Judith Stein’s piece picks up where we left off by providing, I think, a more pointed historical argument about what ended the New Deal order. While organized labor makes an appearance here, this is much more of a political history, covering policy options not taken, presidential politics, Paul Volcker, and a particular critique of the left. The rest of these readings take us to the present by exploring the precariousness of work since the 1970s, poverty, and work amid our contemporary pandemic. Please be sure to read the UN report (primary source).
- Judith Stein, “Conflict, Change, and Economic Policy in the Long 1970s,” in Aaron Brenner, Robert Brenner, Cal Winslow (eds.), Rebel Rank and File: Labor Militancy and Revolt from Below During the Long 1970s, Chapter 3.
- Aaron Benanav, “Precarity Rising,” Viewpoint Magazine, June 15, 2015:
- Sarah Jaffe, Michelle Chen, “Jaffe-Chen_Work in the Time of Coronavirus” Dissent, Vol. 67, No. 3 (Summer 2020): pp. 125-148.
- (Primary Source) Philip Alston, “Statement on Visit to the USA,” United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, December 15, 2017.
This week’s Readings “Conflict, Change, and Economic Policy in the Long 1970’s,” Precarity Rising,” “Jaffe-Chen_Work in the Time of Coronavirus”, and “Statement on Visit to the USA” were very interesting.
What I gathered from “Conflict, Change, and Economic Policy in the Long 1970’s” I was introduced to the Keynesian Objectives. I found this particular reading a bit difficult. What I could understand was after the Great Depression governments all over the world such as the Japanese government and the European government sought to protect their economies by investing and fully monitoring the markets so that their economies can flourish. What I gathered from this reading is that the U.S. government did the opposite. The U.S. Government still used the “Free Market” ideals which is capitalist focused. If I can relate this reading to modern day then to me the U.S. government has maintained its “Free Market approach”. In this Modern Day/ Covid Era small businesses are closing, people are losing jobs but capitalists are still winning. Some companies have tripled their worth while others have closed their doors permanently.
The Reading “Precarity Rising” introduced us to the term “Precarity”. The reading defined Precarity as “Theorists such as Antonio Negri and Guy Standing Identify a sharp rise in insecurity, or what is also called precarity (a term borrowed from the French), as a key feature of work and life in the present.” On this basis, they argue that a shift in the form and content of class struggle must take place, or, indeed, is already taking place.” What I gathered from this reading is that there is a rise in class struggle as such the rich keep getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. This reading seems recognize that there has always been class struggles but it reinvents itself in many ways. There was the argument of “job security” and that workers no longer feel secure in their employment. The reading believes that people don’t feel secure in their employment because of years of neoliberalism. Government has a tendency to work in favor of Capitalist. Employers tend to control every aspect of their employees and normally with the backing of government. The end reward for working with the employer does not pay off because wages do not get better or there are lay-offs.
Jaffe-Chen reading “Work in time of Coronavirus” Is what I particularly related too. I have two essential jobs, one in government and one in the private sector which is Amazon. I began working for Amazon in the heart of the pandemic. We are deemed “essential workers”. During my time at this company we were initially given Hazard Pay, which was an extra two dollars on the base pay, but that has since been taken away although all hazards has remained. My colleagues as well as myself have watch this company make trillions of dollars off of our backs but our pay was cut. We have watch small businesses shut their doors but Amazon remained in power. “Essential workers” kept this country running but were given the short end on the rewards. The winners for Coronavirus are the corporations.
The reading “Statement on Visit to the USA” was extremely impactful. This reading reported that although the U.S. is seen as one of the richest countries in the world it is by-far the most discriminatory. It expresses that the wealth in America is with the top 1% and the rest of its citizens are left in poverty. The top 1% stay on top because they pay the least in taxes while the burden of the taxes are placed on the non 1%. The reading mentioned child poverty, mass incarceration, homelessness, and the overall systemic segregations that continues to grow in the U.S. What was interesting in this article is that the author mentioned that the U.S. pressures other countries to give their citizens basic human rights but these human rights are not required for themselves.
