This is rather millenerian? "The rapid development towards the political/environmental catastrophe"? That's what they said in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Greece (since these societies have left us written words). We are still here today, aren't we. It is simply called change! It's not good change; it is change we have little control over, and perhaps that's why, just like in the past, it seems rapid and suggests tomorrow's catastrphe. But it equally stands to reason that no change historically has been without an injury to 'good,' in the sense that good is scarcely to be found in the past few thousand years, at least. Some would say (myself including) we have been living in 'catastrophe' conditions since the development of speech, because that was the first time a human could share with other humans and realise that he/she was not alone in feeling the fact that today has replaced yesterday. "You never step into the same river twice." This has nothing to do with 'change' as a temporal phenomena; only with its quality. We will always feel that changes are "rapid" and may be even "towards a catastrophe," because they seem so rapid. So, the monopoly stage of capitalism might have seemed to some to represent the few final seconds of jouissance before the armaggedon. Well, Einstein's theory is again proven correct; one hundred years later we are still labouring through those last few seconds. Also, if I am chosing to fight homelessness in my neighbourhood, or the opression of women, or for adequate day-care facilities for children, or capitalism as a socio-cultural system generally, am I reactionary, because I am not fighting the transnational corporation, per se? Does not the transnational corporation exist by virtue that all those issues I have just mentioned worth fighting for have been supressed by the very logic the corporation operate (i.e. capital over labour)? To put _all_ your efforts into fighting the transnational corporation, and only the transnational corporation, is tantamount to waving your fists at the enemy while having the consequence of pushing him up to the higher ground and allowing him to gain more leverage over you as the basis on which he stands (i.e. the suppressed social costs) give him more room and firmer ground for manouvre. I would rather see the ground sink under him as I and my comrades shovel it out, for the beast we are attacking is no fist-fighter. In solidarity, Greg. U.P.secr. wrote: > > The rapid development toward the political / environmental > > catastrophes has reached the stage where only those > > aiming directly at terminating the transnational corporations > > are entitled to call themselves progressive. > > The march of events seems accelerating. > Here is another example seen on Leftlink. > Ole, [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://home4.inet.tele.dk/peoples > > -- Gregory Schwartz Department of Political Science York University 4700 Keele St. Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3 Canada tel: (416) 736-5265 fax: (416) 736-5686
