Some History and Stuff

The other day, in response to an entry Alex Voy made on her LJ, Abbey and I got into a discussion about history and politics, two of the things I love best.  Well, of course, in responding to Abbey, I nattered on so long that I exceeded the character limit for a reply.  So I'm posting that reply here, where I'm suffered to wax on at great length.

 

Thanks for such a thoughtful response, Abbey.  I'm a huge history/politics junkie; I love reading and talking about this stuff. 

<<From what I've read, Thatcher was pretty much the only politician willing to get her hands dirty and make some rules on the unions--secret ballots to avoid coersion during union votes, and some other things. I did a fair amount of research on this time period for a project on Thatcher, but you'd be better asking Alex.>>

While I'm sure that Thatcher did some fine things for the UK, I tend to associate her with policies that led to serious unemployment, loss of working-class power, increased segments of demoralized citizenry, increases in crime, and the strengthening of the position of the rich.

As for the unions, my reading led me to believe she did more harm than good there.  Of course, in the UK, as in the US, labor unions had over-reached themselves by the later part of the 20th century, becoming highly corrupt and often criminal.  And they are obviously not completely reformed today. 

But despite their many flaws, I see unions at their best as good things, particularly essential in industrial, capitalistic societies.  In addition to many needed workplace safeties and rights, unions generally gain for workers a bigger piece of the profit pie, which is one of the reasons that many corporations work so hard to keep unions out.  Sadly, in the ways they addressed union excesses and wrongdoings, both Reagan and Thatcher did a lot to destroy their genuine, needed effectiveness.  They threw the baby out with the bathwater.

On balance, based on my reading and my own experiences, I think the economic and social policies of the Reagan years have left the US worse off; although I don't know as much about the situation in the UK, I have the same impression of the Thatcher years.  This isn't to say, of course, that both leaders didn't do many necessary, effective things, just that, when the final balance sheet is tallied, their outlooks and policies have left us more debits than credits.  (Still, I'd take Ronnie over Dubya -- or at least the 80s brand of Republicanism over the evangelical 00s brand.)

 

>>Certainly there were a lot of freedoms gained during the 60s & 70s, and my parents were mostly happy about them. My mom is just about a year younger than you, and remembers the 60s as a decade of great upheaval.>>

Oh, it certainly was.  But it was in large part that upheaval, as scary and excessive as it often was, that fueled the sense of excitement and potential that many people felt.  For a brief period, it really seemed as if some of the serious inequities of society might actually be addressed.  The times, they are a-changin', as Mr. Dylan famously said; I really believed then that they were "a-changin'" for the better.  (I believed it the 70s, anyway; I was just a kid in the 60s and didn't pay much attention.  I started my teenage years as a very conservative, religious kid, but I got much more radical over time.)

Your mom is right that the assassinations, wars, etc., were horrifying and deplorable, but for a while, it genuinely seemed as if we were going to be able to rise from this turmoil to better things.  When I say that the national mood was better then, I don't mean that seriously bad things weren't happening; it's just that it did seem as if the various cultural and legal revolutions, with all their attendant cost and pain, would be worth it.  And in some ways, they have been, of course.

(Of course, it's inaccurate of me to discuss "the national mood" as if a single generalization can ever account for the complexities of culture and belief.  I'd better say "national moods" plural, for then as now, there were many different outlooks.  For a lot of people, the upheavals of the 60s and 70s were more frightening and destructive than anything else.  But there were also a large number of people who saw hope and potential in the turbulence and who honestly thought that increased participation in mainstream politics could be an avenue for real change.)

>>What you saw as rights for women she saw as horrendous violations of human life.>>

Gee.  I saw the women's rights movement of the 1970s as bettering human life, not violating it.  There were so many beneficial changes in gender laws regarding salary, employment, education, marital relations, inheritance, rape, equal opportunity, even women's ability to easily take out mortgages on their own.  (In 1961, for instance, my never-married, gainfully employed, 38-year-old aunt had to get my grandfather to sign with her before her bank would give her a mortgage even though she was quite able to afford it on her own.)  True, the ERA sadly failed, but the legislative push it engendered was quite successful in the long run.  And there were important changes in people's attitudes, too.

I will go so far as to say that there's not one female in America today who is not at least legally better off than she would have been in 1960.  That's why I am so saddened by the women's rights backlash of the past ten years or so.

