the failure of neoliberal policy over 40 years to create an informed, engaged electorate interested in real issues, because politics has since become irrelevant to our lives, as Monbiot pointed out, so that people opted for an anti-politics of slogans and symbols. It was a perfect storm-- of an inadequate opposing candidate who used poor strategy (plus perhaps the fear of electing a woman president), Russian hacking stoking false scandals, Republican voter suppression, removal of civics classes in schools for many years, social-media-stoked conspiracy-theory rebellion, the talents of the celebrity demagogue himself, as well as the atomized and alienated condition of the public-- that was also deceived enough after 40 years of false neoliberal freedom slogans to still support a neoliberal candidate (Trump) who presented himself as some kind of populist, nationalist leader who alone could fix things and Make America Great Again, but who actually offered only more neoliberal policy peppered with prejudice that was more-overtly "trump-eted" than it had already been peppered-with in the past.

Calling "cultural neoliberalism" such things as affirmative action and multi-culturalism, is not correct. That is social liberalism, pro-diversity. Neoliberalism has no connection with this. Quite the opposite. It stokes resentment among whites to social programs, taxes and regulations on business by libruls supposedly making people give away their hard-earned money to ethnic groups who are freeloaders. This is probably the most important and most-persuasive aspect of neoliberalism, which garners its greatest support in rural white regions of the USA in election after election-- support for Republican candidates who promote neoliberalism and prejudice/resentment-- two sides of the same coin.

Obfuscation about Trump's nationalism and supposed populism to hide his neoliberal policies, and confusion over the term neoliberal to apply it to some kinds of true liberalism as your article author does, is a major factor that hides the damage that Trump Republicans continue to do-- right down the line in the tradition of Reagan, Bush, Thatcher, Pinochet, Gingrich, Pence, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Uncle Thomas, Marjory Taylor Greene, etc.

[sbarrera]

(08-24-2022, 12:06 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(08-23-2022, 03:37 PM)sbarrera Wrote:

(08-23-2022, 01:27 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: To say that neoliberalism created any economic prosperity for anyone, as Bobbitt asserted, except for its wealthy promoters, is pure lies and obfuscation. Rachel Maddow straightens out anyone who bothered to pay any attention, which Bobbitt did not.

Bobbitt doesn't say that about the market state, though. He says it creates economic opportunity. Whether or not you can turn opportunity into prosperity is up to you (that's essentially Reagan's message too). That's why I say he's more identifying the shift to the Third Turning mindset than a new kind of order that will last. That order has to come now to correct for the excesses that the market-driven era created.

I stand corrected to a degree. I was seeing his quote that "Neoliberalism improved the world.  Unfettered access to US markets (the most valuable in the world) led to twenty plus years of rapid economic globalization that lifted billions of people out of poverty and made many countries rich." So what he meant there was that the USA adopted neoliberalism pretty-much unilaterally which allowed other countries to take advantage of US markets and do better while the USA did not.

If he said that the neoliberal market state creates economic opportunity, I would disagree; it only creates opportunity for the rich to exploit everyone else and keep them poor.

That quote was actually from John Robb, another blogger who was springboarding off of Philip Bobbitt's work. But Bobbitt may well have said something similar. 

I think everyone is right here. The era of globalization/neoliberalism that began with the Reagan revolution was accompanied by massive global economic growth and a rising global middle class. But it also led to a hollowing out of the middle class in the United States, largely due to the all the outsourcing and the fact that capital is much freer to move than labor is. Robb says as much in the quote above: other countries took advantage of US markets and did better than the USA. MAGA is a backlash against this.

And to your point, the rich have done better than the poor in this regime. Inequality has grown as well as overall wealth growing. These aren't contradictory points.

[Eric the Green]

(08-24-2022, 08:44 AM)sbarrera Wrote:

(08-24-2022, 12:06 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(08-23-2022, 03:37 PM)sbarrera Wrote:

(08-23-2022, 01:27 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: To say that neoliberalism created any economic prosperity for anyone, as Bobbitt asserted, except for its wealthy promoters, is pure lies and obfuscation. Rachel Maddow straightens out anyone who bothered to pay any attention, which Bobbitt did not.

Bobbitt doesn't say that about the market state, though. He says it creates economic opportunity. Whether or not you can turn opportunity into prosperity is up to you (that's essentially Reagan's message too). That's why I say he's more identifying the shift to the Third Turning mindset than a new kind of order that will last. That order has to come now to correct for the excesses that the market-driven era created.

I stand corrected to a degree. I was seeing his quote that "Neoliberalism improved the world.  Unfettered access to US markets (the most valuable in the world) led to twenty plus years of rapid economic globalization that lifted billions of people out of poverty and made many countries rich." So what he meant there was that the USA adopted neoliberalism pretty-much unilaterally which allowed other countries to take advantage of US markets and do better while the USA did not.

If he said that the neoliberal market state creates economic opportunity, I would disagree; it only creates opportunity for the rich to exploit everyone else and keep them poor.

That quote was actually from John Robb, another blogger who was springboarding off of Philip Bobbitt's work. But Bobbitt may well have said something similar. 

