From Publishers Weekly
The emotional fervor generated by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq has helped a domestic neoconservative agenda, as well as altered a historical pattern in which governments waging war wind up expanding civil rights and social programs, or so argues sociologist Piven (Why Americans Don’t Vote). The turn to preemptive war and the disregarding of international linkages, she claims, is part of a domestic strategy, just as the Cold War justified the domestic Red Scare. Piven doesn’t add original research; rather she synthesizes a wide range of reportage and commentators (Chalmers Johnson, Kevin Phillips, Naomi Klein, Garry Wills, Jonathan Schell, etc.) in sometimes bloglike fashion. She finds Bush backers in Congress invoked the need to avoid partisan bickering in wartime—thus hastening passage of corporate-friendly tax-cut legislation and deregulation. Meanwhile, cuts in federal spending increased pressure on the states to cut back their own social spending. Piven doesn’t pause much to analyze why the opposition Democrats and others let this happen, but she does argue that the fallout from the wars make the administration vulnerable in the upcoming election. "War itself cannot be an effective cover for this ruse for long," she concludes, predicting (while at the same time working to foster) an atmosphere conducive to regime change.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Book Description
The bestselling political thinker analyzes the impact of the Iraq War on domestic policy. The overwhelming attention paid to America's imperial posture overseas has turned our eyes away from a crucial dimension of belligerent foreign policy: the domestic politics of war. Frances Fox Piven, one of the country's most celebrated social scientists, raises questions others have not. She examines the ways the war on terror served to shore up the Bush administration's political base and analyzes the manner in which flag-waving politicians used the emotional fog of war to further their regressive social and economic agendas. In the past, governments tried to reward their citizens for their costly sacrifices —in blood and money. During World War II, tax rates on the wealthy rose to 90 percent; toward the end of the Vietnam War, eighteen-year-olds were given the right to vote. In this war, by contrast, democratic rights are being rolled back and taxes on the rich have been slashed. Even veterans' benefits have been sharply reduced. The War at Home makes sense of these developments by putting the current domestic fallout of war in the context of history —and by turning an unsentimental eye on the domestic motivations of American militarism.
About the Author
Frances Fox Piven is the author of Why Americans Don't Vote and, with Richard A. Cloward, Regulating the Poor, Poor People's Movements, The New Class War, and The Breaking of the American Social Compact (The New Press), among other books. She lives in Manhattan and Millerton, New York.
The War at Home: The Domestic Costs of Bush's Militarism FROM THE PUBLISHER
In The War at Home, Frances Fox Piven dissects the way war has propped up America's rulers - at home. She examines how the war on terror initially served to buttress George W. Bush's political base - resolving, at least temporarily, political tensions between factions on the right, and shoring up voter support for a politically weak president. And she analyzes the manner in which the administration used the patriotic rush of war to further its regressive social and economic agendas, enacting a predatory program that extracted wealth not, in the classic imperial sense, from foreign peoples, but rather from middle- and low-income Americans.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
The emotional fervor generated by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, argues sociologist Piven (Why Americans Don't Vote), has helped what she sees as the domestic neoconservative agenda, as well as altered a historical pattern in which governments waging war wind up expanding civil rights and social programs. The turn to preemptive war and the disregard of international linkages, she claims, is part of a domestic strategy, just as the Cold War justified the domestic Red Scare. Piven doesn't add original research; rather she synthesizes a wide range of reportage and commentators (Chalmers Johnson, Kevin Phillips, Naomi Klein, Garry Wills, Jonathan Schell, etc.) in sometimes bloglike fashion. She finds Bush backers in Congress invoked the need to avoid partisan bickering in wartime thus hastening passage of corporate-friendly tax-cut legislation and deregulation. Meanwhile, cuts in federal spending increase pressure on the states to cut back their own social spending. Piven doesn't pause much to analyze why the opposition Democrats and others let this happen, but she does argue that the fallout from the wars makes the administration vulnerable in the upcoming election. "War itself cannot be an effective cover for this ruse for long," she concludes, predicting (while at the same time working herself to foster) an atmosphere conducive to regime change. (Oct.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Forget about blood for oil: this war's about everything else, an excuse to loot the treasury at home as much as any wealth abroad. So argues Piven (Political Science/CUNY; Why Americans Don't Vote, not reviewed) in this vigorous but slight and not altogether satisfying essay. Her overarching thesis-that George Bush's war on Iraq and the one on terror are aspects of a war on liberal society and the social welfare state-is, in the main, unobjectionable and unsurprising, and she capably shores it up with pointed observations on just how curious this Iraq war is, anyway: Where previous American wars have yielded the expansion of democratic rights, a kind of sop to the working people who have to bear the sacrifices of blood and dollars, "this period is markedly different," characterized by tax cuts for the rich while "social welfare programs are being cut, both at the federal and the state level, and even some veterans' benefits have been reduced." Piven is probably correct to characterize this war as imperial, even though the jury's still out; indeed, as she wisely notes, it is already fulfilling the dreams a little-known bureaucrat named Paul Wolfowitz announced in 1992, when he "called for a permanent American military presence on six continents capable of establishing and protecting a new world order." All this war-making and empire-building, Piven argues, shores up the Republican right wing, but it exposes the whole enterprise as that sop "delivered to the big business interests that backed the administration and its party." Fair enough, but it would be good to start naming names here, and Piven provides too few specifics, offering little in the way of sustained analysis but turning upinteresting nuggets along the way: the fact, for instance, that Bush scored big with Arab-American voters in 2000 but has lost his following in the wake of the Patriot Act. A sermon to the converted, but good fuel for arguments with the Republican next door. Agent: Frances Goldin/Frances Goldin Agency
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