Carrol this is what you wrote: "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." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sorry I thought that when you said that a 'jobless recovery' and that an economic crisis would cause misery for millions, perhaps billions, of people who would be driven to mass depoliticization as people scurried to find individual solutions to ride out the bad times you were talking about workers. Who exactly where you referring to, bourgeoisie's? And I will disagree with this statement again, resistance by workers, especially the level seen in Greece, to the offloading of the crisis onto workers (which is just the limiting of the potential ways for capitalism out of t crisis) most certainly does present a threat to capitalism as a social system. Carrol wrote: Do you think _radical leftists_, in the conditons of 2010, affect Congressional legislation this year, or next, let me know. Otherwise the topic is what we can do NOW that is useful at some future date. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ You talk as if it is all or nothing...either we have mass movement against capitalism or we have nothing but impotence. I don't think it really works that way. I think anytime workers, aided by leftists or not, do anything to close off potential means to smooth capital accumulation and overcome the disparities inherent in it, they are part of the class struggle. If they are conscious of their role then it is all the stronger, but without it they are still involved in class struggle and it does have an impact on capitalism. So it needs to be both about some future date and what workers and leftists can and are doing right now. Carrol wrote: We are impotent NOW. We may suddenly not be impotent tomorrow, but today we are. We = conscious radical leftists, not the whole fucking workig class which is only potentially powerful. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The last sentence epitomizes part of the problem on the left: the idea that radical leftists must convince or educate the working class that we hold the key to their power. But who will educate the educator? If we as radical leftists are unable to align ourselves with workers interests as they are and in a manner that is revolutionary then we will fail. Brad _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
