Michele Bachmann and the right-wing context: notes and a conspectus

.
Notes on Michele Bachmann and the right-wing context
Jay Rothermel


I composed these rough notes during the latter part of the debt ceiling debate in Washington, and after reading a few bourgeois and middle class radical articles about Rep. Bachmann.

The context for my understanding of all this as a Marxist is informed by a very useful book published in Moscow in 1984, entitled Political Consciousness In the USA: Traditions and Evolution, which epitomizes a whole generation of serious Marxist-Leninist analyses of the United States. I happened to be reading and annotating the book at the same time the events in Washington were taking place.

Jay

_____________________________

Lenin repeatedly emphasized that "the deepest

economic foundation of imperialism is

monopoly;" that the "transformation of

competition into monopoly is one of the most

important – if not the most important –

phenomena of modern capitalist economy". That

"the rise of monopolies; as a result of the

concentration of production, is a general and

fundamental law of the present [imperialist]

stage of development of capitalism" and that

"Monopoly! This is the last word in the

'latest phase of capitalist development'"

(Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest State of

Capitalism, Progress Publishers, Moscow,

1978, pages 93, 20 and 29 respectively).

The instability of the petty-bourgeois
strata’s social status generates a sense of
general instability, vacillation and a
feeling that the world they live in has been
plunged into tragedy. This forms a specific
of their group consciousness, of their
“petty-bourgeois consciousness”. This typical
“ unhappy consciousness” (Hegel), which
earlier and more acutely, than any other
group consciousness, pinpoints the
contradictions of the modern social world on
both the quotidian (commonplace) and
theoretical (ideological) levels and in
crisis situations appeals for an immediate
and radical solution of these contradictions.

These specifics of the consciousness of the
petty-bourgeois strata determine their
contradictory nature and their dual and
vacillating attitude to the theory and
practice of communism. The petty bourgeois
does not accept communism, which abolishes
private property, but at the same time
appeals to it because it abolishes big
capital and rejects the relations of
domination and subordination.

*
wsws:
leading politicians on both sides of the
Atlantic is clear. Virulent anti-Islamism,
the condemnation of a society based on the
co-existence of different peoples, rabid
nationalism and hatred of the political
left—i.e., all of the basic elements of
modern Fascism—are acceptable elements of
mainstream political discourse.”

*

My notes

The Tea Party's intellectual grab-bag:

>unlimited individual autonomy = Robinsonade.

>resentment that they must "go it alone" and
rely on their own resources whole others get
public assistance.

>undocumented workers get public assistance

Obama's socialism bails out the stupid,
careless, and inefficient while the thrifty
and wise pick up the tab.
*
p-b in that it expresses a contradictory and
intermediate perspective compressed between
the line of march of the working class and
the prerogatives and practice of the
dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
*
How did Bachmann supplant Palin?

--she wanted it more
--Palin is a subjective vacillator [witness
her resignation as governor after the David Letterman interview ].
--Bachmann is part of the nomenclatura of the
Republican right wing in the U.S. Palin
comes off as a marginal dilettante always
changing her strategy [collapse of bus tour]
--Palin unreliable, inconsistent.

*
The Whipsaw:

bi-partisan austerity drive in Washington.
debate is whip-sawed between tactical
approaches of different ruling class parties,
each stirring up their supporters and
funders, before the bipartisan austerity cut
is voted for. Some are given the luxury of
opposing it and even voting against it so
long as the margin of victory is assured, so
that they can steal a march on their
challengers back home if necessary.

This back and forth raises the level of
frustration level of viewers, who are
inundated with misinformation about
motivations and consequences until they turn
the channel in disgust.

Win-win for the bipartisan war party.

And...so much sand is kicked up that no one
in the media has to worry about being called
on the fact that the unending and always
expanding war budget is never mentioned.

*

Bachmann's dog-whistling signals to racists
and homophobes are a testament to her sheer
nerve as a marginal opportunist unafraid to
double-down on her wagers about how extreme
her rhetoric can become. In the pre-Iowa
Caucus bell-jar of bourgeois politics, taking
up this much rhetorical oxygen is a strategy
to asphyxiate competitors below her on the
ladder: Santorum, Gingrich; and scare away
any second thoughts or will-o-the-wisp whims
of someone like Palin, whom Bachmann has to
stop from running by absorbing the same base
and funders.

