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Well, I was just about to say, "What do you mean people carrying on as if nothing was going on..." by pointing out the NYT article on the soaring use of food stamps, but Matt did that for me, so I'll move on to some other items. Yes, I regard neo-liberalism as an ideological smoke-screen, like Friedman's free marketeering was the smokescreen for "rationalizing" Pinochet. The driving force was the a change in the demands, desires of the US bourgeoisie after rates of return peaked in 69 or 70. After overproduction raised its ugly face again. After rolling back the strike wave of the early 70s-- it was time to begin an assault on the living standards of the working class. That assault has been pretty well sustained since then. But I don't think "neo-liberalism" is the movement. Now the Christian Right... that's a movement. The anti-abortion terrorists... that's a movement. But identifying neo-liberalism as a movement is a bit like telling me that George Wallace's campaign was a movement based on state's rights and not segregation. State's Rights was bullshit. Segregation, preserving, restoring the relations of power that made segregation, that was the movement. Agree again: Nothing's automatic, everything must be constructed-- but it doesn't get constructed out of thin air. But isn't a belief in automatism really contained in discounting of the actual material conditions based on the supposed passivity of the working class. The passivity exists. It does not automatically go away when times get tougher. It has been created over many years of asset-stripping, capital flight, downsizing, reduced real wages, defeats of strikes. So in reversing that passivity, and in constructing what we call class-consciousness, we have to know, to truly apprehend what's going on in the circuits of capital... hence "the endless chatter" concerning economics that Carrol finds so wasteful... Just so that it will make some sense to everybody else when Marxists go on record as opposing bank bailouts, government guarantees of money markets, government assumption of the debt of the GSEs, and instead argue for canceling the debts, expropriating the banks and declaring null and void all loan covenants, collateral requirements attached to asset-back securitis, CDOs, credit default swaps, etc. etc. I think the decisive factors in the bourgeoisie "rescuing" accumulation are in destroying the very components inherent in capital that undermine accumulation-- labor as wage-labor, the means of production as private property. I agree with you, the bourgeoisie think they can get out of this crisis. Hell, Nixon and Kissinger were convinced they could defeat the Vietnamese right through 72, 73, 74 [ Nobody said delusion doesn't have material consequences]. And I am not certain that the bourgeoisie can't get out of the crisis. But I am certain that the price that will be paid for the bourgeoisie to get out of the crisis will be horrific. Look at the price paid throughout the world when capital isn't confronted with trillions of dollars in non-performing assets-- then multiply that by a trillion. IMO, opportunities here and now in the US: 1) immigrant labor-- we have to develop a campaign to mobilize workers to force employers to not allow employment records to be used for detaining, arrest, interrogation, and deportation of workers. 2) health care-- universal health care, decentralized/centralized-- neighborhood health care centers staffed by professionals but reporting to a communist oversight board on a) specific but widespread health problems in the community b) programs of mitigation and prevention of those problems ----- Original Message ----- From: "brad bauerly" <[email protected]> To: "David Schanoes" <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, November 29, 2009 5:21 PM Subject: Re: [Marxism] Eight theses on the economic crisis > ====================================================================== > Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > ====================================================================== ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
