BOOKS

...One area where I take issue with Faux is on the question of race and gender politics...

...Empowerment of workers—including more power in determining the corporate agenda—is an important part of Faux's program...

...Jeff Faux, the president of the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, has written a readable and provocative work that answers both questions...

...The program constitutes a powerful answer to the logic of contemporary conservatism...

...During the entire 1991-1995 "recovery," real wages fell for 80 percent of working men and 70 percent of working women...

...Faux quickly dispenses with Clinton's claim that free trade along with educational initiatives will position American workers for eventual prosperity in the world economy...

...Competition with economies like Mexico (where wages are less than a tenth of those in the United States but where worker productivity often rivals ours) only yields job loss or wage erosion here...

...One key to their success is their universality- Faux points out that a universal safety net, including government-financed health care, child support, and pension portability, would reduce social and personal costs and help build a new majority coalition...

...And it should protect labor...

...Given Lind's trajectory, should we expect him to turn up next in the pages of The Progressive or The Nation...

...In The New Review of Books, he revealed the grand-conspiratorial and anti-Semitic thinking in the writings of Christian Coalition godfather Pat Robertson...

...He recognizes that trade treaties have fostered job losses that cannot be compensated simply by domestic spending...

...Then, just when you would least have expected it, in the wake of the 1994 elections, he turned his back on his mentors and, in quick succession, took up senior editorial positions at Harper's and The New Republic...

...He emphasizes the lessons of both the Gilded Age and the 1920s...

...A democratic labor movement, which not only organizes around wage concerns but also encourages political education and empowerment, is key...

...Unregulated market economies don't produce smooth economic growth—especially when workers don't receive their fair share of the income...

...Amidst the distractions of the current campaign, we will likely see little immediate work along these lines...

...A good job is not only one that provides a decent pay check, but one that treats workers with respect and gives them opportunities for significant input into corporate decisions...

...And in The New Republic, Lind, a Texan, decried how rich Southern reactionaries had taken over the Republican Party in a coup and were now promising to refashion the nation in the image of the old South, with its culture of racism and political economy of low taxes and lower wages...

...Lind disavows any interest in reinvigorating the left: He is in favor of "'national liberalism" or the resurrection of what Arthur Schlesinger Jr...

...Finally, he blames the post-sixties liberal left for establishing a new "multicultural" regime committed to divisive racial designations and preferences...

...In The Next American Nation, he spells out a vision of the new political movement that would unite "the ideal of the trans-racial melting pot with the tradition of social-democratic egalitarianism...

...These trends left the Democratic Party vulnerable to an increasingly self-confident and comprehensive conservatism, which organized itself at the grassroots as well as in Washington...

...Relying on the private sector is foolish...

...But if our economic and social troubles continue to deepen under the new Beltway orthodoxy, Faux's perspicacity will be vital for building a more democratic alternative.* Wobbling Around the Center Up From Conservatism by Michael Lind Free Press...

...The party increasingly built its success on money, rather than on mass mobilizations of constituents...

...But one could equally argue that in order to build momentum for the sweeping changes he advocates, one would need to confront the ugly stereotyping that divides us...

...by John Buell The upcoming elections present a distressing spectacle...

...I would also add that broader worker empowerment dramatically improves workplace productivity, a theme brilliantly elaborated by the late David Gordon...

...Faux points out that Clinton in 1992 campaigned largely as a Democrat committed to governmental initiatives on behalf of the working class...

...However, even if Lind has become an antagonist of today's right—which we should appreciate—we must be careful about treating the enemy of our enemy as our friend...

...The budget debate...

...And the Democratic Party has become organizationally and intellectually enfeebled...

...For all his talk of class warfare and racism, for all his readiness to appropriate significant elements of our tradition, Lind is no friend of the left...

...Although he claims to be concerned about the common people, Lind's politics are not only anti-left, they are also elitist...

...Faux believes the United States has the capacity to achieve security and economic justice through domestic-policy changes...

...by Harvey J. Kaye The title of Michael Lind's book, Up From Conservatism, refers to both Michael Lind's defection from the political right and his anxious hope that America, too, can be rescued from rightwing dominance...

...He finds it imperative to depict both the New Left generation and the New Right's neoconservative intellectuals and their children ("minicons") as primarily Jewish phenomena...