*
These are the kinds of people BHO wants to
run against: avatars of the alienated and
psychologically fragmented middle class who
-- because of the precarious social position
of the layer they emerge from -- are always
alarmed and threatened by social
contradictions BHO's self-confident kind of
opportunism seems easily able to overcome.

BHO wants to run against these people because
it will be easier to make his case that he
really is the lesser evil to a Michelle.
Bachmann. The two-party system's genius for
maintaining unthreatened bourgeois
dictatorship is clearly and starkly
demonstrated in these kinds of contests.

*
view reforms as not only useless but
pernicious

undermine private initiative (and with it the
whole edifice of bourgeois society) and also
give rise lo idleness and parasitism

_______________________________________________________

Political Consciousness In the Usa. Traditions and Evolution



....The ideology that extreme conservatives
profess today was the essence of American
liberalism in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries.

The furious growth of the monopolies
destroyed the traditional “equilibrium” of
the bourgeois social and economic mechanism.

The ruling cliques, in the interests of the
monopolies themselves, began to organize and
regulate the anarchic development of
capitalism, and consequently to place a
degree of limitation on the actions of
individual corporations.

….a new social order, a transitional one from
complete free competition to complete
socialization.

[n.b.
….[struggle within the ruling groups over the
question of social concessions] was finished
by about 1975, the period of the first
post-WWII global recession. Declining
average rate of profit, increased
international competition with other
imperialist states, end of post-war world
market monopoly. Concessions could not be
afforded, so austerity and union-busting --
along with anti-independence wars and
expansion of high tech sector of defense
industry -- were used to counterattack
declining average rate of profit.]

….modern capitalism seeks to preserve its
influence among the masses both through
repression and through establishing a minimum
wage, providing for social insurance,
guaranteeing employment for the able-bodied,
and so on. (The scale on which measures of
the second type arc carried out depends not,
of course, on the goodwill of the ruling
cliques but on the intensity with which the
working class struggles for its vital
interests.)

….ultra-rightist ideologues are opposing to the
politics of social maneuvering an unvarnished
apology for the principles of totally
unlimited private ownership and free
competition. They regard the social reforms
that the US government has enacted under 284
pressure from working people as nothing other
than a communist conspiracy. This view of
bourgeois reformism has been common among
reactionary extremists in the USA throughout
the twentieth century; it became particularly
widespread, however, in the postwar years.

….ultra-rightist ideology has undergone a
vigorous revival since the Second World War,
and considerably expanded its sphere of
influence. At least two objective factors
contributed to this.

First, capitalism, with its cult of private
property, is constantly and unavoidably
reproducing conditions that foster the
ideology of individualism, which is a
cornerstone of rightist thought among the
masses. As noted above, these conditions have
been especially marked in America since the
war. No doubt the crisis of bourgeois
ideology, the modernization of the classical
principles of capitalism that accompanies it,
and attempts to deal with the problems facing
American society through state-monopoly
regulation helped turn the rightist movement
into a jingoistic crusade to save America’s
heritage.

Second, the ideological struggle now going on
as the general crisis of capitalism worsens
has brought about a split within the USA’s
ruling cliques, making some well-to-do
segments of American society fearful of any
changes whatever in social and economic
relations; Irving Horowitz has remarked that
their identification of change with socialism
is almost pathological."’ The global
clash of the two ideologies has made
rightists more fanatical and bigoted than
ever; they interpret any move toward
compromise by their government, whether at
home or abroad, as a compact with the enemy
and a betrayal of Americanism.

*
Liberal practice is very frequently to be
seen in tandem with conservative thinking.
Liberalism, to put things figuratively, is
the mind of capital; conservatism is its
soul.

…."real liberals" or "libertarians.”

….Although a superficial acquaintance with the
writings of the right’s ideologues and
leaders might suggest that they oppose the
strong centralized power of the federal
government, this is not the case. They simply
want to keep it from tampering with the
economic interests of business, while using
its full force against the have-nots.

….conservative politicians, who depict their
views as virtually revolutionary

….Equating liberalism with socialism, they have
branded the liberals too as anti-Americans,
as conspirators and traitors. Fighting
“disloyalty” and “treason” has become the
right’s principal means of expressing its
“patriotism” and "one– hundred percent
Americanism.”