I think everyone is right here. The era of globalization/neoliberalism that began with the Reagan revolution was accompanied by massive global economic growth and a rising global middle class. But it also led to a hollowing out of the middle class in the United States, largely due to the all the outsourcing and the fact that capital is much freer to move than labor is. Robb says as much in the quote above: other countries took advantage of US markets and did better than the USA. MAGA is a backlash against this.

And to your point, the rich have done better than the poor in this regime. Inequality has grown as well as overall wealth growing. These aren't contradictory points.

I agree, except MAGA is not really just a backlash against outsourcing, but only partially, and it's totally misdirected toward the resentment against what Robb calls "cultural neoliberalism", but isn't. It's just prejudice and replacement theory. If MAGA were just about global free trade, then its adherents would be pro-labor liberal Democrats and Berniebros. Trump found it much easier to enact already-established neoliberal policies (like tax cuts) and his social conservatism and prejudice (like immigration restriction and welfare cuts) than to do much about economic globalism.

And hollowing out of the American middle class is not "largely due to all the outsourcing" but even more due to the wealthy hogging the wealth here in the USA through tax cuts, deregulation and social spending cuts, which prejudiced rural whites support with their lopsided votes for Republicans and Trump supporters and their gerrymandered districts thanks to the disaster of Nov.2, 2010. Making Trump out to be primarily an anti-globalist populist instead of a neoliberal deceptively whitewashes the Trump regime and its followers.

[David Horn]

(08-24-2022, 10:16 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(08-24-2022, 08:44 AM)sbarrera Wrote: I think everyone is right here. The era of globalization/neoliberalism that began with the Reagan revolution was accompanied by massive global economic growth and a rising global middle class. But it also led to a hollowing out of the middle class in the United States, largely due to the all the outsourcing and the fact that capital is much freer to move than labor is. Robb says as much in the quote above: other countries took advantage of US markets and did better than the USA. MAGA is a backlash against this.

And to your point, the rich have done better than the poor in this regime. Inequality has grown as well as overall wealth growing. These aren't contradictory points.

I agree, except MAGA is not really just a backlash against outsourcing, but only partially, and it's totally misdirected toward the resentment against what Robb calls "cultural neoliberalism", but isn't. It's just prejudice and replacement theory. If MAGA were just about global free trade, then its adherents would be pro-labor liberal Democrats and Berniebros. Trump found it much easier to enact already-established neoliberal policies (like tax cuts) and his social conservatism and prejudice (like immigration restriction and welfare cuts) than to do much about economic globalism.

And hollowing out of the American middle class is not "largely due to all the outsourcing" but even more due to the wealthy hogging the wealth here in the USA through tax cuts, deregulation and social spending cuts, which prejudiced rural whites support with their lopsided votes for Republicans and Trump supporters and their gerrymandered districts thanks to the disaster of Nov.2, 2010. Making Trump out to be primarily an anti-globalist populist instead of a neoliberal deceptively whitewashes the Trump regime and its followers.

I'll echo sbarrera: everyone is right here. We're seeing a realignment forming in the shadows. Will it emerge or be suppressed? Until we can answer that with some specificity, it's hard to know whether this 4T will create change or sclerosis.

The election in November should tell us something. Let's hope the message is positive and clear.

[sbarrera]

(08-24-2022, 10:16 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: And hollowing out of the American middle class is not "largely due to all the outsourcing" but even more due to the wealthy hogging the wealth here in the USA through tax cuts, deregulation and social spending cuts<...>

This is an interesting point and distinction. I wonder if anyone has done a data-driven analysis to try to separate out these causes.

[Eric the Green]

(08-24-2022, 12:05 PM)sbarrera Wrote:

(08-24-2022, 10:16 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: And hollowing out of the American middle class is not "largely due to all the outsourcing" but even more due to the wealthy hogging the wealth here in the USA through tax cuts, deregulation and social spending cuts<...>

This is an interesting point and distinction. I wonder if anyone has done a data-driven analysis to try to separate out these causes.

I don't know, I guess, but it's pretty clear that because salaries and wages have not been raised for most people for 40 years, while it is well known that salaries for wealthy CEOs are now hundreds of times higher than for their workers, and that this has happened over the last 40 years, and that this was not the case before then, that this has resulted in inequality. Surely you have heard of this fact? I think the videos above make this point. It is quite well known that the national minimum wage is still only $7.25 an hour (higher in some places), and that it costs 3-5 times that much just to afford housing, and that this is deliberate trickle-down economics Republican policy, not outsourcing. Congress is responsible for the minimum wage, not multinational corporations. This is what Hanauer was talking about.

And furthermore it is well known that, in addition to this unequal salary situation, that these rich people, corporations and CEOs pay far less in taxes by % of their income than they did in 1980, when Reagan reduced top rates to 50% and then Bush and Trump and their congresses have reduced these taxes 2 or 3 times further, down to about 20%. This results in gross inequality even without the free trade policies that allowed companies to close factories here and take away their jobs, and instead employ cheap labor overseas and sell their products back to us cheaper and with more profit for themselves.

