DM thinks it’d be helpful to discuss the actual policy proposals on poverty of some of the Democratic candidates as a way of both seeing what the mainstream left has to offer and to compare it to possibly more dramatic neo-Marxist ideas…well, John Edward’s poverty policy is here and here’s his page on “Working Families,” which covers labor policies. There’s also relevant policy stuff on the website under the several other headings as well. Obama’s (not as detailed) policy page on poverty is here . This is the most relevant page off of Hillary’s website, which seems to focus at least as much on her record as her proposals, which I suppose is fitting given that a big part of her campaign narrative is that she's one of the most experienced candidates in the field. Debate on some of these proposals can be found here and here; this is, I think, an interesting and relevant way of comparing the candidates. I didn’t find as much on Hillary or Obama’s domestic policy proposals, which is probably partly due to their not offering up as much in the way of concrete proposals and partly due to the fact that policy doesn’t get discussed nearly as much as the “horserace” between the candidates. Anyways, that was also after a not very exhaustive search. I’m sure I’m not the only one here who knows how to use Google, so feel free to waste your own damn time and add to the links I’ve provided.
Anyways, while I’m not opposed to discussing and comparing the candidate’s policy programs on poverty or any other topic, there are some real limitations to the usefulness of that discussion. For one, as you’ll see if you read the campaign websites above, the level of vagueness and generality is kept pretty high. In part this is to keep from giving your opponents anything too concrete to use against you. Then there’s the fact that a lot of what matters in a given policy is going to be the fine print, the technical details regarding funding, implementation, etc. that only professionals in the field (or people with far too much time on their hands) can really sort through. I consider myself pretty knowledgeable and interested in this stuff, but I still can’t really make much sense of the advantages or disadvantages of the different health care proposals, for example. Like most people in this situation, I turn to the opinion of those who spend more time thinking about these things than me who seem to share my values and get things right more often than not. Another limitation to the policy debate is that while the President proposes what he or she’d like to see happen, it’s up to the congress to actually write the law putting the policy into effect, and a lot can happen at this level to alter the fine points of a policy. Democrats most likely won’t have a filibuster proof majority in the next congress, so they’ll have to make compromises with Republicans to get any bills passed. So with all that in mind, I think that looking at a candidates policy proposals tell us more about where their priorities and values are than what will actually become law if they’re elected, which is fine: knowing a candidates priorities and values--and whether they have the competence to enact their agenda--is probably worth almost as much as a set of detailed proposals anyway.
6 comments:
I screwed up a couple of those links. One of the Edwards links takes you to his site, but not the "Working Families" page, which is reached easily enough through the "issues" tab.
One of the posts I tried to link to can be found at: www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=07&year=2007&base_name=post_4430
and the other at: www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=07&year=2007&base_name=post_4301
Tigrenoche, thanks for posting those links. I’ve skimmed through the policy proposals of Edwards, Obama, and Clinton concerning poverty and economic inequality and I think they could all benefit from paying a bit more attention to Marx. I won’t attempt anything in the way of a “Marx says this, but Edwards does this,” sort of thing, but my opinions have been formed by reading neomarxist analyses. Returning to our earlier discussion of Rorty, I hope that my analysis below demonstrates that a neomarxist perspective offers a pragmatic approach to the problem of inequality.
I think that one of the simple but important things that Marx does is to undermine the notion that the owner of capital is entitled to the bulk of the surplus value generated by the worker, simply because he is the owner. Marx argues that the relationship between the owner and worker is exploitative and that in the interest of justice and equality, the control of the owner over the worker’s surplus should be reduced (By the way, this is why Edwards’ work for a hedge fund amounts to hypocrisy. I don’t know a lot about hedge funds but my understanding is that they allow those with capital to benefit at the expense of those without. Unlike $100 haircuts, which are simply wasteful and perhaps selfish, hedge funds exacerbate inequality rather than reduce it.) One of the lessons that I take from this is that economic policies should be based on a logic of redistribution rather than charity. There’s nothing wrong with charity, but in order for charity to exist inequality must also exist. If the owner is not entitled to the worker’s surplus labor, then redistribution is not an act of charity, but one of justice. Economic policies should be evaluated on the basis of the degree to which they eliminate the exploitative relationship between owner and worker.
My sense is that of the three candidates Edwards is the only one with proposals that will impact redistribution and equality. For the most part I’m very impressed with his policy proposals, while Clinton and Obama seem to be primarily interested in business as usual – by this I mean supporting the interests of corporations over the working poor and middle class. They both give lip service to helping the poor but show little evidence that they will implement effective policies. Clinton has been stereotyped as the candidate for corporate America and as far as I can tell this more or less true.
Just the fact that Edwards puts forth detailed plans for poverty reduction shows that he is serious. As TN notes, these plans could expose him to critique before and after he is elected. If you concretely propose something it is politically difficult not to do it. For example, all of the candidates mention increasing minimum wage, but only Edwards states specifically how much and how soon the wage will be raised.
Perhaps most importantly, as far as I could tell Edwards is the only candidate who proposes redistributive policies concerning international trade. Obama and Clinton both talk about helping the poor, but from a neomarxist perspective in order to accomplish this goal you’ve got to redistribute the profits that corporations are making through global trade.
Edwards claims that he will end corporate welfare. This means eliminating policies that allow US corporations to operate overseas without paying taxes, conforming to US labor laws, and environmental standards. Taxing the huge profits that corporations receive and redistributing that income among the workers who have actually earned it makes good sense. It reduces inequality and by keeping local workers happy you reduce support for the sort of protectionism that would probably hurt the economy in the US and elsewhere. Edwards is definitely moving in the right direction with these policies.
