collected snippets of immediate importance...


Thursday, September 15, 2011

yergin and stanislaw, the commanding heights

(14, 124): "underlying all this has been a fundamental shift in ideas"

(15): "importance of leaders and leadership"

(20): Atlee was a social worker

(21, 26-27): insofar as they have a concept of crisis, it's "war"/devastation [the politics of that crisis, w/ the Left in ascendancy, etc., is all obscured.]

 (29): "nationalization as a capitalist weapon" [there is a great deal of truth to this--nationalization can be a great boon for capitalists]

(34): the 'chicken feed' argument!

(51): FDR and the New Deal [no mention of Labor/Left role, strife, uncertainty, etc.]

(64): more regulation under Nixon [and Dem Congress, of course] than under any president since New Deal [is it coincidental that this post-dated second significant wave of struggle? yet no mention of this.]

(74): 'Permit Raj,' but of course

(81, 91): no acknowledgment of the successes of ISI [this framing permits 'idealism'--because then it really is the failing of ideas, and the superiority of alternative ideas, that explains historical change. interests/power be damned! must look at centrality of profits and class power, rather than the question of whether one or the other policy is 'better' for society]

(87, 91): corruption, also, is un-explained

(93): Keith Joseph as catalyst

(96): Edward Heath was UK's Richard Nixon--an unfortunate Keynesian

(107): in 1974, Thatcher and Joseph break with Heath and the Tory mainstream

(108): the first three years were a 'non-event'--only after Falklands

(113): confrontation with NUM and Scarrgill, in 1984

(115): State companies were inefficient, found it difficult to compete--in this, of course, there's always an element of truth. [on the other hand, we're confronted with the track record of neoliberalism]

(123): in total, only 46 privatizations

(124, 140, 145): again, "beliefs" as driving change [there are always all sorts of ideas around. the question is why certain ideas get selected for]

(139): getting literature on E. Asian miracle backwards--consensus is different

(142): LSE in the 1930s became redoubt of liberalism

Harvey, Neoliberalism

(19): centrally--it's a political project, not a utopian project

(31-33): difficulties w/ class--resolved by pointing to finance

Williams, Keynes

(74): Keynes actually didn't write much about social policy/welfare

(76): engaged welfare State through obsession w/ unemployment




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