My questions are:
1. Will this new administration actually address the disparities in the U.S.?
2. Why does the U.S. function to systemically oppress its citizens?
3. Will the modern day society rise up to end these disparities?
I really enjoyed Judith Stein’s “Conflict, Change, and Economic Policy in the Long 1970s,” I think it is incredibly well researched and very detailed in the ways it explains the changing tide of economic thought in the 1970s. I am especially pleased to read a piece that specifically delves into the ways individuals and the choices they made impacted, and indeed continue to impact, the American economy. Being able to tie together the rise of globalization and how other countries handled the post-war years, paints a very clear picture of how we ended up with both the economic system we have now and how the economy is more broadly perceived by Americans. At the end of the piece, Stein writes, “Power allows those with ideas to implement them,” which is both incredibly obvious and also somehow so easily ignored in economic and labor history.
Aaron Benanav’s piece “Precarity Rising,” falls into that trap. For me, his argument often lacks nuance. He discusses the ways in which strong labor markets are empowering and weak labor markets destroy that power but doesn’t delve deeply into WHY a labor market is weak or strong or who might benefit from those extremes. His argument ends with the assertion that precarity is a political argument but not once in the entire article does he acknowledge that the labor market, unemployment, GDP growth, and all of the other variables that create precarity are also political arguments. His thesis, like many economists but unlike Stein, ignores both the power of perception and the way governments and business and finance leaders create these conditions. The economy does not just happen, it is not a natural force it is created by people who use it to their advantage.
Questions:
1) What are the creative solutions the working class would need to end precarity?
2) What alternatives could the Democrats in the 70s have put forth that could have solved the problems of Keynesianism and avoided the rise of neoliberalism?
I share Amati’s response to this week’s readings. One thing that struck me was the inability of presidents Kennedy through at least Nixon, as well as the country’s major labor unions, to see that the competitive advantage enjoyed by American business was unsustainable without the sort of government action that built up their European and Asian competitors. It’s interesting how both parties embraced an idea of American exceptionalism that assumed continued success as a given, even as a right, at the same time that domestic concerns regarding race, poverty, inequality, and stratification could no longer be ignored. This, combined with an obvious rise in the fortunes by other industrialized countries, increasingly complicated conflicts between the U.S. in third-world countries, and increased globalization should have screamed to our leaders that unregulated free markets and unrestrained Capitalism would cause great harm to manufacturing, exports, and the economy in general. It is easy to forget that both parties felt some responsibility towards the populace to continue the safety net begun by the New Deal until, after Volker and then Reagan bailed out the interests of the rich, both parties were free to focus on the wealthy and, as long as lip-service was paid to the middle-class, the poor could be conveniently demonized. That unions did next to nothing to prevent what Ross Perot called the “sucking sound” of jobs fleeing America while focusing on infighting and disunity is consistent with past practice and came as no surprise to me. I found the UN report shocking, not because the facts were so grim, but upon the realization that I, along with the rest of the country, shouldn’t find any of it surprising.
1) Were their any alternatives to the Volker’s measures to curtail inflation? If so, what?
2) What could Labor have done to prevent the decline of American exports and manufacturing?
I choose to read the article titled “Work in the Time of Coronavirus: presented by Sarah Jaffe and Michelle Chen.
The title itself caught my attention because of the unforeseen health challenges throughout
the world. Today’s headlines, who gets the vaccination first? The issue in particular that the article’s main focus was “who is considered an “essential worker”. Many of the stories were narrated by workers in fast-food restaurants, Uber drivers, and healthcare workers. Mostly all people of color, some of older generation workers, female headed household, and undocumented domestic workers, all now called “Essential workers”, to keep the businesses open. I am trying to understand how and why these workers are not essential
when they organize and fight for higher wages, better working conditions, and sick leave pay.
