'Racial Politics' in 'Old Confederacy' Called Key to GOP Wins -- GOPUSA

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'Racial Politics' in 'Old Confederacy' Called Key to GOP Wins
By Marc Morano
CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer
June 6, 2005

Washington (CNSNews.com) -- The Republican Party's electoral dominance of the South is due to its willingness to employ "racial politics," according to a University of Maryland professor who also referred to the region as the "Old Confederacy," during remarks Friday at the liberal Take Back America conference in Washington, D.C.

Gar Alperovitz, said the Republican Party represents "the dark side," and has been able to exploit southern states because "a radical shift has occurred in racial politics, a radical shift.

"It isn't simply the moral issues. It is the fundamental implicit and explicit racial division of the working class" that allows Republican victories in southern 'red' states, Alperovitz said.

He noted that even though "very radical conservative Democrats" from the South used to dominate with their "racial politics," they represented "a strange moment in the 20th century

"It was very odd," Alperovitz continued. "We don't realize how odd it was; it always should have been reactionary Republicans" who exploited blacks.

Alperovitz, who authored the book, "America Beyond Capitalism," also launched into an attack on U.S. free enterprise during Friday's panel discussion and later in an interview with Cybercast News Service.

"The inequality of American capitalism has grown. It is an unsustainable," Alperovitz claimed. While conceding that capitalism is "the most productive system" known to humans, Alperovitz chastised what he sees as the overwhelming negatives of the system.

"[Capitalism is] very, very dangerous -- creates a great inequality, creates very great opportunity for violence and repression and demagoguery and it often undermines democracy, as in now in the United States," Alperovitz said.

"Who owns American capital? One percent owns 48 percent. That is a medieval number. You need to grasp it. That is a medieval number. That is not a modern number. That is off the charts,' Alperovitz said. "The way this distribution of wealth has been going on for the 20th century cannot continue ... this system continues to decay."

'That's a socialist idea'

Alperovitz also blamed American liberalism and the success he said the movement has had in expanding the welfare state for unnaturally propping up capitalism. "That [social welfare] model has allowed capitalism to go on in an attempt to clean up around the edges by organizing labor, environmentalists and social groups and taxing enough," Alperovitz said.

"That model is over, and I think what is on the table is whether or not the ownership of wealth becomes benefiting to the public directly rather than benefiting corporations or the wealthy. That's a socialist idea, if you like," he said.

But Alperovitz insisted that he is not a socialist. Instead, he said he favors a new system that would combine capitalism and socialism, but avoid big government. "I think the socialists are wrong about one thing and the conservatives are right -- put that much wealth into the state and connect it to politics. Inevitably, it leads to a dominant state and they were right about that."

Fellow panelist Sam Pizzigati, author of "Greed and Good: Understanding and Overcoming the Inequality that Limits Our Lives," agreed with Alperovitz and called for placing "the apologists for inequality on the defensive.

"They would be defending greed. We would be defending sharing. In that battle, I like our chances," Pizzigati said.