OLD PROBLEMS, NEW APPROACHES
Barnet, Richard J.
Old Problems, New Approaches BY RICHARD J. BARNET We must take on the traditional concerns of the Left but we need to do so in ways that reflect the new realities of the world economy and the...
...If the existing political parties will not address them, a new party will...
...H The increasing inability of government to control or even to influence positively the behavior of unaccountable corporations, which, among other things, guarantees grossly uneven development in this and other societies around the world, as well as a permanent fiscal crisis...
...h The atrophy of the political parties and the elective process, so that the three problems mentioned above cannot be debated seriously...
...the treatment of women...
...In my view, these are the most urgent: 11 The crisis of American children...
...Our children suffer from the economic pressures on their parents and from such new health hazards as drugs, stray bullets, and television commercials...
...Now is the time for new approaches...
...These issues also appeal to important strands of mainstream—pre-Cold War—American conservatism...
...1i The mounting inequalities of income, race, and gender...
...The depth and the seriousness of the problems cannot be minimized, but solutions exist—though most require global action...
...This is a serious, immediate crisis with potentially catastrophic implications for the near future...
...Unless this happens, the nation is making problems for the next generation that will make ours look like a golden age...
...Treasury during the Reagan-Bush years...
...We need to call for policies, public and private, that address the deterioration of the experience of childhood in the United States...
...The issues on a progressive agenda are not new, although they all have a new urgency, largely because of the privatization of the U.S...
...Richard J. Barnet is co-director of the Institute for Policy Studies...
...His most recent book is "The Rockets' Red Glare: When America Goes to War...
...Restructuring and conversion of industry, community accountability for economic institutions, dismantling the national-security state, and a collective effort to save the environment are all issues for which potential majority support exists in American society...
...Old Problems, New Approaches BY RICHARD J. BARNET We must take on the traditional concerns of the Left but we need to do so in ways that reflect the new realities of the world economy and the overriding structural problems of our own country...
...the singular lack of interest of the medical industry in preventive health care...
...It is the responsibility of progressives to tell the American people—increasingly anesthetized by hype, television, drugs, and games—what they already know but do not want to hear...
...U The inability of national governments to mount an effective global effort to reverse the assault on the environment, because doing so would involve radical changes in the productive process and in global power relations...
...These problems include: H The inability of our political institutions to shift from a war to a peace economy, because of dependence on obsolete war bureaucracies to define American purpose and strategy...
...the neglect and perversion of education...
...For all the flag-waving, most Americans know that the party is over...
Vol. 54 • November 1990 • No. 11
