Click here to access article by Henry Giroux from TruthOut.
I am posting this article not because it sheds much light on its subject matter, but as another example of material you find throughout liberal-left media (TruthOut, Democracy Now!, The Nation, AlterNet, etc) and by prominent activists and critics such as Naomi Klein. Thus, if you are already familiar with Giroux's writings, I am not recommending that you read this article. What I want to do is use this and similar writings in order to define a major boundary between reformist and radical ideological positions. Those who write in the reformist camp always limit their critiques to preserve the system of capitalism while wanting only modifications of it. In contrast, radical writers see the capitalist system as basically or inherently flawed and want to replace the system with something else, although this may be unspecified.
The crucial feature of capitalism is the right to "own" value produced on the premises or using material "owned" by private parties. Hence, the need to convert everything into a commodity that can be owned, bought and sold directly or indirectly for a profit. Thus we see all kinds of ideas and even life forms being "owned" to serve profit-making, privately owned enterprises. Labor has long been transformed into a commodity through wage labor, a kind of rented labor.
Reformist writers often go to great lengths to criticize existing economic practices and their harmful effects on society. People like Giroux and Naomi Klein do this with so much passion, but it is not passion that divides reformists from radicals.
The way we can identify this piece as reformist is rather easy when we see such phrases as the following to bolster Giroux's arguments: "free-market fundamentalism" instead of simply "market operations", "neoliberal" or "neoliberalism" or "neoliberal authoritarianism" in place of "the current stage of capitalism", or "predatory capitalism" or "savage form of free-market capitalism" used in place of simply "capitalism". (Klein frequently uses "deregulated capitalism") He, like other reformists, argue that the current form of capitalism is replacing what we had before which he implies was democracy. This is patently false. Under capitalist class rule there has always existed this primary principle: the more money you have in your bank account the more rights and privileges you enjoy. It's just that nowadays with capitalist wealth becoming so concentrated, the increasing inequality and disparity between the rich and the poor has become so dramatic that it can no longer be downplayed or ignored.
Giroux and Klein are two of the most passionate writers who attack the abuses of capitalism, however they always stop short of attacking the system itself; instead they focus their attacks on what they see as corruption of the system. Thus, they always suggest that only reforms are needed to restore things to what we enjoyed in some mythical democracy. Their passionate concern for the victims of capitalism often reminds me of Bill Clinton's theme of "I feel your pain" which he (and Obama uses) used so effectively while promoting legislation in support of neoliberal trade treaties.
Thus, we can see why liberals, or the capitalist left-wing, are tolerated in capitalist class rule: they serve to co-opt or convert radical-revolutionary types into reformists with their emotional pitches of concern for the victims of capitalism.