I am not big on social media posts, but recently I came across a post of a young woman crying
because the DMV was closed in her community, however, the fast-food restaurant remained open. Her dismay was that restaurants, Liquor stores, and hair salons are “essential “but the DMV is closed down until further notice. A sign on the door reads “All applications for license renewals must be done on-line”.
This further irritated the young lady as she cried that she needs to renew her license in order to get a job as an Essential worker! I actually sympathize with her and I hope she eventually figured out a solution to renewing her driver license.
1- Will these workers still be essential when the vaccinations are administered, or will they be the last to be vaccinated due to substandard Healthcare?
Having been deemed an essential worker throughout this entire pandemic having to physically report to the office on a daily basis, I completely related to the testaments recorded in “Work in the Time of Coronavirus” Sarah Jaffe and Michelle Chen. As an Investigator for the NYC Dept of Homeless Services I have been required to physically report to work because I have staff that have opted out of working remotely and can not remain unsupervised on site. In addition to that the NYC shelter system is a 24hr operation and homeless does not stop because of a pandemic. Although the agency has devised contingency plans for families that have already been placed in shelters however new families continue to apply at PATH (the city’s main shelter intake center located in the Bronx) on a daily basis seeking assistance in obtaining emergency housing.
As stated in Carmen’s response the article, majority of essential worker’s on the front line, helping to keep this city running are people of color. Majority of which have been struggling with working under poor conditions, have been ill equipped with the necessary supplies to safeguard themselves and are not afforded paid sick leave in the event they do become ill.
To answer your question as to will essential workers still be considered essential workers when vaccines are administered, yes they will. The term “essential worker” has not been deemed by some members of mainstream society as a title in the congratulatory sense unless they are benefiting from the services offered / needed by workers on the front line. In keeping with that same ideology, because of their lower economic status in society they (we, me, etc…) may be offered the vaccine first on a trail basis before its actually perfected. Thus the first trails of the vaccine which took place in Johannesburg, Africa in June 2020 and Brazil in November 2020.
In the report by Philip Alston, “Statement on visit to the USA” was impactful to actually see in writing that the USA is no longer a country of opportunity but of oppression to the people that does not have wealth. The report is very clear stating that the rich do not pay much in taxes and benefit more from tax breaks that should go to small businesses or the people who are in extreme poverty. While the report only looks at only certain states, it is obvious that state and local government does not do much to take care of the extreme poverty that exists in their localities. The report also states that these local and state legislators know of the problem that persists in their localities but do nothing- this is insane, irresponsible and clearly a human rights violation.
From the reading, “Precarity Rising”, was very enlightening in that it actually calls out that job security and social standing go hand in hand. From what I can understand, precarity is rising due to the inequality of the job market, the dissatisfaction of people not having job security, and it is political advantageous to keep people in poverty. This goes hand in hand to the report of Philip Alston in the politicians know of the job market changes and the advantages it has for certain class of people, and advantageous for them to keep people in poverty so they won’t rise up to go against their policies.
I agree with Amadi that the report “Statement on visit to the USA” the USA pressures other countries on their human rights, but is not doing nothing for the people that live in extreme poverty. My questions are:
1. If politicians know of the inequalities that exist in their localities, why does the people speak up more on the injustices that exist in their towns, cities?
2. How do we hold these politicians accountable to provide basic human rights to all their citizens?
3. If we are living in a precarious period, especially now with the Corona Virus and job insecurity, what can the working class do to not fall on these situations and how do we hold employers responsible for these situations?
Judith Stein’s piece “Conflict, Change, and Economic Policy in the Long 1970’s” provides a brilliant analysis of political economy in the 1970’s. Typically, when reading about the rise of neoliberalism, much lip service is given to Paul Volcker or the Chicago Boys for engineering the economic policy that flourished in the 1980’s. However, Stein is willing to take the Left and the Democratic Party to task in her piece, as she feels that they had “forgotten to think about the economy.” She references numerous reasons for this; the media spectacle of Watergate producing a short-lived swing back to Democratic governance and an overly hubristic assumption that America’s post-war prosperity would continue unabated, chief among them. She doesn’t mince words in tearing apart the single term of Jimmy Carter’s presidency, whom she feels was a failure of a president who could neither work with the diverse Democratic coalition (of which labor was a major part) nor fully sell himself as the id of American capitalism, as Ronald Reagan successfully did after him.
