Reform of IMF (was the global melodrama)

[Louis Proyect]

Doug Henwood:
>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?

These questions are the sort of things that Hahnel-Albert, Roemer, et al
address. Unfortunately they are not the sort of questions that socialist
revolution hinges on. They, instead, hinge on questions of how to take
power and once in power how to keep it. Economic policy is managed through
a combination of pragmatism and strong egalitarian instincts combined with
scientific rationality. If there will be a socialist revolution in the US
or any other advanced capitalist country, the driving impetus will not be
powerful arguments about why socialism is superior to capitalism but the
sheer need for self-preservation. Strikes such as the kind taking place in
Korea or Russia will increase in frequency and intensity until big capital
decides to take matters into its own hands and support Lyndon Larouche,
Mark from Michigan, Ron Arnold or some combination of that. Workers
organized in committees will arm themselves and rally soldiers to their
side, just as the Chinese students attempted to do at Tienamin. If the
committees can take power, they will discuss how to run the economy. At
that point, all good ideas will be welcome, I'm sure.

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