Oct. 2-4 Conference Information

[Louis Proyect]

>I'm not sure what the subversive potential of the financial markets are,
>other than 1) the possibility of collapse, or 2) debt boycotts, like the
>one in SA. So far, 1) has proved rather elusive in the generalized sense,
>and the political fallout from local collapses has been pretty minimal so
>far. Given what Mexico has been through since 1982 - several financial
>crises and debt-driven depressions - the lack of politically subversive
>consequences is a pretty big story, no?
>
>Doug

This is a point that has been on my mind very much lately. Left-wing
radicals and Marxists in the US have been saying for years that we are
isolated because the US economy has been performing so strongly since WWII.
If there was economic misery, workers would listen to us.

Meanwhile the East Asian economies have collapsed completely to the point
that Thais in the countryside are reduced to eating bark. Meanwhile I have
seen no items in the press about worker or peasant militancy in Thailand.

The Mexican financial crisis was actually not the main cause of the Chiapas
revolt. It had to do more with displacements in agriculture brought on by a
big EXPANSION in the oil economy which diverted peasants into the
construction and drilling industries. The traditional economy suffered,
while the new petroindustry was booming.

Reality is not black and white. What will cause workers or peasants to
think in revolutionary terms is not poverty alone. Other things enter into
the mix. The black radicalization of the 1960s was in a certain sense the
product of rising expectations. Many of the arrested Detroit rioters in
1967 were employed by the auto industries. This is a very interesting
question all in all.

Louis Proyect

(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)