Put another way: without corporations there would be no way to make the airplanes that fly anti-globalists to their protests.

And who makes up corporations? People. Who makes up the government? People. Given that the same species is doing the work in both cases, it’s kinda silly to assume that one is inherently evil and the other inherently good.

Once you set your rhetoric and vision as pro commerce your use of the state for a collective purpose has a greater chance of success.

To my mind it is interesting that the CCF was never an anti-commerce party. Their platforms were designed to grow as well as spread wealth. I think this had to do with its rural heritage which was by definition practical in its objectives and approach. I think it was later, with the influx of foreign socialist ideas that the left in Canada degenerated. We can see this division today in the body of the NDP, with the provincial NDP in Manitoba and Sakatchewan being very practical and pro commerce and the Federal NDP being ideological and impractical. BC and Ontario are split, as Bob Rae found to his chagrin in 1995 when the unions turned on him.

The irony here being that the National Left Wing in Canada, which would by definition stand against colonialism, has let foreign socialist ideology change its very character.

Don’t even get me started on the Parti Quebecois.
They take foreign intellectual idolitry to a whole other level. White Niggers of America, the nationalist hommage to Fritz Fanon can now only be seen as leftist comedy. Is there anything less ‘Canadian’ then the ideas of the Parti Quebecois? And I don’t mean that only as a federalist double entendre.

I think this may be true on any randomly selected day, but the election drove some people mad, it seems. Even as a Keynes skeptic, I still used to read guys like Krugman and DeLong as the ‘go to’ sources of reasonable Donkey economic policy. Both went totally insane as the election year progressed. As long as Bush did it, it was bad. Any unknown variable was a conspiracy or a lie. The least economically sound president in history was Bush due to his fiscal irresponsibility – so you all have an obligation to vote for Kerry? Drum and Yglesias seemed to keep their heads a little better.

I’m sure the same happened on more right wing blogs. To be honest, I get my fill of ‘right’ material from predominantly libertarian sources, as that is where I am most ideologically comfy. I may, therefore, be assigning a more reasonable voice to the Elephants than would be the case if I were truly spending time reading Republican blogs.

You’re right to note that the corporation has a lot in common with the state. Bill Roy’s book “Socializing Capital” gives a very interesting account of how corporations went from being agents of the state to an entrenched private form. The short version of the story is that in the early 19th century, the government had several failed public works projects and it decided to let private capital give it a try.

I think there’s an Old Guard/New Guard fight going on in the Democratic Party (and I think the DLC, to its shame, is not sure which side it is supposed to be on). Bob Shrum, Inet rumor has it, was responsible for the failed populism message of Gore in ’00 and the failed populist rhetoric of Kerry ’04. Clinton, rumor has it, wanted a more moderate message from both.

What’s interesting is that (it seems to me) many of the new “grassroots” Democratic activists are (again, it seems to me) substantially more moderate than the leaders of the Party. Krugman, for example, is really pretty moderate. Of the bloggers (particularly if you look at their writings from a couple years ago), Drum, Atrios, DeLong, and Josh Marshall are all pretty moderate. Dean was a popular choice because (a) he was against the war b/c it was stupid, not because he’s a pacifist, (b) b/c as a governor he was pretty moderate – more so than the Congressional candidates, and (c) his policy concerns (fiscal discipline, incremental healthcare reform) were pretty moderate.

To the extent that there is a divide between moderate Democrats and moderate Republicans, its that we are less likely to believe in natural law arguments about property (but moderate Republicans don’t seem to really buy them either), and more likely to think that we should help those with less out – both b/c it makes them (and therefore the country) more productive, and because we think its just right to do so. But there really isn’t much difference at all. I, for example, would have preferrd GHWB to both GWB and Kerry.

Uh… You mean libertarians aren’t ‘godless, amoral hedonists’ and Marxist gender-theorists aren’t ‘elitist, puritannical killjoys’? I thought those were taken as given?

(I am speaking as a ‘godless, amoral hedonist’, of course.)

If this is true, you have made me an optimist in one swell foop. Like folks such as Tyler Cowen over on Marginalrevolution.com, I find myself opposite the Donkey party because I perceive that the party as a whole is driven by the anti growthism of its leftmost part. I hear about Benedict Arnold corporations, I hear about the virtues of police force compared to ‘unaccountable corporate will’, and I hear policy after policy that will result in lower growth. Higher overall levels of taxation are anti growth. Policies that penalize investment, such as double dipping on dividend taxation, are harmful to investment, which is harmful to growth. Keynesian stimulation is always and forever about stimulating current demand, not future demand (‘we are all dead in the long run’, the man said).

I very much fear Tim, that it is not folks like yourself that write the platform for the Democrats.

Given that you’ve entitled this post “Advice to Democrats,” I think it’s reasonable for people to believe that you are conflating the left and the Democrats. To the extent that the former is a subset of the latter, I think it’s actually a pretty small subset.

The Democratic ideal changed in the ’90s. We saw big commercial growth, often in Blue areas (Rte. 128, the Bay Area, Austin), and a host of social statistics going in the right direction. Democrats, as much or more than Republicans, believe that economic growth is a (if not the) key to addressing societal ills.

Accordingly, I think many Democrats are not anti-corporation so much as anti- a specific type of corporation. For example, I tend to think of companies like Google and Apple as liberal or Blue companies. I tend to think of companies like Ford as conservative or Red companies.

Our problem with the Man in the Gray Flannel Suit is that his company, for reasons that have nothing to do with earnings growth, forces him to wear the gray flannel suit. If there is a growth point to it, we’re all for corporate strictures. But, many of us think, there are rarely reasons for it except that the Big Boss’s old boss used to do things the same way. And that is strangely alienating – an imposition of an unnnecessary cost on the employee.

And, if I haven’t said it before, you have a fascinating blog.