If you haven’t read the Lewis Powell memo, you probably should. Or you can read the Greenpeace analysis of the memo. I think it really does represent one of the turning points in our nation’s history, and it isn’t well enough understood.
Powell created the template for a right-wing corporate resurgence in 1971. He became a Supreme Court Justice in 1972.
We’ve been getting screwed ever since.
Yeah, but it was inevitable. Only three groups in American politics have had success: Labor, Agriculture, Corporate/Business. The first two dominated the lobbying landscape prior to the memo…then yes, the rest is history. Now agriculture is fused into one or the other, usually with the corporate/business side. And with labor going the way of the dodo, eventually we’re left with just one.
Cheery.
Correction: America has never been We [All] The People.
Some groups of Americans have always been screwed.
In 1971 it just became more broadly generalized to the vast majority of us being screwed.
“… famed Dr. Milton Friedman of Chicago warned: ‘It (is) crystal clear that the foundations of our free society are under wide-ranging and powerful attack — not by Communist or any other conspiracy but by misguided individuals parroting one another and unwittingly serving ends they would never intentionally promote.'”
Darkly ironic, ain’t it?
But no one should have been bombing Bank of America branches in the early 70s. Just as anarchists and Communists shouldn’t have been bombing officials in the late teens and 20s.
It cost credibility and legitimacy, and justifies secret police action by the government that is nearly impossible to fight without massive popular support. It made thing worse, not better.
In the 1970s, the left movement was highly infiltrated by FBI informants and agents and populated by very frustrated very young white men who had been trying to end a war for six years. I would not make assumptions that the bombings were informed tactical decisions, nor totally untainted from manipulation.
Yes, it cost credibility, but how is it that the bombing of abortion clinics and the murders of doctors, even the murders of liberal church members has not cost credibility on the right?
Part of the tactics of social control is to manipulate opponents into violence to justify brutal oppression. The clearest examples of that were the labor union struggles. And the labor movement had its share of bombings and sabotage as well.
This is not to say those actions are justified or wise, but to explain how they happen and how they can be manipulated to occur.
Regardless of how much or well the FBI infiltrated and prodded the left in the 50-70s, the plane fact is the Weathermen actually blew themselves up with their own bomb. While I was sympathetic then and now to the fact that young people were effectively dying against their will for an illegal war. I appreciate the “by any means necessary” mentality but it didn’t help end the war.
In the late teens and 20s there really were anarchists and communists blowing up people. I sympathize that they were fighting a workplace that was enslaving and killing them. IIRC about 10% of steelworkers died annually.
The bombings may have scared the shit out the captains of industry and cause them to build libraries and universities but it was the popularity of Teddy Roosevelt that caused them to put him on the McKinley ticket thinking he could do little harm there. If not for an assassin that might have been true. Still I think it can be argued that Roosevelt and later FDR could have more easily won the vote if the general public didn’t think the left was full of dangerous nut bent on bringing down the government.
And yes that is also true of the assholes killing doctors and bombing women’s clinics.
The analysis that economic sectors (agriculture, labor, corporations/business) are those that dominate US politics and only the alliances among them matter are true only if you assume that each of those are politically monolithic, which they are not.
Different corporations and businesses for example have different interests, which is what allows them to split and support multiple parties. Labor is split between the historically complacent unions and the militant unions. In the New Deal the split was between the AFL and the CIO. Today, it’s between the coaliton unions like SEIU, Teamsters, AFSCME and the craft unions. Today, agricultural interests have diminished even as rural political strength has been consolidated through the phony culture wars and the use of religion.
I’ve been reading Kevin Phillips’s excellent history of the American Revolution, 1775: A Good Year for a Revolution. One thing he notes is the extent to which religious support or opposition to independence was a shadow for underlying theological arguments between competing churches. IMO that has not gone away despite the secular nature of US society. The Catholic church fought secularization and loss of members by adopting various political positions – anti-communism to protect its prerogatives where it was the state church, anti-abortion to wean its labor members away from an increasingly liberal Democratic Party, school vouchers as its parochial schools were threatened by loss of member support and by desegregation. Southern Baptists, pentecostals, and evangelical entrepreneurial churches fought secularization by jumping whole-heartedly into the defense of segregration by setting up segregation academies, pursuing school vouchers, and in 1978 linking up with Catholics in a united conservative religious front. But a lot of their historical theological divisions remain and will emerge as the overall conservative movement is spent.
With respect to religion, the Powell memos importance is putting business and the Republican Party in the frame of mind that they could use that as a front for gaining power. Little outposts in every precinct of America–that’s what a political operative sees in churches. And not only that, little outposts where one guy or gal with authority can sway groups, even large numbers of people to see things a certain way.
How would you relate this to the idolization of “the small business owner”? Seems to me that the concept is so broad that it includes huge corporations and the corner barber shop. The Chamber on the national level is conflated with local chambers, which seem to have totally different missions. But in the low-informed public mind, the “Chamber of Commerce” is interested in them, so how can the US Chamber of Commerce be any different?
The idolization of the “small business owner”, as well as legislation making no distinction between huge corporations and mom & pop operations, is essential to keep mom & pop on the “right” side of the issues. It’s worked out pretty well for the Chamber politically.
On the other hand, in recent years, the Chamber of Commerce has gone so far to the right that a significant number of corporations big and small, and local chambers, have said bye-bye. So thats significant too.
Check it out:
http://chamber.350.org/
http://www.fixtheuschamber.org/issues/local-chambers-vs-us-chamber
Reading that piece made me thing, as always, of Richard Feynman’s inclusion of Science and the methods she brings to any discussion. He was the first I read that pointed out the method of labelling to stop any real debate.
Once you label, then facts are mere sidetracks and all that is left is opinions.
Feynman’s analysis of the John Birch Society and the value of science become more relevant every year.
This is timely. Just yesterday Hubby and I were discussing “What happened?” I pointed to massive public demonstrations in the 60’s: pro-civil rights and anti-war, race riots, students taking over campuses, and the general support of the “liberal media”. (I surely did not think The Establishment Media was liberal at the time but, golly, in retrospect and by comparison, they were!) All that, SCARED the Ruling Class into organizing and proceeding over the last forty years to TAKE BACK THEIR COUNTRY.
Reading Powell I am struck by the righteousness of his point of view. He really made a good case that his side was under attack. He correctly identified the enemies of business/corporate power as loudmouths like Nader who ranted about exploding cars and other shoddy goods being foisted on the public, the ACLU defending individual liberties, Labor Unions representing workers, and liberal intellectuals pointing out the naked greed of capitalism. He saw himself representing Freedom (to profit w/o restraints), Justice (those who have more deserve more), and the American Way (unfettered capitalism). And my goodness, he justifies the Few controlling the Many so neatly with all those little shareholders and employees having a stake in the corporate oligarchy. Now roughly 46% of voting citizens agree with him!
When I recall that the “Original Intent” was that only white male property owners would be allowed to vote and govern the rest of us… I despair. They now do so by proxy through lobbyists, political campaign financing, “news” sources like Fox AND control the Supreme Court! I believe lowly individuals have lost this war entirely and that is why I now comment infrequently.
Thanks for posting this, Boo. I firmly believe that putting a name and face on things is a great help. We can go for the jugular when we know where it it is.