While Edwards’ policies would definitely represent a major change for the better, there are a few problems that could easily be alleviated if his advisors had read more Marx. At times he seems to conflate protecting the interests of America with promoting the interests of big business. If he is truly interested in inequality then he needs to remember that class extends beyond national borders. Ultimately policies that benefit the working poor internationally will benefit the US working class. If Edwards is able to succeed in creating the strong international labor laws that he demands it will protect workers in Thailand and also make it increasingly difficult for US workers to lose jobs to cheaper, easily exploited international labor. Strangely, some of Edwards’ policies sound very similar to the structural adjustment programs that have been advanced by the US through the WTO in order to expand the free market and advance the interests of corporations. His call to fight currency manipulation (perhaps I’m misunderstanding him here) sounds an awful lot like the sort of currency devaluation that has made it very difficult for the poor in much of the world to eat three meals a day. His demand for a level playing field for trade would be great if he did not specifically state that this involves eliminating subsidies that foreign countries offer to their farmers and workers. In reality it is only the US domination of the WTO that allows it to continue giving huge subsidies to American farmers of cotton, corn, rice, and other agribusiness crops. These policies destroy the environment, eliminate markets for locally produced goods in the 3rd world, and hurt the working poor everywhere. These policies contradict Edwards’ call to end corporate welfare.
To sum up, I’m surprised by how solid Edwards’ policies are, but there is certainly room for improvement. I think it’s also important to note that not all the democrat candidates are the same. If one is serious about reducing inequality then it is probably best to drop the "any democrat is better than a republican rhetoric." It is this logic that continually leaves us with choosing between the lesser of two evils.
I'll have more to say on other parts of your comment later, DM, but for now wanted to address this: You don’t really mean “any democrat is better than a republican rhetoric” do you? Looking at the sentence before that one, it seems like maybe you meant “any democrat is as good as any other democrat” and this is a typo? If this isn’t a typo, then I’ve got to disagree. Any of the Democratic candidates for president, including Hillary, would be a lot better than any of the Republican candidates. Since we just looked at Democratic policy ideas,here's Giuliani's foreign policy manifesto and here's some commentary on it. Romney, meanwhile, wants to "double guantanamo" amongst other things. Giuliani's health care plan is really nothing more than a tax break for the well off. Romney's health care plan, in addition to more tax breaks for the affluent, is to let the each state come up with it's own plan, which sounds kinda reasonable, but has huge problems as well. Also, Romney thinks that life begins at conception and opposes making emergency contraception available. One could go on in this vein all day on really any issue out there. Now I don’t like Hillary’s positions on a lot of issues much at all, and neither do most of the people and institutions that I think of as making up the progressive left, where Edwards and Obama get the most support (today just happens to be the monthly dailykos poll, which as of this writing has Hillary barely beating Kucinich for third place and Edwards beating Obama by about 10%). No one I know of is saying that any democrat is as good as any other (so I guess I disagree with both possible wordings) and I really truly hope that Hillary doesn’t end up the nominee. But if I have to choose between her and any of the Republicans, it’s not a hard choice to make. And even though it’s safe to say that Hillary doesn’t show the same interest in confronting inequality that Edwards does, she does support some good policies that would affect this issue—she supports card-check elections for unions, which makes it much easier to unionize a workplace, and increasing the minimum wage, just for two examples.
I understand the complaint about having to choose between the lesser of two evils. I really wish that Edward’s positions marked the center, or even right wing of acceptable political thought in this country, rather than the left. I wish that we could vote for a really progressive candidate who wasn’t just a vanity candidate. But, a) this election isn’t between the perfect candidate who shares all my views and priorities and the one that doesn’t, no election ever will be. It’s going to be between one of the Democrats and one of the Republicans, and the differences between the two will matter and b) if you want us to get away from this “logic” then what do you think we should do? How do we change it? I believe in supporting good, progressive democrats, including with time and money when possible; I believe in supporting primary challengers against bad democrats when possible (as was done with Lamont challenging Lieberman in Connecticut last year) and hopefully getting rid of the centrist, pro-war, pro-big business wing of the party over time; I think most importantly we need to continue building progressive media, think tanks and other institutions that can get the progressive agenda out to the public and shift the terms of our country’s political debates to the left, the same way that the right wing, from the 1960s on, built up the conservative movement. I see these as being long-term goals that have no guarantee of eventual success, but I don’t see any other real options besides just griping ineffectually or waiting for shit to get really bad at which point everyone will magically come to share our politics (rather than choosing authoritarianism of some sort or just violent chaos). Anyways, that’s my boring, sell-out plan. What’s yours?
No that wasn't a typo. I said "If one is serious about reducing inequality then it is probably best to drop the "any democrat is better than a republican rhetoric." It is this logic that continually leaves us with choosing between the lesser of two evils," and I stand by that statement. I don't mean to imply that a republican candidate is potentially better than a democrat. Rather, continually harping on how awful the republicans are seems to obscure differences between the democrats. It prevents the sort of debate that would actually enable the democrat party to move further to the left in the manner that you suggest.
But the debate about which of the dem candidates is the better, more progressive candidate--at least amongst the very small percentage of the population that is actually paying any attention to this stuff right now, instead of just watching Dancing With Celebrities and thinking about what to do with their three day weekend coming up--is going on. Not in the mainstream media, to be sure, but that's a lost cause for the foreseeable future anyways. Why don't you think it is? What are you basing this idea on?
In support of my last comment, see for example this from today.
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