[Bachmann reproduces these decades-old hoary
cliches of the witch-hunters in demanding
loyalty investigations by news media of
members of Congress.]

*
….An equally important ingredient of
capitalism’s ideological and political crisis
in the 1970s is an intensification of the
monopolies’ attempts to impose reactionary
regimes on society and the resuscitating of
various right extremist, neofascist trends.

….With the advent of imperialism, the
bourgeoisie of all countries turned from
democracy to “all-out reaction" in economics,
politics and ideology.

….“Politics is a concentrated expression of
economics.” and of its scope
(Politics "is the sphere of relationships of
all classes and strata to the state and the
government, the sphere of the interrelations
between all classes"

Politics as a social phenomenon comprising
power relations arose at the time when
society broke down into classes and the state
system was established

….emergence of capitalism and the concomitant
rise of the modern government of laws with
its bourgeois-democratic apparatus create the
material base for the politicization of
public life: politics becomes an independent
sphere of. mass activity.

….As the capitalism of free competition
develops and is consequently transformed into
state-monopoly capitalism, a broader section
of the masses tends to be drawn into the
political process and to constitute its
subject. This historical trend corresponds
directly to the conclusion reached by Marx
and Engels: "Together with the thoroughness
of the historical action, the size of the
mass whose action it is will ... increase.”

….by the bourgeoisie itself, which makes
increasingly active use of political
mechanisms to strengthen its own position in
society and also draws certain strata of the
working people into the political process,
intending to make them its allies.

….State-monopoly capitalism emerged and
economic levers proved inadequate as
guarantees of the functioning and development
of society.

….politicizing the economy and culture

….different aspects of public life were
subordinated to the interests of the
political struggle, and the economy and
culture were turned into an arena for
political competition, overt or covert.
Private, as well as public life became an
object of practical interest for politics and
politicians, since public and private life
alike’ became more closely connected with the
exercise of power, and thus a political
“concern”.

….the political order, without in the least
sacrificing its autonomy, is seeking to
appropriate the dominant role that once
belonged to another autonomous sector,
economics.

The existence in bourgeois society of public
political life in which working people
participate does not, of course, imply that
the masses of the citizenry have real access
to power. But the very fact that citizens can
participate directly in activities having to
do with the exercise of power (elections,
referenda, the work of political parties and
trade unions, etc.) becomes a significant
element in the social and political
experience of the masses and an active factor
in the formation of mass political
consciousness.

….Involving the masses of the citizenry in the
political process and broadening the field of
politics as a specific domain of social
relations are both linked historically with a
broadening of bourgeois government’s domain
and functions. Government takes on an
economic function and 14 subsequently an
ideological one, neither of which it
possessed in the early stages of capitalism’s
development.


Syncretic at Dictionary.com
–noun 1. the attempted reconciliation or
union of different or opposing principles,
practices, or parties, as in philosophy or
religion.

….breakdown of syncretic social consciousness
and its differentiation is the first of the
natural consequences resulting from the
emergence of politics as a separate field of
endeavor and the politicization of public
life. In this process political consciousness
becomes established as an independent form,
it develops and is enriched by integrating
into itself elements of other forms—legal,
moral, and religious.

In essence, political consciousness
represents reflection by the subject of the
political process on the process itself and
his own part in it. As soon as it arises, it
becomes an important component link and a
genuine factor in the exercise of political
power, ensuring the functioning of the
socio-political system. This role of
political consciousness, whatever its actual
content, is the result of the social
functions it performs. As for the content of
political consciousness, its various
manifestations may differ fundamentally
depending on the social status of the
subject, the character of the times, and the
concrete historical conditions. It should be
kept in view, moreover, that the political
consciousness of a society, class, or group
changes in content more rapidly, as a rule,
than its religion, morality, esthetic views,
and philosophy, because class and party
values are naturally expressed more fully,
consistently, and clearly in it than in any
other form of consciousness.

….political questions become enmeshed with
moral, religious, and philosophical questions
in the practice of public life

….it may be said that today almost any side of
public 15 or private life may be an object of
political consciousness..

….mass political consciousness as the real,
practical consciousness of the mass subject
of the political process

….everyday consciousness is to a significant
degree empirical consciousness, but it also
includes theoretical (ideological) elements.

