====================================================================== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. ======================================================================
> Jim Farmelant wrote > > In recent years, I have found a lot of Petras's commentary on various > subjects to be rather loopy, but not this piece. Jim, thanks for posting. The article does a good job in pointing out that internationally the Center-Left left now has limited options for pacifying the popular classes, but that mass action at the base, due the lack of leadership (currently the reformist trade union bureaucracies and Social Democratic parties) holds no hope for effective reversal of the situation. This is creating significant political opportunities for the left, but also difficult and dangerous conditions for the working class in the west. But I think Petras misses the most critical point in his article, though. He states: > The L-LC political leadership was unwilling to envision an > alternative to their promotion of the policies of big corporate and > banking interests as they led to financial crisis. "Unwilling to envision an alternative?" Nonsense! Because of the historic nature of the capitalist crisis, New Deal liberalism is dead (it's important to understand how and why). This is the ONLY alternative we are facing under 21st century capitalism. In this sense he misunderstands the contemporary nature of world CL politics. Related to this: In an earlier article "Crisis, What Crisis?" Petras cites official government statistics showing increasing (now record) profits, and puts forward the view essentially that there is no crisis of capital accumulation in the system, that by implication, it's a crisis of "neoliberal policies." This view, also reflected in his article above, is that the solution to the crisis is just a matter of forcing the bourgeoisie, through "pressure from the bottom," to abandon the neoliberal capitalist policies adopted by both the Democrats and the Republicans in recent years. A corrolary to this (he doesn't actually say it) is: "if we can't put mass pressure from the bottom on Obama and the Demcrats, then it's ultra-leftism to talk about independent political action by the Left and socialist parties. allan ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
