The point is well made, but doesn't cover enough territory to settle the argument. It doesn't because it assumes the "working class" exists as a conscious political agent, with an identity as solid as that of a biological human individual. I hope I don't need to argue that that is not the case. People have to be motivated and organizations built. I like the Tobin Tax and progressive taxation because I think I can get other people to like them; so it seems possible to build a campaign around them and thus organize people, to begin to CREATE the political agents we want to see. Both proposals also educate, raise people's consciousness so that whether they support or oppose them in the end, they will better understand the economy than before.
The alternative, an explicit campaign to overthrow capitalism, these days, makes me blush. I don't currently see such a campaign as sufficiently educational, nor as effective in organizing. Rather, as I think Doug Henwood said, it would amount to self-marginalization.
Right now, distribution is more and more an issue in the hallways and bars, slowly getting up there with taxes and "big government" as a source of cliches to mouth off with. There, I'm sorry to say, lies whatever power we might access. Let's make the best of it!
Michael Brun