Saturday, May 14, 2016

"When Racism Can Be Blamed, Capitalism Can Be Exonerated"

"The Clinton program—which is the kind of politics that's defined the Democratic Party and American liberalism for decades—is also a class program. But to paraphrase Adolph Reed, it's a politics that few would recognize as a working-class one.
"Despite off-the-charts wealth inequality, Democratic Party liberals have been concerned not with an egalitarian reckoning to unite the have-nots against the haves but with inclusion: bringing different 'interest groups' into the professional class while managing everyone else’s expectations downward.
"This kind of 'inclusion' politics—the chance at climbing one of a tiny handful of rickety ladders to the top—is the only economic program the Democratic Party mainstream is selling to those not already in the upper tiers. Sure, this politics is better than nothing. But as Ralph Miliband put it, 'access to positions of power by members of the subordinate classes does not change the fact of domination: it only changes its personnel.'"

Connor Kilpatrick at Jacobin criticizes the Democratic Party's apparent lack of concern for white workers.

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