On 9/27/08, John Gulick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > now I'm 4% for permanent residency outside the US, 3% in favor of Obama > (lesser evilism), > 2% keyed up for a third party vote, 1% bent on McCain (the worser the > better), and > 90% enthusiastic about swallowing hemlock.
Sheesh. It ain't about Obama (or third party). For something meaningful to happen, it has to come from popular mobilization... and from analytical reflection. I can't imagine a situation in which more repression (the worser) is better. Obama is in the position of FDR at this point. The policies of an Obama administration depend almost entirely on what kind of mass mobilization is going on after the election. During the Clinton administration, the right effectively mobilized a reactionary tide. Actual conditions today (the 'conjuncture') create opportunities for a progressive mass movement. The key to whether this happens or not is the extent to which the most politically astute, progressive elements of the citizenry seize those opportunities or engage in abstract disputes while they "wait to see what happens." By politically-astute elements I mean to indicate a collective quite distinct from traditional 'political activists' or lefties. Traditional left arguments have focused on who gets how much of a (presumably) given economic pie. The important questions, though, have to do with what ingredients go into that pie and who gets to determine that. The early critiques of political economy, from utopian socialists, argued that because labor was the ultimate source of value, workers were entitled to the full product of their labor. The 'living wage' position of the labor movement in the US focused on standard of living as a function of the consumption of the products of industry. Both of these approaches side-step the issue of how the integrated production/consumption process constitutes a way of life, subsumed in its entirety to the accumulation of capital. Marx got about half way there but subsequent marxism has made the mistakes of taking the incomplete analysis for a comprensive whole while at the same time often uncritically embracing utopian socialist and/or distributionist living wage slogans and rationalizations. -- Sandwichman _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