What I found most interesting in this section was its characterization of Carter’s instatement of Paul Volcker as Federal Reserve chairman, which I had always thought fit in perfectly with the times. Stein more wrote of Volcker’s appointment as an overcorrection to the problem of inflation, which pollster Pat Cadell said was a concern of financial elites, and not average people. Volcker’s use of his famous “shock” in 1979 took even Washington by surprise, as Carter’s chair of the Council of Economic Advisors Charles Schultze once said that “the Fed has made us all prisoners of its own rhetoric.” My understanding up until this point was that it was Jimmy Carter’s presidency that normalized neoliberal policy in Washington, but it seems like Carter was somewhat of a Democratic anomaly at the time as he was still likely working with a lot of New Dealers around. It was really illuminating to have Judith Stein set the record straight in a way; to mercilessly criticize Carter’s failed term but also to give the proper context necessary to understand why he was unpopular. He couldn’t thread the needle exactly for what became the neoliberal “capitalist realism” of the 1980’s and 1990’s.
1. How much of Jimmy Carter’s fiscally conservative policy making was an inevitability of the times and how much was his own pro-business ideology that prevailed over some of the New Dealers in Congress and his cabinet? Was he doomed no matter what?
2. What is the difference between the foreign policy of the Trilateral Commission and that of neoconservatives?
I’m frankly a bit obsessed with the political and economic issues of the 1970s. In many ways, I see that decade as the pivotal turning point from the New Deal Order to the neoliberal era we live in today. I think that’s why I overall really enjoyed the reading from Judith Stein. One interesting aspect from the Stein reading that I particularly enjoyed was her section on the Nixon years. Nixon famously saw domestic policy as merely a matter of housekeeping and, instead, focused more on foreign policy. However, several of Nixon’s economic policies can be seen as the swan song for the New Deal Order. Nixon considered himself a “Keynesian” and he “expand[ed] Social Security and Medicare” (Stein 86-87). However, global events during this period ushered in the politics of austerity and neoliberalism.
I think it’s important to note just how apocalyptic the 1970s may have seemed to the average American. Watergate, the oil crisis, urban fiscal crises, student protests, Vietnam, energy shortages, political assassinations, inflation, cults, serial killers, etc. It’s easy to see how the New Deal Order stopped being a valid framework in which to handle all of these crises. In many ways, the 1970s period become a period of austerity and ostensible “belt-tightening.” Restrictions on energy usage were encouraged or mandated due to the oil crisis. Cities such as NYC were forced to adopt draconian budgets after the federal government refused to bail them out during fiscal crises. The old order seemed ineffective or useless in the face of so many concurrent problems. That’s why, according to Stein, the “supply-siders” were able to provide “a seductive alternative” to the New Deal Order’s toolkit (Stein 100). Conservative institutions built up during this period such as the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, and the Business Roundtable were able to reshape the way in which policymakers faced political and economic crises.
In many ways, the many crises of the 1970s appear to have been a perfect storm for the collapse of the New Deal Order. The 1970s were so chaotic that it’s almost difficult to even pinpoint an exact moment when things fell apart for the postwar economic boom in America. However, I think one way to begin answering this question is to acknowledge the mood of the time and the way in which this impacted the political imagination of both the working-class and the economic elites. This may provide clues as to why we are in the period that we are now living in today.
Questions:
1.) Besides bell bottoms and disco, what legacies of the 1970s continue to this day?
2.) How did the New Deal Order come to be seen as sclerotic and ineffective?