<<Politics is complicated, but I don't think populism can be underestimated. At some point during this time period, my mom stopped seeing the Democratic party as the one of the little guy-->>

Unfortunately, I don't think that any successful, mainstream political party is ever really for "the little guy"; they are primarily about maintaining power for those who already have it, which in the US mostly means native-born, rich, straight, Christian white men.

As you say, most effective social change begins at the grass-roots level.  I joined my first community-action group in high school and have always been part of at least one; as a founding member of my school's social justice club, I have to brag and say that we (actually, mostly the students) have had quite a few successes.  I love local activism.  But I keep trying to fight the national battles, too, however much it might seem like tilting at windmills.  As a general rule, no one gives up power voluntarily.  Genuine equality must be fought for in every arena.

 

>   It is worth noting that in the "decade of greed", charitable contributions rose greatly.

Yes -- which to my mind is a good indicator of just how greedy the 1980s in fact were.  It sounds like a paradox, but an increase in charity often signals a decrease in larger commitments to social justice.  Private charity often rises in periods when governmental support for social needs dwindles, because when federal and state budgets for social programs are seriously cut (or when, as in the laissez faire days, such programs rarely even existed), private organizations have to pick up the slack.  By relying on and stressing private charity, a government can abdicate its responsibility for achieving economic and social justice and equality.  What gets treated are only the symptoms, not the disease.

That's why I'm suspicious when individual and corporate charity rises, because it's often an indicator that the responsibility for fixing social ills is being off-loaded onto the private sector.  It's an acknowledgement that there's not going to be any genuine attempt by the state to address the underlying social inequities that lead to the need for charity in the first place.  Thus corporations can make a show of giving money, can take the resulting tax break, and can continue happily along with their various exploitive policies and behaviors, throwing the occasional Martha Stewart (a relative small-timer and an uppity woman to boot) to the wolves of public example while the Kenneth Lays and the Halliburtons of the world go on mostly unimpeded.

Charity can be good -- I donate to several organizations whose work I believe in -- but ultimately it's a band-aid and even a distraction from the real sources of evil.  It allows too many people in power to avoid looking at the causes of the problems, to avoid admitting the vast economic and class and gender and racial inequities and injustices that our system is built on.  Unless we address these basic inequities, no amount of charity is going to eliminate, for example, the moral outrage that is our current health care system.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not an America-basher. I think that so far, American democracy has been more successful than other political systems in addressing social ills, and market capitalism definitely has its good points.  But, socialist that I basically am, I'm not sanguine about any really lasting changes.

 

>   I honestly don't see the grimness today. We sure as hell aren't perfect, but I don't think that materialism is anything new

Depends on what you mean by "new," I suppose. It's certainly not new to the election of 2004. But historically, I'd argue that materialism as we know it now is a relatively recent development.   Such materialism wasn't really possible until the growth of industrial, market capitalism, which means that one of the main driving forces of our economy and culture -- modern consumerism -- is mostly a development of the last 150-180 years (in the US.)  That's not to say that people in earlier times didn't consume goods; of course they did.  But not with the social, moral, and economic impact of recent times, especially the last one hundred years.

 

> Maybe *I'm* naive, but I'm not panicking.

Well, at least that's one of us *g*.  Time will tell, of course.  I doubt there will be any collapse of society or anything like that. Things will go along mostly as they have been, the cycles of history will continue their ups and downs, and I, like most of us, will continue to walk around, as my beloved George Eliot says, "well-wadded with stupidity."  This is a good thing, she says, for otherwise, we would "hear the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and die of the roar that lies on the other side of silence."  For the sake of our sanity, most of us can't afford to listen too hard to the squirrels' hearts of the world's poor and disenfranchised.  We have to be satisfied with the little we ourselves can do. 

(And I certainly can't complain for myself.  Sure, as an atheist lesbian, I occasionally have to deal with discrimination, but only on a small scale.  Overall, as a middle-class, educated, professional white woman, I'm extraordinarily privileged, far more so than most of the people in the world.  I try not to let myself forget that. And I'm complicit, too, in the state of things; I live a pretty comfy life and unfortunately don't do as much to help as I could.)

I wish you the absolute best in your military future, Abbey.  You're right that the Army needs people like you.

 
>
>   I'd ramble more, but I've got to pack for a band trip to NYC. Got any
>   Janeway in the works for us?

Have fun in NYC.  I may have to put off Janeway for a while, but she's muttering around in the back of my mind.  She'll be back.