politics for the 99%

Published on Zmagazine, by Eli Cook, Aug 24, 2014.

Gabriel Kolko, historian and socialist, died last month in his home in Amsterdam. He was 81.

When Kolko’s The Triumph of Conservatism appeared on the scene in 1963, it was not only a book of history but heresy. This was the era in which American liberalism reigned supreme, and social commentators such as Daniel Bell confidently assured the public that the formula for sustained economic prosperity and political freedom had been uncovered in the form of a capitalist system kept in check by a powerful and centralized regulatory government.  

American liberals of the era rarely challenged the basic assumption on which their worldview hinged: that the purpose of the modern state was to inhibit and constrain—not advance or sustain—corporate interests. As is evident from Bell’s contemporaneous declaration that the balance of powers between private enterprise and public policy signaled nothing short of an “end of ideology,” American liberals in the early 1960s were so utterly convinced of the diverging interests of state and capital that they could not even fathom that this assumption was ideological in itself.

To men such as Arthur Schlesinger, an archliberal in both the White House and his own historical writings, it was sheer common sense to note that “liberalism in America has been ordinarily the movement on the part of other sections to restrain the power of the business community.” In the early 1960s, American historians—led by the likes of Oscar Handlin, Louis Hartz, and Richard Hofstadter—echoed Schlesinger’s sentiment. American historians, that is, save for a young Gabriel Kolko.

But then, everything changed. With the new century came a dramatic turn of events as a cadre of crusading “middle-class reformers”—led by the “trust-busting” likes of Teddy Roosevelt—took control of the federal government, instituted a number of anti-business “reforms” and not only ushered in the Progressive Era but set the political, economic, and ideological foundation for post-war American affluence … //

… Let us hope scholars other than libertarians pick up where Kolko left off, as he is no longer around to write the definitive case study on the shady dealings of Timothy Geithner, Hank Paulson, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld. This is a real tragedy, for I suspect that no one would have done it better.

(full long text).

(Eli Cook is a postdoctoral fellow at the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis).

some Related Links:

• Keynes is dead, long live Marx, on Asia Times, by Ismael Hossein-Zadeh, August 29, 2014;
• a cartoon on PoliticusUSA: Uzi Insanity, Aug 28, 2014;
• Gentrification Destroys Communities: True or False? on TakePart, by Willy Blackmore, Aug 28, 2014;
• A Nation of Shopkeepers, on Forbes, by John Mauldin, Aug 25, 2014;
• How Revisionist History Works, on HowStuffWorks, by Cristen Conger, not dated;

Historical Revisionism:

• on Princeton.edu;
• on Historians.org;
• on Michael A. Hoffman’s Website: beyond the gatekeepers;
• on en.wikipedia;

Find also on en.wikipedia:

• Gabriel Kolko and the /External Links;
• Historical revisionism;
• Liberalism in the United States;
• Corporate liberalism;
• Conservatism in the United States;
• Paul Merlyn Buhle;
• and also: The Progressive Era was a period of social activism and political reform in the United States that flourished from the 1890s to the 1920s.[1] One main goal of the Progressive movement was eliminating corruption in government by exposing and undercutting political machines and their bosses and establishing further means of direct democracy. Progressives also sought regulation of monopolistic trust corporations through antitrust laws, which were seen as a means to promote fair competition for the benefit of consumers …;

Other Links:

Declared missing: Russian diplomats detained in Kiev under dubious pretext, on Russia Today RT, Aug 30, 2014;

Winter is coming: Ukrainians educated in energy saving, alternative heating, on Russia Today RT, Aug 30, 2014;

Interview with Deon Haywood: Nine Years After Katrina, It’s All About the Takeover, on Dissident Voice, by Jordan Flaherty, August 29, 2014: Deon Haywood is the Executive Director of Woman With a Vision, a New Orleans social justice non-profit founded in 1991 by a grassroots collective of African-American women in response to the spread of HIV/AIDS in communities of color. According to the WWAV website, “We envision an environment in which there is no war against women’s bodies, in which women have spaces to come together and share their stories, in which women are empowered to make decisions concerning their own bodies and lives, and in which women have the necessary support to realize their hopes, dreams, and full potential” …;

Find on Al-Ahram weekly online, Aug 28, 2014:

• Egypt: Last chance? by Amany Maged: Yet another reconciliation initiative has been launched, this time by young Muslim Brother dissidents. And it may succeed …;
• Lybia: Neighbouring concerns, by Kamel Abdallah: Libya’s neighbours want all militias in the country disarmed …;
• The Iraqi disease, by Salah Nasrawi: Iraq’s new prime minister may succeed in forming a government, but he will have to operate within narrow bounds …;
• Auditing the revolution, by Bassel Oudat in Damascus: Financial irregularities may be undermining the credibility of the Syrian opposition …;

… and this:

• enjoying later summer 2014 in Geneva;
• Hildegard von Bingen: Voice of the Living Light, 76.56 min, uploaded by ClassicalMusic, Jan 14, 2012.