P.S. If, like me, you’re also obsessed with the politics of the 1970s here are some book recommendations:
1.) Kim Phillips-Fein’s “Fear City”
2.) Jefferson Cowie’s “Stayin’ Alive”
3.) Rick Perlstein’s “Nixonland” and “The Invisible Bridge”
On “Statement on a Visit to the USA”, the first thing I would say is that in the beginning of the article I was surprised to see the author thank the Trump Administration for their assistance. Trump and human rights doesn’t seem to belong in the same sentence but that did give me some pause. I feel almost that it’s a bait and switch, yes, I’m going to assist on a study on racial and economic disparities but right now I’m going to continue to give tax breaks to the 1%. The author had me question this article as a whole because although he is bringing up some truths on policies and procedures in the US, this has always been. This is nothing new about healthcare and education and labor as a whole. The The thing is that when it comes to word association, the first thing people think about when you say the word “poor”, “disenfranchised”, “criminal reform”, “disproportionate”, these all have negative connotations and is automatically associated with black and latino. Even when you mention something about “minorities” black is the first racial group to come first before any other in a negative context and that has to change. Black people don’t make up even a quarter of the population, yet when it comes to programs that could benefit everyone, they put us on the front line of being the recipients when there other groups out there who may need it more and they are not being addressed and these programs or initatives get shut down. Native Black Americans have been screaming for years about injustice and the roadblocks that they were facing and people tend to put the blinders on until it starts to spill over into their world. We are basically ingrained into a system that does not want every group to succeed. Yet, people are still shocked, surprised and appalled. And this kind of makes me wonder , what is the immigrant’s perception of America and what is their perception of Black people in America? Do they believe everything that they see on tv and carry those stereotypes with them? Why are people still shocked that people in the US live in poverty. They’ve had commericals on this since I was a kid. This author also talked about soaring death rates and prescription drugs. Take a look a Miami Vice or Scarface or any film that romanticized and glorified the drug trade. Yet this author felt a need to do a study. Even today you have Snowfall, Narcos, El Chapo, I’m even watching a show called Undercover on Netflix about the drug trade and addiction. It’s not just here that it’s a problem its all over the world. And the author mentioned “American exceptionalism” what exactly does that even mean? Instead of trying to find exceptionalism in another country every country needs to promote their own exceptionalism and promote change to make things better there too and maybe that way things will trickle down. That is the only way change can happen. Everyone looks at the US as a model, but the model has always been broken.
“Work in the Time of Coronavirus” was a very good read. I feel for the people that are deemed essential workers and I’m a government worker and completely understand. I think in order for the essential workers, independent contractors to really have their voice heard, there has to be a mass general strike across the board, statewide for everyone to be taken seriously. It’s funny in reading about the taxi drivers that are having issues because I have a friend that works for DOT and there was a joint program with all the city agencies to help deliver food during the quarantine and the cab drivers who needed the money would participate in the program. On the one hand I would feel bad for the cab drivers and their stories but then I heard that they were dropping the food in the dirty lobby of an apartment building for people to pick up like animals. It’s hard for me to feel sorry for people that you know are treating other people like dirt to get a check and that has to stop. I also used to work in a nursing home back when I was going to college making $4.25 an hour an imagine living on that with not type of leave. You would force yourself to work because if you didn’t you didn’t have no pay and no leave. I remember one time I had called out sick I just couldn’t make it out of bed and my manager called me and yelled at me because I called out sick and that’s the reality for some people. I have an ex-coworker who got hired by a hospital in December of 2019 and then Corona hit a couple months later. She caught Covid but was still told to come into work if she didn’t show any symptoms. She got tested again 2 weeks later and she still had it. How do you say no to going into work when you have a child? I don’t go to work I’m going to get fired and if I do go to work I may die. This is all capitalism. It’s all about keeping a system running and when the time comes where you have to make a choice between life and death for the almighty dollar. And that’s a question that I ask myself every day when my job tells me that I have to come in.
My co-worker’s union that they said that if a vaccine comes out that they may have to take it and if you don’t come in you have to use your time. There’s a pandemic going on and people still concerned about money and generating revenue for someone else.
My responses to Amadi’s questions are:
1.Will this new administration actually address the disparities in the U.S.? – They absolutely will not and was never expecting them to.
