Robert Reich's New Book Predicts Revolt Against Wealthy

Bloomberg:

The bargain broke down when middle-class America buckled under global competition and labor-replacing technology. Reich blames what happened next on the rich and powerful: They financed think tanks, books and ads that hypnotized the public into heeding Milton Friedman and voting for Ronald Reagan.

Read the whole story: Bloomberg

Comments

[TruelyFedUp]

10:21 PM on 10/01/2010

More on the peasant commune "The peasant commune is likely one of the greatest supporters for family liberty devised. But its superiority to western models exists not merely in the results of such organization, but also because it was no “devised.” It was perfected over 1,000 years of often hard experience. The communal structure, the tightly organized extended family and the traditional peasant love for communal and family liberty kept the state at bay right up until the revolution. The destruction of the communes, naturally, came immediately under Lenin’s rule.

[TruelyFedUp]

10:17 PM on 10/01/2010

Continued: It need not be said that the commune, for American historiography, is basically derided. This is largely for one important reason: the architects of liberalism and capitalism in Russia were the elite: the elite political and economic forces. For them, the commune was an irritant, a set of protections that permitted the average peasant a great deal of protections against exploitation. The destruction of the commune, then, was absolutely necessary for the Russian neo-Jacobins to impose constitutional capitalism on royal Russia. (cf. my The Third Rome: Holy Russia, Tsarism and Orthodoxy for a more detailed argument in support of this thesis.)

Full article; http://rosenoire.org/articles/Peasant_Commune.php

[TruelyFedUp]

10:16 PM on 10/01/2010

The Russian peasant commune was an example of a real rural and Christian anarchism at work. The commune protected the peasantry from want, alienation, poverty and tyranny. By the end of the 19th century, the nascent capitalist classes were screaming for the commune to be destroyed, for peasants could not be dragooned into the cities or to work on the railroads or factories while protected by numerous layers of communal obligations, immunities and rights. In England at the same time, the capitalist ruling classes had already succeeded in tearing apart rural society, turning it over to landlords to exploit for personal profit, eliminating the small holdings and self-sufficient communities that were a threat to the stage, as well as to capitalism. By the beginning of the 20th century, English and American working class kids were being mutilated in the robber baron factories in huge numbers, with no advocacy or protections of any kind. The formerly protected rural peasants were turned into miserable proletarians. In Russia, the trend was precisely the opposite, as the Russian royal state introduced even more protections to the commune and immunities for workers.
The institution of the peasant commune in pre-revolutionary Russia is one of the world’s unique institutions; and also one that is almost unknown. As Americans continue to work long hours for comparatively less pay, continue to see unions disappear, and see any kind of job security dissipate, maybe it is time to look at other models of economic organization.

[booki]

02:33 PM on 09/26/2010

the poor, or middle class now becoming poor.........
don't have the time or means to "revolt
it is not like it was in the 60's 70's .
( mainly it was the young people revolting, in cities, universities)
unless one lives in the city the "revolt" occurs.it is impossible for many to partake..
i also think many people have a defeatest attitude. rightfully so.

[CommonSenseForChange]

08:48 PM on 09/20/2010

Not against the wealthy. The greedy are the enemy.

[goedel]

03:57 PM on 09/20/2010

I don't know if Mr Reich makes the point made by Bill Fletcher and Michael Zweig in Bill Moyers' interview of them on 9/18/2009: that the essential element missing from a working-class revolt agaisnt our plutocracy is organized labor. Bill Moyers accepted that assertion and wondered why are the labor unions, now representing ony 12% of the US work force (down to 1/2 of its peak strength), not leading in putting our wealthy rulers in their place. The answers given were that labor's top echelon has become gentrified. They no longer see themselves walking picket lines and confronting major corporations as they did in the 1930s through the 1950s. They were castrated by the anti-Communist hysteria of the McCarthy era. They now see themselves as sitting at the table, and they don't want to lose their seats.

When asked about President Obama's role, the two interviewees, one from labor-journalism, the other from academe, displayed their own gentrification: Obama told us correctly that we, American workers, must form a political force and push him into doing what they think needs to be done.

What a cop-out! The interviewees pointed their fingers at George Meany and Lane Kirkland for their lack of militancy, but they effectively excused - in the interview - President Obama from accountability if he is not "pushed" from below.

Of course, we can see even more clearly now, if not clear before, President Obama's school of thought: the school of Herbert Hoover.

[Icky Sticky]

12:47 PM on 09/20/2010

As the rich get richer from globalism, more people are brought to the brink of life and death decisions. How rich do you need to be if it's from exploiting others in order to achieve it?

Worker_suicides.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China_Business/LE22Cb01.html

[Chubbster]

10:38 AM on 09/19/2010

Revolt against the rich...I guess things aren't working out to well with the ridiculously stupid economic plan of the last 2 years. Blame the rich instead of craven incompetence.

[Icky Sticky]

12:43 PM on 09/20/2010

What's stup!d is your asinine statement.

[SirSlappy]

08:37 PM on 09/16/2010

Robert Reich underestimates the passivity and numbness of 9/10ths of the American population.

[Eagleman]

07:14 PM on 09/16/2010

Nationalize all rich people's wealth

It worked in Cuba, Venezuela and many communist countries
It should work in Obama's USA too

[MalloMel]

09:59 AM on 09/17/2010

When our economy totally tanks like those other countries did, then we just might do that. We're not at that point yet, but it has to come, the way things are going. It's not going to be pretty.

[no more yesterdays]

01:12 AM on 09/16/2010

is this a sample of the oncoming rage of the masses due to come ashore someday soon?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SM-iTVbKaek&feature=player_embedded

[srivers]

10:13 PM on 09/15/2010

Here is a link to director D.W. Griffith's timeless classic "A Corner in Wheat" (1909):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSF7p_DAAxw

[USNDC]

10:11 PM on 09/15/2010

BOOM !

The battle has begun.

The Tea Party is busy reminding America's self-annointed ruling class that we DO NOT have a ruling class !

The Tea Party's momentum promises to spill over onto Democrats in time ... and the corrupt career politicians from "both" political parties are running scared.

The battle lines are being drawn.

Some of us are lining up to defend the corrupt 2 party politicial system that has nearly bankrupted our great nation ... and some of us are lining up to dismantle America's self-annointed ruling class.

Will you line up to defend their $13 trillion in debt ... nearly 93% of our nation's GDP ?

Or ... will you line up to dismantle the corrupt career politicians that are bankrupting our once great nation ?

The Tea Party is busy firing the first salvos ... the battle has begun.

America's self-annointed ruling class is officially under attack ... not the wealthy.

It is "us" against "them" ... not each other.

[rougebaisers]

06:59 PM on 09/15/2010

And I predict that one day the rich will be fed to the starving masses dogs.

[pyro]

11:43 AM on 09/20/2010

I'm eating before my dog does.

Yes, eat the rich. My dog gets the scraps.

[LovelyGirl]

04:41 PM on 09/15/2010

I think RR is a smart man. I would like to read his book. I'm no economist but it seems to me that what we need now is innovation. We need new industries. Manufacturing is gone. We cannot keep recycling these 20th century jobs and expect to get above water. We need a 21st century viewpoint. I thought an expanding green industry would help us turn around the economy, but I'm no longer confident about that. I don't know what it's going take.