….ideology is the product of purposeful,
specialized activity carried out by
theoreticians ( fulfilling the “demand” of a
class), while mass political 16 consciousness
is shaped and functions spontaneously, in the
everyday socio-political practice of the
masses. The latter does, indeed, have its
“system”, but this is not at all the result
of purposeful activity by the mass subject of
the political process, but rather an
expression of the logic (or illogic) of the
masses’ spontaneous activity.

….mass consciousness cannot be reduced to any
one element (level) of social consciousness;
it is a distinctive expression of the latter
in its entirety.

….conviction, a subjective form of synthesis
between ideology (theory) and social
psychology within the consciousness of the
mass individuum. Conviction comprises three
basic elements: 1) information—- knowledge
about the world as a whole or about some
section of reality, socio-political reality,
for example; 2) confidence in the truth of
that information; 3) a readiness to act
accordingly.

Conceptions assimilated ready-made may be
regarded as stereotypes: they are marked by
uniformity and a high degree of stability,
and are not necessarily grounded rationally.

….political ideology -- a system of social and
political ideas that expresses in theoretical
form the consciousness of a particular class
or group, and gives a theoretical
justification of its political interests.
....an independent superstructure to
political theories shaped in the historical
development of society, or versions of such
theories adopted by political parties....

American bourgeoisie succeeded in presenting
its own interests as the interests of society
thus giving the existing social and political
doctrines the appearance of neutrality, but
this in no way affected the class character
of American society or the party character of
the political theory it produced.

….integration of ideology into mass political
consciousness and its transformation into
convictions is a complex process that takes
place in the framework of the social and
political practice of the subject of mass
consciousness.

….mass consciousness is often fragmented:
conflicting (not to say mutually exclusive)
conceptions and values coexist within
it....subject of mass consciousness can
assimilate ideological conceptions and
stereotypes controverted by his own
experience and not in accord with his
spontaneous behavior

…..at the ideological level continue to pay lip
service to an amazing degree to stereotypes
and shibboleths inherited from the past. The
abstract ideas they tend to hold about the
nature and functioning of our socio-economic
system still seem to stem more from the
underlying assumptions of a laissez faire
philosophy

….abstract ideas that make up the American
political ideology”, which have been
assimilated by the mass subject, do not
correspond to the social and political
experience of the subject.

….more than political ideology; it might be
called political ideology in action. In this
respect it is an essential element of mass
political consciousness.

….Conviction is deeper and richer than opinion,
which is inevitably confined to a concrete
question, often very narrow, the answer to
which is only a partial expression of
conviction and, in the last analysis, of
political orientation

….heterogeneity of American conservative
political thought, in the framework of which
several types coexist, and by the primordial
heterogeneity of their ideological
substratum. The central feature uniting these
various types of political thought is that
they all are employed to justify and
stabilize historically outdated social
structures

....Conservative ideology of the present tends to
serve those bourgeois quarters that in
principle accept the capitalist development
of Western society but are opposed to some of
its modern forms—above all they fear the
growth in the social and political activity
of popular masses

….conservatism as a type of ideology and
consciousness embodies the political
thinking of those segments of society whose
position in it is threatened by new trends of
social development

….refusal to admit the irreversibility of
social changes which call into question their
social position

….win back the lost social space

….two ideological currents in the structure of
conservative political consciousness, one of
which is aimed at stabilizing and
perpetuating antiquated social structure and
the other at eliminating opposing social
forces and trends and restoring the former
social order....

….avoids analyzing social development from a
historical perspective. It prefers a
moralistic and didactic approach to social
phenomena built on the statement of absolute
truths unchangeable in a historical
perspective....

….the universe is subject to a general moral
law; human nature and reason are imperfect
and evil; men are born unequal; existing and
time-tested social institutions are
preferable to radical social reform; strict
social differentiation is necessary for the
harmonious interaction of classes and social
groups; protection of private property is the
ultimate moral purpose of society....

….one-sided approach to the social time frame....

"The great principle of laissez faire, that
had proved so useful in the earlier struggle
against aristocratic paternalism,” V. L.
Parrington wrote, "has become a shield and
buckler for the plutocracy that was rising
from the freedoms of a let-alone policy.”