2. Why does the U.S. function to systemically oppress its citizens? Because we the people are allowing them to and are slaves to capitalism (me included).
3. Will the modern day society rise up to end these disparities? Some would argue that modern day society was 20 years ago too and nothing has changed. When people are okay with another group getting what is their due without looking to see what is in it for them, then I think that there could be change. But instead of looking at others to facilitate it, the people who are the receiving end of the disparities have to be a internal force within themselves.
My question is :
1. If your job/union asked you to take the Covid vaccine and reclassified your title as an essential worker, would you take the vaccine if your job made it non-negotiable? And if not, what would you do?
As the posters above described, this weeks readings were about the precarity of workers in the modern era, and examined the different reasons for that precarity. The primary source UN report and the Dissent article both put the policy and economic history into a human perspective. The positive examples of poverty management in the UN report were consistently community organizations and mutual aid, while government policy failed to provide adequate help. One of the analyses in the readings compares the modern economic age with the Gilded Age, and looks at how workers should respond.
I appreciate the analysis that Benanev ignores some of the political realities which determine an economy to focus on how precarity is often a reaction to external factors. As many posters noted, the 1970’s included a cavalcade of factors that led to the reorganization of what governance should look like. In many cases, this was the US reaping what it had sown through decades of public policy. The US used (and uses) economic soft power as an arm of its foreign policy and slowly leveraged its domestic workforce to build the world it envisioned. The US idea was to shift its population from producers to consumers, and have international products purchased by Americans prop up nascent economies in allied countries. This frames labor as a competitive marketplace, which pits American workers vs workers in other countries. Capital moves across borders freely, but labor does not. How do workers, internationally, fight back? Workers, especially in times of high precarity, are so focused on the day-to-day material realities, how can they contribute to the constant reconstruction of the world economy?
I think the answer lies in politics. On a tangential note, related to Jay’s reading recommendations (I actually just ordered Fear City too), I used the week off to do some personal reading and one of the books I picked up was Rick Perlsteins Reaganland, which is a giant tome outlining the shifting politics towards conservatism from 1976-1980. The New Right, as the intensely conservative movement was known, organized around social issues and the emotional resonance of “freedom.” Freedom, in this conservative sense, is the freedom from restraint or the freedom to kind of do whatever feels good no matter who you harm or whose rights you infringe upon. This cultural notion of freedom replaced that which reigned in the New Deal Era, which was more material, and infringed upon by rapacious employers. I was reminded of something Professor Suarez said in this class, which is that political coalitions are often built and sustained by whoever monopolizes the cultural definition of freedom, a concept so engrained in the American ethos.
So, my abstract question:
How do workers redefine Freedom in the modern age?
What are some policy ideas for actually building labor power on an international stage?
I enjoyed reading Amadi’s response to “Conflict, Change, and Economic Policy in the Long 1970s” because she brought it back to the pervasive ideas that tend to linger throughout American history: the government functions in ways to support what it wants and the rest is played down. (If 7% are unemployed then at least 93% are content… Oi.) I agree with Amadi that this reading was difficult at times for a variety of reasons. I was going through it expecting more explanation of how political economy was affecting employment, but found myself lost in foreign policy (import/export ratios) and inflation/rate regulation. What I found especially interesting was the bit about UAW and how they essentially wanted to unionize internationally so they didn’t side with labor entirely and instead focused on the expansion and relocation of industry abroad as an opportunity. (Although Stein mentions that the auto industry was not in the same boat as other industries at the time and did not expect to be.) I wished there was a little more on this and labor’s responses because I’ve had to fill in the gaps and am assuming UAW saw this as an opportunity and thought that if American companies had been more restricted internationally they also would be restricted internationally, leading me to question why the UAW saw business regulation as union regulation as well. (I’m really stuck on this because I know business and unions are tied together, but it feels like the UAW could operate internationally even if it wasn’t with American companies that had expanded there. It feels like narrow thinking to assume organized labor has to follow national lines like this. Maybe Im interpreting this wrong? Was the UAW just focusing on building up in the US before expanding and then lost momentum when the US auto industry was hit hard?)
