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Regarding: > Dennis Brasky <dmozart1...@gmail.com> > excerpt - > "There is enormous hypocrisy surrounding the pious veneration of the > Constitution and ?the rule of law.? The Constitution, like the Bible, is > infinitely flexible and is used to serve the political needs of the moment. > When the country was in economic crisis and turmoil in the Thirties and > capitalism needed to be saved from the anger of the poor and hungry and > unemployed, the Supreme Court was willing to stretch to infinity the > constitutional right of Congress to regulate interstate commerce. It > decided that the national government, desperate to regulate farm > production, could tell a family farmer what to grow on his tiny piece of > land.... CUT...... > It would be naive to depend on the Supreme Court to defend the rights of > poor people, women, people of color, dissenters of all kinds. Those rights > only come alive when citizens organize, protest, demonstrate, strike, > boycott, rebel, and violate the law in order to uphold justice. > http://www.howardzinn.org/dont-despair-about-the-supreme-court/ > > Dear Denis: Obviously Zinn made an enormous contribution to progressives and Marxists, when he emulated A.L.Morton's "A People's History of England" - & performed the same treatment for the USA. You do not comment on the excerpt, but I take it you are approving? And are perhaps (?) suggesting that the current furore over the Supreme Court is misplaced. If you are, or if you are not - will you please forgive these two points? : 1) "It would be naive to depend on the Supreme Court " etc... The salient word here is "*depend*". Who, in fact, "depends" upon it? No Marxist striper of any sort I believe. 2) In addition, is not a several shades-worth of difference between - for e.g. - a Bader Ginsburg and Kavanaugh - a potential benefit to the workers and women of the USA? (Please notice the word 'potential'). The above I suspect many on the list would agree with. However, I doubt this following point, will have any resonance here. But I suppose I should state this - perhaps to salve my own mind - but to be even more explicit. Therefore, here is a larger point: In the same vein, should Marxists take account of a potential split between two inveterate parties of capital - as are Democrats and Republicans? I believe that it can be shown that there is a *primarily* pro-Industrial wing of capital (republicans) and a *primarily* pro-Finance capital wing (democrats). Of course given the inter-penetration of capitals since Lenin echoed parts of Hilferding, nothing is *absolute*. As industrial capital itself saw the ease, in the period of 'financialisation', of making profits without *producing* *anything* (or at least as much of as it had been won't to do previously) - it became 'financialised'. And of course *both* Democrats and Republicans cannot do without the financial capitalist class. Nonetheless, there is a - *perhaps only a smidgen* - but there *is a difference*. Anyway, forgive me if I have misunderstood your underlying point in your clip from Zinn. Hari Kumar _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