….libertarianism, reflects the thinking of
business circles who are not active in the
state sector and who reject any kind of
encroachment of the government on their
traditional sovereignty and are opposed to
the widening of workers’ rights, referring to
them as “collectivist” and “socialist”
actions which undermine American
individualism. This type of consciousness in
a theorized form is contained in the works of
Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, John
Hospers, Jerome Tuccille, Milton Friedman,
David Friedman, Murray Rothbard, Roger L.
MacBride, Robert Nozick, et al. There is an
essential functional difference between
libertarianism and the market conservatism of
the late 19th and the early 20th century. It
consists in that, during the 1930s and 1940s,
the 104 apologies for a free market became an
openly nostalgic position which lagged far
behind the development of American political
consciousness after the New Deal.

…..combining of libertarianism and
traditionalism becomes possible because of
the specific ideological deformation of
ideological borrowings within the system of
conservative political consciousness.

….fusionism (F. Mayer, M. Stanton Evans,
William F. Buckley, Jr., et al.) which
attempts to treat the differences between
libertarianism and traditionalism as mere
frictions within the framework of a general
consensus and calls for their removal in the
context of a wider problematic field of
American conservatism. Yet the absence of
positive bases for the merging of
libertarians and traditionalists and their
ultimate incompatibility proves to be the
greatest difficulty for the doctrine of
fusionism.
….neoconservatism in America as a new type of
conservative consciousness. This type of
consciousness in a theorized form is
contained in the works of Irving Kristol,
Daniel Bell, Daniel Moynichan, Norman
Podhoretz, Samuel Huntington, Seymour Lipset,
Robert Nisbet, Edward Banfield, Roger Staar,
Martin Diamond, Peter L. Berger, et al.
p The new type of conservative political
consciousness in the United States originated
in a new social, political and economic
situation which took shape in the 1970s as a
result of the further development of
state-monopoly capitalism and the worsening
of its contradictions. This process brought
about some changes in the criteria for 105
distinguishing conservatism and liberalism
and introduced some corrections in the
watershed concerning the attitude towards
government intervention, which had formed
between them by the beginning of the New
Deal.

By the 1970s the active regulating role of
the government in economic and social life
became a permanent factor of American
reality; as a result the government began to
be regarded as a "neutral administrative
tool" which in itself is neither
liberal nor conservative.

Accordingly, the criterion in
distinguishing the various political and
socio-economic positions became not so much
whether or not the mechanisms of government
regulation were employed, but rather in whose
interest and how they should be employed.

A number of factors contributed to the
formation of a new type of conservative
consciousness. Among these were the
disillusionment of Americans in the
optimistic social programs and social
policies of the liberals of the 1960s. The
serious complication of the problems of
post-industrialism, the complexity of the
entire modern social system, and the obvious
inability of the neoliberal technocratic
recipes to provide solutions (plus the
increasing trend towards radical social
reforms which these recipes objectively
stimulated), have brought about a reverse
reaction of growing interest in the
traditional social schemes of conservatism
within the idea of the "limits of politics”.

….neoconservatism is functional in that it
actually points out the crisis phenomena in
the economic and socio-political system of
American capitalism today, focusing on the
most acute of the economic and
socio-political problems in American society
today that cannot be solved by the
traditional liberal or neoliberal methods.

….ideological elements are borrowed from
libertarianism and traditionalism; second, as
a means for the conservative deformation of
the ideology of new liberalism, which, as is
known, tries to minimize market regulation,
elements of market mechanism are introduced.
The "old middle class”, who were not amenable
to state-monopoly forms of capitalist
reproduction, formed the backbone of
libertarianism and traditionalism, while
neoconservatism incorporates other social
groups, mainly those whose demands were met
by the New Deal all the way up to the period
of economic stability at the start of the
1960s, but who were threatened by the loss of
their gains owing to the basic trends of the
social policy of neoliberals during the
second half of the 1960s and the beginning of
the 1970s. Forms of right radicalism appear
as offshoots of conservatism on the basis of
similar conservative reaction of social
strata affected by economic and
sociopolitical changes in the American
bourgeois system.



LIBERTARIAN CONSCIOUSNESS

….distinctive stamp of eschatology combined
with moralism, which, incidentally, in one
way or another is characteristic of all types
of conservative consciousness

….transition from market to state mechanisms of
regulating the socio-economic process
represents the logical development of the
capitalist structure. The recognition of this
logic, however, would be self-destructive for
this type of political consciousness. In
their attachment to a historically past phase
of bourgeois development libertarians
interpret this transition as none other than
the distortion of a morally stable "natural
order" that is in keeping with the highest
moral principles and human nature itself.

