Sales and income are poor and damaging to all but the wealthy- the former hits lower income and not the wealthy, and for different reasons the same is true of income. Both allow the common wealth to go exploited to the nth degree.

Neoliberalism is a particularly deep problem because it is cloaked in the tradition of “white man’s burden”, and “humanitarian interventionism”, and “helping the poor countries develop. This makes neoliberalism much more incidious than neoconservativism which is blatant aggression awash with hegemony and imperialism ala conquering the weak to assure USA predominance.

I also disagree with the author’s apparent agreement that the current cabal of, “… insurers, doctors, and nurses …” is an acceptable way of providing health care, which, I guess, also means the author blesses for-profit hospitals. Also, I don’t see much happening here in the U.S. with respect to popular movements in opposition to anything these days. Seattle was a few years back. USans seem to be responding by chewing their cud and buying antidepressants, and penis enlargement pills, for the most part. Other than that, the article is a fairly good summation of the obvious, if a bit long-winded.

I also think that the changes needed must be deep and structural. The uneconomic growth in play and unleashed unto the world as a model to exploit the earth will require major fundamental changes that will either happen naturally (and dramatically), or through an undercurrent transformative movement. I suspect the movement will only gain traction when we are on the precipice. Do we know where that is or when? I think we should assume it is immediately before us. Natural (including human) systems change through bifrucation which is a complete shift away from current course. In order for bifrucation to correct our course we must begin sooner rather than latter to lay the ground work for the alternative path.

Example: Cuba met head on with the collapse of the Soviet Union by fundamentally altering their farming from monoculture/mechanized/industrial model to highly diverse, small horticultural farming. The latter was possible because there were agricultural activists in the universitites who had been demanding these changes years before. When the time was right, their ideas were embraced – but it was as Cuba reached a cul de sac of major proportions. The rest is history.

As far as American imperialism: At bottom, and at the national level of politics, the game is all about neoliberalism of one form or another. And the voters have yet to figure out that the differences between these candidates is minimal and mostly regarding outward appearence: after all what is the real difference between Clinton’s Bosnia/Somolia/Iraq policies in terms of human suffering and those of George W. Bushes? And there is no reason to think that this election will bring about real change regarding the most critical aspect of American Empirism.

Mr. Giroux, I think your argued – the premise is certainly one which is met with general progressive agreement – could use a little more causality in its presentation and a little less enumeration. And we could, all use a lot more, So what do we do about this? discussion.

Max

The ideology of the common good and democratic centralism is part of the same system of control as neoliberalism. One is used when there is little enough dissent that the elite can suppress the rest through force; the other is used to manufacture consent at times when it is sufficiently obvious that capitalism does not serve the average person’s interests. The New Deal was the second-best thing that ever happened to America’s oligarchs. The best was the creation of its corresponding mythology, a Golden Age that greatly enriched the ruling class, but which would-be leftists will actually leap to defend.