...Faux notes that Republican gains in the 1994 elections were due in part to "the decline in real wages and opportunities for the vast majority of those who made up the traditional Democratic coalition...

...The Republican candidate, a traditional champion of business, offers tax breaks for the rich...

...For example, Lind states without apology that mid-eighties Reaganism appealed to him because it offered the greatest chance to cultivate the vital center...

...Most businesses and even households distinguish between borrowing to meet daily expenses and borrowing to enhance long-term prospects...

...The problem with the Reagan era is not that government incurred some level of deficit, but that 1980s deficits funded excessive military spending and luxury consumption for the rich...

...Preaching fiscal orthodoxy—especially after Reagan's huge deficits—won elite support and dollars...

...Up From Conservatism expands upon these essays with an account of Lind's own sojourn in the ranks of the right...

...It's not just the snide remarks...

...And what are we to make of this: "In opposing the Vietnam war, [the New Left Jewish radicals] were merely reenacting the opposition of their leftwing parents to the Korean War and (during the Popular Front period) to World War II, and the opposition of their radical grandparents to Woodrow Wilson and U.S...

...Both in his first book...

...When Lind observes that every persuasion but national liberalism has its own magazine, one gets the idea that all he really is after is his own new weekly.¦ —Harvey J. Kaye (Harvey J. Kaye is professor of social change and development at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay...

...Because the Democrats had lost sight of their populist mission, the party's union base weakened and the working class became bitterly fragmented along lines of race and gender, further weakening the party...

...The United States cannot hope to enjoy political or economic stability in a world where other nations continue to suffer...

...what changed was the political world...

...It should build the infrastructure...

...Faux also suggests a strategy of organizing around local races, training local activists to ask appropriate questions of candidates, and building these campaigns both through word-of-mouth and electronic communication...

...Corporate executives in turn benefited from a centrist party whose key members enjoyed seniority and power...

...For this President to sing "Happy Days Are Here Again" is absurd, and perhaps politically dangerous...

...Arenewal of both the Democratic Party and the nation requires transforming the way we view trade, the deficit, and government's role in society...

...Government also has a social role to play, providing security for those too old, too disabled, or too young to work, Faux says...

...Are these our only alternatives...

...The massive Reagan-era deficits helped give big government a bad name...

...Unlike many economists on the right, and even some on the left...

...Reaganism...

...called "vital-center liberalism"—though Lind also indicates it might well include "one-nation conservatism...

...How did we get in this mess...

...The distance from neoconservatism to The New Republic is not great, but Lind created a grand canyon when he proceeded to author several articles directly attacking the movement that had nurtured him...

...American citizens do not distrust ail government, he notes: Social Security and Medicare remain exceedingly popular programs...

...entry into World War I. The 'rebellion' of the sixties radicals, in short, was entirely due to the tradition of the tiny immigrant subculture from which the New Left emerged...

...Unfortunately, the last two decades have created both political and economic obstacles to positive government initiatives for quality jobs...

...Eager to portray vital-center liberalism as the only reasonable alternative to the prevailing power structure, he fabricates a history that either downplays the left's role in making a freer, more just, and more equal America—or damns it...

...His view of the good society—"a color-blind, gender-neutral regime of individual rights, combined with government activism promoting a high degree of substantive social and economic equality"—is clearly derived from traditions of the left...

...The Democratic standard bearer, traditionally the champion of the working class, argues that our fortunes will improve if we stay the course of fiscal austerity and keep up the quest for business competitiveness in international markets...

...For starters, deficits aren't always bad...

...education here and elsewhere grows...

...Job and wage growth remained sluggish...

...The U.S...

...He describes himself as merely having "wobbled slightly around the vital center...

...It should regulate corporations...

...Faux argues that the government should play a strong role in the economy...

...Still, Faux's underlying commitment to deepening and extending economic democracy makes his work an invaluable starting point for negotiating any new majority coalition...

...His most recent book, co-authored with Tom DeLuca, is "Sustainable Democracy: Individuality and the Politics of the Environment...

...Education cannot stem these losses if the number of good jobs declines and the number of workers seeking John Buell is a political economist who writes on labor and environmental issues...

...Lind seems intent upon discounting or denigrating struggles from below not overseen by a vital-center elite of politicos and pundits...

...Nevertheless, I would not expect to find Lind in The Progressive very soon...