Libertarian consciousness reproduces the
Smithian fetish of exchange regarded as the
natural means for the self– revelation of
human nature: "The only way by which man can
do this is by use of his mind and energy to
transform resources (‘production’) and to
exchange these products for products created
by others.”

…."individuals are the only human reality. All
groups are fictions ... they exist only in
the abstract."

All types of conservative political
consciousness in the United States are
characterized by some form of educational
program. The distinctive feature of the
libertarian program is associated with the
fact that this type of consciousness formally
recognizes that man is naturally reasonable.
In this connection, his education (or
reeducation) in accord with the ideals of
libertarianism is supposed to be realised
with the help of rational influence. In this
respect libertarianism is much less elitist
than traditionalist consciousness and exactly
for this reason is opposed to the
traditionalist slogan of law and order.

….conservative counterculture, i.e., on the
formation of alternative social institutions
as the foundation of anarcho-capitalism in
the framework of the existing social
structure of the United States.

….market types of consciousness are inevitably
reproduced as specific building material
further to be remoulded into statist types of
consciousness. The market type of
consciousness in its libertarian form, like
traditionalism, is inherent in capitalism at
all stages of its development. Libertarian
consciousness fulfills the function of
ideological substantiation and justification
of the interests of the conservative
private-owner bourgeoisie which aggressively
opposes any kind of government reforms and
stubbornly clutches at the old privileges.

A consciousness still attached to traditional
values as it conceives them in its
expectations, but one that is beginning to
lose hope that these expectations will ever
come true, may react in a variety of ways.

To begin with, it may experience an
internal alienation from those existing and
dominant conditions of life, institutions and
means of organized activity that the
individual apprehends as an obstacle to his
expectations. For him they lose all value.
More, he may look upon them as being contrary
to the basic values, and may make them the
target of sharp criticism.

But if there is no program of
reconstruction, and even sometimes no faith
that reconstruction is possible, and if, on
top of that, the existing system of living
conditions, institutions and means of
organized activity is conceived as a
powerful, menacing and unconquerable force,
the spiritual alienation may coexist with
conformism in day-to-day behavior. In that
case alienation produces a morbid and pained
state of mind. This may be introvert and
extrovert. It may be concealed, may shift in
various directions, and may focus on diverse
objects, which are then treated as
scapegoats. Alienation may also breed a
striving to escape from realities that
generate painful emotions.

….relative independence of the spontaneous
self-development of the various types of the
political consciousness because the pertinent
structures of the consciousness, though an
area of sharp struggle between different and
differently oriented forces and tendencies,
are, for a certain time, integral entities

….interlocking and interpenetrating.

The most substantial factor behind the
historical evolution and crisis of the
traditional and the emergence of new, modern
types of the political consciousness in the
USA was the development of state-monopoly
capitalism.

….bulk of the people (85 per cent of them by
Bell’s estimate) were reduced to the status
of wage and salary earners employed by large
bureaucratic organizations. The public life
of millions of people came into ever stronger
collision with the traditional forms of the
social and political orientation of
individuals

Those who had assimilated the ideals and
aspirations of traditional individualism
encountered more and more forms of social
organization and being that precluded their
exercise in practice. In due course, this
structural contradiction led naturally to the
birth of disparate and conflicting tendencies
in the political consciousness.

….liberalism---a conflicting melange of ideas and
notions brought into being by the changed
reality of state-monopoly capitalism, the new
social problems, and the ideas and
stereotypes inherited from traditional
individualism and liberalism. And that
compromise did, up to a point, conceal the
disparity in social meaning and purpose of
the political orientations of different types
of personalities and, in the final count, of
different classes, groups and social strata.

….monopolies, which are gigantic bureaucratic
organizations, naturally endeavor to inhibit
the traditional individualistic and
traditional liberal aspirations and habits of
those “ average” Americans whom they have
turned into wage and salary workers.
Authoritarian bureaucratic methods of
managing millions of people combine with
manipulation of their consciousness. More and
more, the corporations parade as the
incarnation of the "common interest" of all
gainfully employed, of the nation as a whole.

