brad wrote:
> 
> So?
> 
> Carrol
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> So, we've reached a situation or stage where protests in one country
> threatens the whole of capitalism. 

Nonsense. It is true that an economic crisis in one place can,
potentially, plunge the whole world economy into deep crisis. That would
cause misery for millions, perhaps billions, of people around the world.
That misery could go on a long time, with minor variations. Or the
variations could be fairly sharp in the "economy" but not help many
people. We've all heard the phrase, "jobless recovery." A lot of
individual capitalists and capitalist firms might go down the tubes as
well.

The chief political effect of this for a number of years would be mass
depoliticization as people scurried to find indiviudal solutions to
riding out the bad times. 

It represents no particular threat to Capitalism as a social system at
all.

The political terrain is still that whihc I have come to call The
Interval. This is the normal state of affairs under capitalism, such
brief periods as The '60s or the middle '30s being the exception. The
most visible feature of such periods is that nothing that leftists do
can or will have an impact on current affairs. Nevertheless what
leftists do is of great importance, for their activity profoundly
affects the shape that the inevitable period of change takes. It is
essentiall to make left activity visible, for activists to be recruited
into various local groups. (I'm not sure whether national organization
makes any diffrence at this time.) Campaigns of various sort have to be
continuously launched however futile they prove to be, since the future
is unpredictable and largely affected by contingency. Those who launched
the Montgomery bus strike or the campaign to stop the execution of Caryl
Chessman or the campaiign to abolish HUAC or those who utterly failed in
their efforts tobuild an anti-war movement against the U.S. war in Korea
achieved nothing and could not have known at the time that they were
nevertheless in the end igniting  the most powerful (though 
multi-faceted leftist movement in U.S. history.

How does the (perhaps) further collapse of the world economy relate to
this.

And your next statement is pathetic:

> Note that I did not say a
> revolution, but just the threat of people standing up to capital and
> its state apparatus.  If we had any sort of organized international
> solidarity . . .

If wishes were horses beggrs would ride.


Carrol
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