Hi Tony, Thanks for your comment. We are partially in agreement, although we also have different perspectives on the larger issues in the background.
>From my perspective (for example) it is irrelevant what Hillary thought when >she enabled Trump's candidacy. That carries zero weight. Ditto for the >failure to prosecute Trump during the 4 years when that was possible. Ditto >for the distinction between actively putting Trump in power vs passively doing >nothing to stop him. These are essentially distractions for the naive. We >are better off, in my humble opinion, if we do not allow these distractions to >steal our attention. People often act on the basis of their ideology: their ideology guides their actions and--so to speak--does the heavy lifting. Our ruling class is guided by fear of the workers and oppressed--and this fear will be reflected in their actions. Who is in the background pulling the strings? Something inanimate: capital. That may sound strange to some--but it is how our world works. There is a class of people whose status and entire social existence is based on their role as servants of and guardians of capital. These people rule society. I look for what I call the "class logic" beneath events. That is often far more insightful than the internal (and meaningless) rationalizations of the people taking action. Does a salmon (for example) have "agency" as it swims upriver over waterfalls to span? It knows nothing of what it is doing--and is only following its instincts. Salmon act as they do because this is required for their existence. Salmon that fail to act this way are out of the gene pool. Salmon act as they do because what they do is a requirement for being a salmon. Similarly, the bourgeoisie think and act as they do because this is required for their existence as servants of capital. This idea is both simple and powerful. How does this relate to the organization of resistance to Trump's upcoming attempt to move things further along the road of replacing our existing constitutional order (and democratic rights) with something more ugly? Joseph Green summed it up. We can keep our eyes open and observe (from what unfolds): (1) the balance of power within our ruling class (2) the sentiment of the masses Trump's emerging assault on our constitutional order will have two primary consequences for our ruling class, it appears to me, if it is allowed to go forward: (1) It will be highly disruptive to social order and stable economic growth (2) It will prepare the ground for stepped up repression when the debt crisis finally blows up and leads to a financial crisis and a lower standard of living for the working class and masses >From the perspective of capital, the first consequence above is a >negative--but the second may be a necessity. The two consequences go >together. The first is the price that must be paid in order to implement the >second. Large numbers of individual members of our ruling class, it appears to me, are doing a complex calculation and attempting to determine whether, from the perspective of protecting their wealth, the time has come to pull the plug on Trump. The actions of these people (large and small) will add up in various ways. All kinds of forces can appear, so to speak, out of the woodwork. Can our ruling class pull back on Trump's leash? I believe they can do so when their fundamental interests are at stake. For example, last year when Trump started off on his Tariff adventure--there was a moment when articles (from normally pro-Trump sources) began to appear suggesting that Trump may have lost his mind. These were not the normal "Trump is deranged" articles that we see ten times a day in the liberal press. These were something different. Shortly thereafter--Trump essentially cancelled his big tariff initiative, explaining that "the bond market was getting the yips". How do we interpret that? My interpretation is that the bourgeoisie pulled back on Trump's leash. Just recently, one of Trump's trumpets, Maria Bartiromo, was fired from Fox News for leaking info to Trump about Fox policy regarding bogus claims of election fraud. And Joe diGenova, who was part of a group that tried to overturn the 2020 election, has just been forced out of the Department of Justice office in Florida. We don't know the details--and other interpretations are possible--but the likelyhood is that the first (and possibly both) of these dismissals represent a section of capital dialing down support for Trump. If our ruling class allows Trump to fuck with the elections--we may be entering a period of turmoil. > On building institutions of our own, yes, lay out > the ideas. My hesitation is that a list like this is > mostly people who write, and I don't know that > raising the signal among us gets it closer to a class > institution. The ones the class already has are > the locals. Last time I asked whether anyone here > has a line into an APWU or NALC local before > November. I still don't know. If the nervous system > you're describing started by connecting to one > of those, I'd help build it First--just to get this out of the way--the trade unions are dominated by bureaucrats that many would describe as corrupt--in the sense that their job is to sell out the workers. Some people may call the trade unions a working class institution, but that is (at best) half-true, and can be misleading. The trade union bureaucrats serve our ruling class. When I discussed the need to create our own institutions--I mean something else entirely--something independent of our ruling class. My conclusion is the large-scale digital infrastructure the working class needs may emerge from a much smaller project organized around the needs of activists. For example: the MarxMail listserv has about 600 subscribers--and requires a lot of time to follow. But it would be possible to evolve it (step by step) such that it served a much larger number of subscribers who would be able to follow highlights and conclusions without needing to wade through the 95 percent of text that has much less value. For example--people such as you and me (and/or whoever else might be interested) could work on a joint essay summing up (in a concise way) our conclusions related to Bonapartism -- and this essay could be positioned to reach a much larger number of readers. Counterpunch carries many good essays--but does not make it possible for readers to comment on or discuss the articles. There is a need for a journal such as Counterpunch that is more open to public discussion. Such a journal could evolve from a listserv such as this one--if there were a critical mass of activists here who were determined to make it happen. I have written two major works related to the digital infrastructure I believe the working class needs (please see below) and am currently working on a third. * A Place To Stand - A public information platform will be a place for activists to gather and a powerful weapon of mass transparency -- http://communism.org/node/4058/4058.pdf * Spartabase - A universal public database will be our weapon of mass transparency -- http://communism.org/node/4056/4056.pdf -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. 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