….inasmuch as members of the administrative
elite are actively involved in the
competitive struggle for more privileges,
more wealth and more power, i.e.,’ for their
personal interests, their ingrained
individualism tends to assume a new,
modernized form. It is oriented on a
careerism in which egoistic appetites adapt
themselves to and are restricted by
bureaucratic procedure. Careerism is the
individualism of the official whose being and
whose personal interest depend on the
“collective” interest of the bureaucratic
agencies that are created by state monopoly
capitalism and are part of the so-called
liberal Establishment.

So long as the country’s economy tends to
prosper, so long as domestic policy is not
marked by any acute conflicts and sensational
political scandals, and so long as foreign
policy seems to attest to enduring US
positions abroad, any person who sincerely
believes himself to be a liberal thinks that
it is possible to combine:

1) the postulate of the sanctity of private
property, of a free capitalist market and
competition for profit and personal interest,
with the slogan of centralized governmental
regulation of the economy to secure "general
well being”;

2) fidelity to the ideals of traditional
individualism with the collectivist
orientation on the public interest;

3) struggle for the traditional democratic
slogans with bureaucratic forms of social
organization and administration;

4) maintenance, even expansion, of
democracy inside the country with an
imperialist policy abroad, with the role of a
world policeman who suppresses the mass
liberation movements of other nations by all
available methods, including main force.

It will be proper to note here that this
“peaceful” coexistence of conflicting
principles and tendencies in the minds of
postwar American liberals was also furthered
by the fact that the liberal consciousness
has at all times considered such conflict of
principles and tendencies a normal thing.
More, it is one of the key postulates of
traditional liberalism that national
“harmony” rests on a “pluralism” of diverse
postulates as a result of free competition
between different principles that supplement
and limit each other as a result of
compromise. That, indeed, is the liberal
model of the “harmonious” development of
society and the individual.

But in present-day America there are clear
signs for a deepening crisis in various areas
of society. Accordingly, symptoms of an inner
crisis have surfaced in the sphere of the
liberal consciousness. That crisis may take
various forms and entail various
consequences.

….obstinate and at once disaffected
individualism of the liberal who is
frightened by the ongoing objective change
both within the liberal Establishment and its
immanent consciousness, and in the history of
the United States, of other countries and the
world as a whole. His fears prompt the wish
either to preserve the status quo, to
conserve the still surviving traditional
social, economic and political structures, or
to return to the already nonexistent past and
restore the already lost tradition by radical
means.

In truth, this latter point expresses one
of the characteristic distinctions between
conservatism and right radicalism. The option
between them depends on how intense the
disaffection of the obstinate individualist
happens to be, on whether it is expressed in
moderate or extreme forms, in “rational”
reform programs or in acts of rebellion,
often blind, irrational, and neurotic.

Lastly, the option depends on the
background of the bearers of that
consciousness, the concrete place they occupy
in the social structure of American society,
in the system of economic, political and
ideological relations, and on what class,
group or social stratum they belong to. The
distinctive features and
ideologico-psychological distinctions of the
various concrete types of the conservative
and right-radical orientations may be
illustrated by the conservatism that surfaced
in the crisis of 1929 and in the ’30s or by
the conservatism and right radicalism that
emerged in the McCarthyist period of the
early ’50s.

….conservatism in the 1930s was a sign of
deep-going contradictions in the liberal
camp, of a split and a turn to the right
among those liberals who mainly represented
the tradition-oriented segments of the ruling
class of capitalists, mainly the big and
partly the medium capitalists. But this
conservatism did not really gain a mass base
at that time. The rank– and-file Americans
sided with Roosevelt’s New Deal.

The McCarthy period in the ’50s yielded
somewhat different picture. The sharper
contradictions and mounting centrifugal
tendencies lead to the emergence of a
relatively widespread conservative
consciousness that gravitated far more
strongly towards right radicalism and
extremism.

Types of consciousness blending
conservatism and right radicalism with
anticommunism and anti-Sovietism came to the
fore strongly and consistently during that
period of US history.

As the contradictions and centrifugal
tendencies grew sharper, a characteristic
trend appeared: the disaffected and at once
obstinate individualism and anticollectivism
assumed the form of bellicose anticommunism
and antiSovietism. It performed a few
specific functions, being used as a means of
dampening the contradictions within the
United States and as psychological protector
of the existing and dominant forms of
ideology and practice in a setting of acute
crisis. Here anticommunism was a special kind
of defensive psychological reaction of the
individualist whose hopes had been dashed and
who felt himself historically doomed in face
of societal tendencies that he saw as a
menace, that he rejected, and that he did not
understand.

