It's ironic that Bill Cochrane should answer my charge of sarcasm with an
antipodean satire. Never again will I make the mistake of taking anything
'New Yawk' Doug Henwood says at face value, dwelling as he does at the
epicenter of dissimulation (according to the verita-geography of
sheep-pasture Bill's reliable sources).
But, getting back to Marilyn Waring's canonization, there are two issues
here. One is Waring's critique of the GDP as glorification of exchange
transactions. The other is Waring's personal and political character.
I haven't seen the video (produced by the National Film Board of Canada),
but I've heard that it leans heavily on fabricating a persona for Ms.
Waring, at the expense of her critique. In that context, I agree that Bill's
debunking is appropriate, or *would be* appropriate if only Bill would
supply for instances instead of the kind of broad brush allusions to 'tory
scum', 'her ilk' and 'fucking over the people'.
I have read the book (several years ago) and it seems to me that it
presented a well-reasoned and accessible critique of the glorification of
GDP. It's fair to say that a critique of GDP should be nothing new to
marxists, since it was embedded in marxian categories nearly a century
before the GDP was even invented. But even marxists may be tempted into
playing 'we can beat you at your own GDP' game, or as Nikita Kruschev once
put it, "we will bury you." We all know what happened to the USSR. And there
are many paths to wisdom, some of which don't set out from chapter one of
Das Kapital.
Perhaps a more useful way of looking at Waring's reception as a
'progressive', would be to think about the very narrow space that exists for
any political/economic analysis or dissent in North America. Into such a
vacuum, even a fart may come as a breath of fresh air (if you'll pardon my
crudity).
Regards,
Tom Walker
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