Postwar capitalist growth was the very basis for anti-communist mobilization
Evidence
Within the United States immediately after the war, the unprecedented capitalist growth was combined with – was, in fact, the very basis for – equally unprecedented levels of anti-communist mobilizations, putting in place the McCarthyist terror in society at large, the Eisenhower-Dulles combination in charge of the state, a ‘military-industrial complex’ (Eisenhower’s own phrase) in charge of corporate capital, and the merged AFL–CIO to marginalize the radical segment of the working-class movement and to incorporate the unions into that imperialist consensus which was buttressed materially by new and spectacular levels of consumption. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 39
Categorization
- XREF: Challenges the reading that McCarthyism was a rupture from or embarrassment for capital; links to Marcuse’s one-dimensional society thesis. — connects to: Postwar currency reform and Marshall aid signaled anti-communism replacing anti-fascism. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1724; Postwar US growth and anticommunist terror were two sides of one project.