….The ruffled, annoyed and embittered
individualist is one of the main targets of
rightist propaganda. Under its influence his
dismay turns into rank anticommunist
hysteria, at least in certain circumstances.
The manipulators of the mass consciousness
use artful psychological mechanisms: that of
“rationality”, of outwardly rational
arguments designed to create an illusory
picture of the facts; that of driving out of
the consciousness such realistic thinking and
such emotional reactions as would register
the truly relevant social problems; that of
shifting the irritations caused by specific:
objects to other objects chosen as
scapegoats.

….The consciousness of the still obstinate
but also disappointed and embittered
individualist is inclined, at the same time,
to confuse or even identify the bureaucratic
surrogate “collectiveness” that exists in the
United States with the fundamentally
different type of collectivism that
Communists aspire to. This confusion is being
exploited and deepened by the promoters of
right radicalism and conservatism in their
drive to discredit the communist movement and
the communist parties in socialist countries.
Right extremists and conservatives exploit it
also in their domestic struggle against
liberals and against those trends in
government policy and US bourgeois reformist
practices which, though they have nothing in
common with either communism or socialism,
are not to the taste of the hardline
traditionalists.

The invigoration of conservatism and right
extremism in the early half of the ’5()s, and
later at the close of the ’70s and in the
early ’80s, was a peculiar reaction to the
sharpening of internal contradictions in the
USA, extending also to the dominant liberal
political consciousness. The reaction was
specific largely because conservatives and
right radicals succeeded in diverting the
individualist’s dismay and outrage into the
channel of anticommunism and anti-Sovietism.
The groundswell of such sentiment was felt
for the first time in US postwar history in
the early half of the ’50s. It was, among
other things, a reaction to the international
situation in which the USA found itself and
which many rank and file conceived as a
crisis.

It should be borne in mind that deeply
impregnated in the consciousness of most
Americans was the belief that the USA was
well out of the reach of direct military
action, that no hostilities could ever extend
to the territory of their country. This
belief was backed by the certainty of US
military superiority based on its nuclear
weapons monopoly. This belief was actively
exploited to further the ideology and policy
of cold war and imperialist expansion, which
became the official policy of the ruling
classes and was promoted by many liberal
ideologists. The discovery that the Soviet
Union, too, had nuclear arms came as a
debilitating blow. Americans nursing the
illusion of US invulnerability and the cold
war ideology, were assailed by misgivings
and fears. These blended with the same
feelings of the “derailed” individualistic
consciousness bred by fear of the intensive
growth of bureaucracy in all areas of life at
home. And this cumulation of distressed
sentiment was seized upon in their interests
by the supporters of McCarthyism, who
organized a far-flung campaign of rabid
anti-Soviet and militarist propaganda. It was
accompanied with a witchhunt against all
progressive elements, against liberals of a
democratic orientation who still cherished
the idea of Soviet-American antifascist
cooperation and opposed the col war policy
and the country’s militarization which, they
were aware, imperiled the basic ideals and
principles of liberal democracy.

The attack on this section of liberals saw
the rest of them scuttle into the
conservative and right-radical camp. The
contradiction between democratic slogans and
the drive for US military superiority typical
of the postwar liberal consciousness, was
thereby settled in favor of the arms race,
the country’s militarization and its growth
into a "mobilized state" (a term used in the
USA for the militaristic conception of
statehood).

The McCarthyites also relied extensively on
the sentiments of those Americans who
nourished the idea of the "American mission”.
Messianic ideas had prevailed in the United
States for nearly two hundred years, though
at different times in history their content
differed. In the late 18th century they were
expressive of the US bourgeois-democratic
attitude to the feudal-theocratic regimes
that still existed in most countries. In the
mid-19th century they were an expression of
the self-confidence of American capitalism,
which was growing more dynamically than
capitalism in other countries. In the 20th
century they began, among other things, to
reflect the aspirations of US imperialism and
its claims to world supremacy. And it was the
liberal ideology that fostered, supported and
cultivated all kinds of messianic ideas. In
that context, indeed, the post-World War II
liberal consciousness in the USA possessed
much optimism and self-assurance (for the
idea of the American Age gained fairly wide
currency among liberals).







08/01/2011 JR








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