1. Why did the UAW not support Burke-Hartke and instead favored trade adjustment assistance?
2. Stein poses that the United States focused on short-term and reactionary economic policy; have we seen a change to long-term planning? (If yes, how? If no, what would it look like?)
Stein’s piece was rather interesting as her economic story about the fall of the New Deal Order throws into light how stubborn Keynesianism was as the defining ideological “well” from which political leaders had to drink up until Reagan dramatically sealed the deal in the 80’s with full-on neoliberalism, crafting a political climate that insisted there was no alternative. While Keynesianism at home had to be contended with for a surprisingly long time, as Stein points out, lassiez-faire abroad had become the Washington consensus much earlier with the advent and ultimate dominance of free-trade policies. This combination was untenable of course and spelled the doom of American manufacturing as imports continually rose through the successive presidencies Stein recounted. I was deeply interested by the role that Cold War foreign policy played in bolstering free trade while looking the other way as strategic anti-communist allies went forward with protectionist policies.
1. How does NAFTA fit into the progression that Stein describes? Was it an exceptional event in the march toward free trade and globalization or a logical continuation?
2. How do you see the labor movement’s response to labor abuses in the COVID era? Do you see this as a crushing time for labor or as an opportunity for a militant revitalization of the labor movement?
I was able to read “Work in the Time of Coronavirus: Belabored Stories” by Sarah Jaffe, Michelle Chen and “Precarity Rising”by Aaron Benanav. I agree with Amdi’s response on both these pieces and really appreciated hearing her experience working with Amazon. I have family members who are small business owners and essential workers who are independent contractors who continue to struggle. Because even if they are deemed essential they get no benefit. I organizer domestic workers who are nannies, housekeepers and eldercare givers, Technically Childcare workers in NYS is covered under essential workers but we found out it was only workers how worked in childcare centers not workers how worked in individual household. We have to deal with a lot of worker who had to work through out the lockdown and forget about hazard pay where reduced their pay. This is capitalism at its best. On COVID, the news that came out yesterday that UK will become the first country to approve and distribute the Pfizer vaccine is beyond me. I am still trying to understand how this shift from the New Deal to this neoliberal shift happened in the US but also spread across the work.
Questions:
1. Could the US have adopted more social democratic policies like some European countries in the 70s? What kind of impact would that have had in the labor movement?
2. With the divisions created by capitalism across class and race, and how ingrained capitalist ideology is in people is a social democratic wave possible in the US?
Stein’s piece was really compelling and managed to bridge so many different elements that led to break break up of the New Deal Order. I appreciate her including the missteps by the Democratic party in its focus on post-Watergate politics and the failure to take up an economic alternative to the Keynesian policies that ruled, as Jordan pointed out. I also appreciate how she positioned the U.S. within a global context. Particularly, I agree with Alanna that it was fascinating the way in which Stein explained how Cold War politics affected trade policy, ultimately putting the US at a disadvantage as Europe and Japan recovered during the post-war period. I think there’s sometimes tension around whether U.S. Cold War policy was driven more by economic or ideological fervor, and Stein makes a case for the overwhelming dominance of anticommunist ideology actually harming U.S. industry.
Reading Stein alongside the UN report and the Dissent stories is frankly, depressing. But it does help to understand the post-1973 era as an ongoing shift. I found Aaron Benanav’s argument compelling. The uniqueness of today’s labor market has necessitated a drastic change in worker’s relationship to work. This presents a challenge to our current moment given how many of the solutions being suggested by the contemporary Left are nevertheless rooted in a return to some form of New Deal politics.
1) Do we see similar contradictions between domestic economic and foreign policy? Or are both in such crisis that they’e too hard to define in opposition to one another?
2) Are any of the alternatives to the fiscal policies of the 1970s that we can recognize and translate to today’s economic crisis?