If Trump was not a neoliberal, and was a populist, he would have raised the minimum wage and raised taxes on the wealthy, and he would have passed a lot more social programs like the ones Biden proposed in his BBBBB but were taken out by Manchin.

It is also well-known that anti-trust laws have not been enforced or unpdated, as Senator Klobuchar proposes, so that ownership of the economy is much more concentrated than it was in 1980. Mergers and acquisitions have caused many factory closings and job losses too. This again is Republican policy and neoliberal orthodoxy, and I didn't see Trump change this. Populist? Only he can fix it? I will fix the economy for you? No, he just broke it further for us. Biden is trying to fix it, and he could do much more if he had a working congressional majority, which he doesn't have now.

I think Bobbitt and Robb admitted that neoliberalism was largely implemented unilaterally (although the UK and other English-speaking countries also did to a large extent, and somewhat in Germany too), which means that neoliberal policies such as the above were implemented, not just free trade which is only one part of neoliberalism, with the inevitable results of gross inequality, and job losses and higher cost of living relative to income for more and more people resulting in the vanishing middle class. And by the way also gross, destructive attacks on the living world we all depend on.

Neoliberalism is PRIMARILY tax cuts, deregulation, and cuts in government spending for social/economic/health programs, as the 3 videos above (and my essay) describe. See:

http://philosopherswheel.com/freemarket.html
with many more links there

[Eric the Green]

Don't miss when George Carlin says that the system threw us overboard 30 fucking years ago. This was over 10 years ago that George said this. So if you can count, you know that it's Reaganomics neoliberalism that he was talking about.

[Eric the Green]

Just because Trump was right on trade does not make him right on everything else he says and does. And just because Liz Cheney is right about Trump's Big Lie and Coup does not make her right in her neoliberal policies. Both scams need to be opposed and defeated.

[David Horn]

(08-27-2022, 02:58 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Just because Trump was right on trade does not make him right on everything else he says and does. And just because Liz Cheney is right about Trump's Big Lie and Coup does not make her right in her neoliberal policies. Both scams need to be opposed and defeated.

Certainly true.  Also true: being really good at A doesn't make you any better than anyone else at B.  Lee Iacocca refused to run for President on the argument that CEOs are dictators, and dictators make lousy politicians.  Judging by the business leaders of the last 100 years that rose to the Presidency (Hoover, Carter and Trump) that rule seems solid.

[pbrower2a]

(08-29-2022, 01:14 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(08-27-2022, 02:58 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Just because Trump was right on trade does not make him right on everything else he says and does. And just because Liz Cheney is right about Trump's Big Lie and Coup does not make her right in her neoliberal policies. Both scams need to be opposed and defeated.

Certainly true.  Also true: being really good at A doesn't make you any better than anyone else at B.  Lee Iacocca refused to run for President on the argument that CEOs are dictators, and dictators make lousy politicians.  Judging by the business leaders of the last 100 years that rose to the Presidency (Hoover, Carter and Trump) that rule seems solid.

Carter's experience as a businessman in no way made him a better President than otherwise. He tried to bring his Georgia reforms to the federal government, and they did not get the results that he wanted after that. After that his Presidency became sclerotic. The business experience of George W. Bush had taught him nothing about politics.

[beechnut79]

(08-29-2022, 02:36 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(08-29-2022, 01:14 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(08-27-2022, 02:58 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Just because Trump was right on trade does not make him right on everything else he says and does. And just because Liz Cheney is right about Trump's Big Lie and Coup does not make her right in her neoliberal policies. Both scams need to be opposed and defeated.

Certainly true.  Also true: being really good at A doesn't make you any better than anyone else at B.  Lee Iacocca refused to run for President on the argument that CEOs are dictators, and dictators make lousy politicians.  Judging by the business leaders of the last 100 years that rose to the Presidency (Hoover, Carter and Trump) that rule seems solid.

Carter's experience as a businessman in no way made him a better President than otherwise. He tried to bring his Georgia reforms to the federal government, and they did not get the results that he wanted after that. After that his Presidency became sclerotic. The business experience of George W. Bush had taught him nothing about politics.

Presidents are varied in their backgrounds. Take for example Colin Powell, who just passed fairly recently. He was encouraged to run for the office because he was a military man, and many thought that the last time we had a military President (Eisenhower) were the best years of our lives. And folks thought that Powell would be similar in nature. Yet he chose not to run. 

Trump was a businessman and celebrity developer. And the public was clamoring for somebody not a lifelong politician to assume the office, and that's what we got. And how well did it, in the long run, turn out having a one-time movie star in the office?

[beechnut79]

(08-23-2022, 01:27 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: In this brilliant takedown of neoliberalism and its effects of inequality by Nick Hanauer, he mentions how Republicans and Trump carried out the neoliberal trickle-down economics program and its false justification.

Perhaps we should examine the cause and effect of the Reagan Revolution a little more. In a piece just this morning Thom Hartmann presents a very strong indictment of the Reagan effect going back to his time as governor of California. And he indicts many of his own generation for "drinking the Kool-Aid so to speak. They fell for it hook, line and sinker, thinking of Reagan as being the greatest thing to come along since sliced bread.

https://hartmannreport.com/p/dear-millen...s-im-sorry