...Next, he blames a liberal-left and black takeover of the Democratic Party (1968 to 1972) for destroying national liberalism, turning vital-center intellectuals into neoconserva-tives and Reaganites, and alienating working-class whites—thus making them susceptible to rightwing populists...

...He doesn't even accord us the role of serving as the conscience of liberalism...

...And, he recollects that his "second thoughts began with the budget debate in 1990...

...But Faux is not indifferent to the problems of our international-trade policy...

...Calling for the Republicans to be stopped in 1996, Lind provides a devastating critique of their pseudo-populist "culture wars," showing how they serve to obscure their far more insidious class war...

...Nonetheless, under the government's current accounting principles, "any family that took out a mortgage for more than one year would be considered guilty of reckless deficit spending...

...288 pages...

...The Next American Nation, and here in the new one, Lind describes an America in which the rich—the "'white overclass" that heads our corporate, public, and educational institutions—is getting steadilv richer, and the middle and working classes are being made poorer...

...High levels of savings never materialized, and much corporate investment went to mcga-merg-ers rather than to new technologies...

...Lind's surprise defection made him a celebrity, and afforded liberals and leftists some welcome news in tough times...

...But the President soon became a born-again budget slasher...

...There are moments when one can imagine it...

...Lind says that he was a moderate Democrat in college, and claims that his own views never actually changed...

...He neglects the left's radicaldemocratic contributions to labor and the campaigns for racial and gender equality...

...He all but ignores progressive popular struggles, while dwelling on the dangers of reactionary populism...

...All of which leads him to issue a call for a revo-lutionarv movement to (peacefully) overthrow trie overclass...

...Productivity growth remained sluggish...

...After World War II, Democrats in Congress began to depend heavily on Washington lobbyists...

...He implies that once the economic issues are addressed, other inequities will resolve themselves...

...Economic internationalization has gone on for some time now without positive gains...

...Expanded international trade can be made to work, but only if trade treaties include solid protections for labor organization and substantial debt relief for Third World nations, Faux argues...

...population consumes 90 percent of what it produces, and the United States remains by far the world's largest consumer market...

...Working first for the Heritage Foundation and William F. Buckley Jr., and then for Irving Kristol at National Interest, Lind was a rising star of the New Right...

...In Dissent, he argued that intellectual conservatism was dead, showing how it had been done in by its own elite's corrupt, hypocritical, and opportunistic deference to creationists, homophobes, racists, and public-policy kooks...

...Clinton has never offered these workers a convincing explanation for their pain or a plausible scenario to relieve it...

...Lind attributes the success of the right to the failings of the left...

...Faux savs: "Why would a rational nation base its economic policies on the premise that public spending on transportation, water and sewerage systems, air pollution, and health research does not represent investment in the future of the country while private spending on buying and selling stock shares, land, new movie theaters, and gum machines does...

...Lind also gives a clear warning of the menace represented by conservatives' willingness to truck with, succor, and legitimize the far right...

...Although Lind's work is not as original as he purports, his alarms should be heeded...

...Warming up with a nostalgic rendering of the "Golden Age" of national liberalism extending from FDR's New Deal, through Truman's Fair Deal, to LBJ's Great Society (but not including his War on Poverty), he charges the postwar left with threatening this tradition by being soft on the Soviets...

...By the way, despite Lind's success at revealing Robertson's anti-Semitism, Lind seems to have his own "Jewish problem...

...Faux recognizes that we cannot simply recapitulate New Deal-style liberalism, but we can build upon it in ways that will address the issues he clearly delineates...

...Faux also notes that this policy takes a psychological toll: "The prospect of a life spent on a constant treadmill of retraining in a world that continually threatens you with obsolescence might seem exhilarating for the highly educated and confident policy intellectuals in Washington, but it is frightening for most people...

...The role of the Jews, he says, has been ethnically "unrepresentative...

...23.00...

...He apparently would just as soon we withered away and died...

...Well-established Congressional Democrats found it easier to raise money than to mobilize voters at home...

...The free-market rostrums of today don't hold up to analysis, Faux writes...

...Lind glosses over the vital center's role in building up and maintaining the American Empire, a buildup that culminated in Vietnam...

...Up From Conservatism is clearly no God That Failed or mea culpa...

...This regime, he says, has distracted attention away from the nation's growing class inequality...