In an Article in the Atlantic, Matt Stoller describes how we Democrats inadvertently let our party's guard down, through our blindness towards Banking and Finance. He describes how young reformers in the Watergate fueled Democratic Revolution of the early 70s took down important new Dealers, like Wright Patman, who had been resisting the power of banking and finance. The successes of the labor movement, reform movement, populism, seemed to have tamed banking and finance to the point where many Democrats were blind to its threat enough to feel free to take down the "older generation." Thus unleashing them again. Matt writes:
Article in the Atlantic:
We had, more or less, tamed the Trusts in the 30s through the modernization and articulation of basic rights arguments that applied equally to the laborer and the wealthy. FDR had established a progressive ideology formed on the fusion of progressive, basic rights theory and populist ideas:
“Underpinning the political transformation of the New Deal was an intellectual revolution, a new understanding of property rights. In a 1932 campaign speech known as the Commonwealth Club Address, FDR defined private property as the savings of a family, a Jeffersonian yeoman-farmer notion updated for the 20th century. By contrast, the corporation was not property. Concentrated private economic power was “a public trust,” with public obligations, and the continued “enjoyment of that power by any individual or group must depend upon the fulfillment of that trust.”[Stoller]
The titans of the day were not businessmen:
“but “princes of property,” and they had to accept responsibility for their power or be restrained by democratic forces. The corporation had to be fit into the constitutional order.” [Stoller]
But most of them had grown up in a world where progressive/populist ideas were the status quo, and no one seriously challenged them. They had forgotten the history of the movement and the blood, sweat, tears and sacrifices that had gotten them access to college, to good jobs:
“Remember, it was the great bankers and managers of the “money trusts,” such as J.P. Morgan, who sat astride wide swaths of corporate America through their investment and lending power, membership on boards of directors, and influence over industrial titans. Among other things, they maintained a sufficient concentration of power to keep prices up, workers disorganized, and politics firmly within their grasp.” [Stoller]
And they had let their guard down. Thus Trump has a three fingered thing going. Taft Hartley had killed he labor movement by defenestrating it's major popular tools (general strike, power to bind employers into closed shops, etc.....). And now Democrats had shifted their focus to the Environment, to Anti-War issues, and to civil rights, all good,
But at the very moment they were reforming the Country on so many levels, the Trusts were gathering their forces, rallying big business (example is the Powell Memo), & buying influence, University Chairs, Think Tanks and "libertarian" or "Supply side" academics. Ronald Reagan, for example, having been a new dealer, fashioned an entire ideology aimed at replacing every single New Deal idea, including “public trust” with something different and darker. He replaced Public Trust with a joke; “Government is not the solution, Government is the Enemy.” He went after labor. He went after access to College for the middle class (to end “permissiveness!”), and nobody in our Party saw it coming because we'd missed a key point of what FDR and Wright Patman had been focused on. And that is that:
“The essence of populist politics is that political and economic freedom are deeply intertwined—that real democracy requires not just an opportunity to vote but an opportunity to compete in an open marketplace. This was the kind of politics that the Watergate Babies accidentally overthrew.” [Stoller]
We Enabled Trickle down Economics by being blind to the power of money and its influence. Our failure to continue to focus equally on protecting genuine free markets and fighting monopoly, let the Financial Industrialists start to move their operations south (in more ways than one) and abroad, use State Law and Taft Hartley to prevent Unions following them, and to undermine the ideology of the New Deal. By the end of the 70s, the counter attack was in full motion and US Democrats never saw it coming. Many in Labor, having, seemingly, been abandoned by progressive politicians, even embraced the Reagan Counter revolution and its overt propaganda promoting the virtues of extreme wealth, selfish property rights theories, Randian "libertarianism" and Friedman's Trickle Down economic ideas. Those coupled with increasing demagoguery on minorities set us back dearly.
We Democrats need to get that spirit back. Government either serves the people or it is tyranny. If "Government is the enemy" it is because that government is behaving in a tyrannical manner. But Patman's generation understood this. Matt writes:
“To get a sense of how rural Democrats used to relate to voters, one need only pick up an old flyer from the Patman archives in Texas:”
“Here Is What Our Democratic Party Has Given Us” was the title. [Stoller]
And the title spoke for itself.
“There were no fancy slogans or focus-grouped logos. Each item listed is a solid thing that was relevant to the lives of conservative white Southern voters in rural Texas: Electricity. Telephone. Roads. Social Security. Soil conservation. Price supports. Foreclosure prevention.” [Stoller]
And he notes:
“Foreclosures protected homes against bankers. Farm-to-market roads allowed communities to organize around markets. Social Security protected one’s livelihood in the form of unemployment insurance and old-age benefits. Price supports for family farms protected them from speculators. And rural electrification and telephones shielded communities from the predations of monopolistic utilities.” [Stoller]
This was the "deliver the bacon" pragmatic heart of Populism. Nobody likes "Obamacare" but everyone wants affordable health care. More importantly, these kinds of service represent empowerment of local communities and the people living in them. That Generation understood the principles of Democracy and Commonwealth. Matt writes:
“Packaged together, these measures epitomized the idea that citizens must be able to govern themselves through their own community structures, or as Walt Whitman put it: “train communities through all their grades, beginning with individuals and ending there again, to rule themselves.” Patman’s ideals represented a deep understanding that sovereign citizens governing sovereign communities were the only protection against demagoguery.” [Stoller]
We need to get that spirit back!
PS -- Not Neoliberals
And note, This narrative is why the far left labels the Democratic Party as “neoliberal” but that is a pejorative, stretch and misuse of the term. We may have been collaborators with the pirates, but that is because they are cons and they were promising us all the things we were trying to accomplish; equity before the law, equal opportunity, decent wages and benefits, etc... That once they had rebuilt their monopoly power they discarded all those promises and put on their pirate king regalia, doesn't mean we were with them all the way.
We were had. We were duped.
That is a much more severe judgment, and most of those who are adamant about "neoliberalism" now, were once just as duped as we were. People would rather concoct conspiracy theories than face the truth head on.
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