I wrote:
>>>>Now the IMF might become a "world Fed," managing the world's money, but
>>>>I think that the US power elite would oppose that. It likes the way the
>>>>actual Fed manages things.
>>
>>Chris B. writes:
>>>Sure. Change will not come without a battle.
>>
>>it doesn't seem like a battle we want to get involved in, since it
>>involves a conflict between rich-country capitalist elites.
Chris B. answers:
>Why should that be beneath the dignity of the privileged but progressive
>citizens of the hegemonic capitalist country of the world?!
It seems like there are more important battles, such as trying to harness
corporate globalization to subordinate it to democracy. In this
perspective, preventing the IMF from extorting countries to toe the
neoliberal party line is less important than giving it new responsibilities.
>Even if what Jim describes is the true reality of the global economic
>system and not merely the surface reality, why should that preclude
>progressives taking up this battle if it is a battle that must be fought?
>
>I know Jim Devine is no dogmatist and I ask him to appreciate that the
>blows might fall on the sack but they are aimed elsewhere. There is a
>Trotskyist opinion in marxism space that the dispute between the rich
>imperialist countries of the Second World War was no business of the
>proletariat, and the alliance of the Soviet Union with Britain and the USA
>was an opportunist alliance, and that the world united front against
>fascism was an opportunist united front.
I haven't orbited in Trotskyist space. I don't think that the idea of
giving the IMF new responsibilities is in the same league as World War II.
They are issues of quite different proportions.
>Now when it is the bounden duty of all progressives in the world,
>*especially* those in the USA, (who also happen to dominate English
>speaking email lists) to further a world united front against US
>hegemonism, this viewpoint is extremely harmful and adds to the inertia of
>any serious attempt to integrate theory with practice, which of course is
>always difficult.
right. US hegemonism is bad. But I don't see how giving the IMF new powers
deals with this. The "new & improved IMF" would likely be under the US
thumb (i.e., of the US power elite). Or the thumb of US+Euroland (i.e., of
their power elites).
>Let us go back to Jim's proposition.
>
>>it doesn't seem like a battle we want to get involved in, since it
>>involves a conflict between rich-country capitalist elites
>
>That zealous, even at times over-zealous, Marxist, Lenin, argued "Why does
>it follow that 'the great, victorious, world' revolution can and must
>employ only revolutionary methods? It does not follow at all."
I didn't say anything that makes this quote relevant, since I wasn't
talking about reform vs. revolution.
I'm not a big fan of Lenin, so I'll skip the rest of the quotes. BTW, from
the perspective of 2001, Lenin's effort in l917 looks like a failure (for
whatever reason), so his status as an authority is dimmed, to say the
least. In any event, I don't think quoting from authorities is useful as a
way of proving a point.
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
