>Doug Henwood wrote:
>
>"This is all surreally hypothetical, but I'll play a little longer. "
>
>I think the really interesting question here is "What is the attraction
>for so many (and not just liberal economists but those who call
>themselves Marxists) of the "surreally hypothetical"? I'm not opposed to
>hypothetical questions as such -- in fact it seems to me that certain
>categories of hypothetical questions lie at the heart of any form of
>systematic theorizing -- i.e., any systematic understanding of human
>practice.
I practiced the hypothetical in this case to show that official protestations of powerlessness are a crock.
>(4) So when a leftist asks the question, "Should we support the Tobin
>Tax?" he/she is asking, in disguised form, some such question as the
>following: If by some horrible mischance socialist revolution were
>within our grasp, how could we most gracefully return power to the
>capitalist class?"
Just what is a socialist revolution in a place like the United States? Talk about hypotheticals....
How would this alleged revolution confront money, capital, and capital flight in its institutional forms? Would these, even in the best of circumstances, cease to exist overnight? Is there any way to operationalize, as the bourgeois social scientists say, a revolution in this country? Simultaneous seizure of the White House and the NYSE? Should socialists agitate for nothing less than total transformation? That's ok for Sparts and other self-marginalizers, but is it all or nothing?
Doug