Reform of IMF (was the global melodrama)

Mark Jones Jones_M at netcomuk.co.uk
Thu Aug 20 14:34:57 PDT 1998


Doug Henwood wrote:


> Just what is a socialist revolution in a place like the United States? Talk
> about hypotheticals....

Carrol beautifully put the problem with reformism: it's not pragmatic at all, it's utopian.

Thus Max Sawicky just said 'the best we could hope for was social-democracy' (words to that effect). Of course, we can't hope for any such thing; it's utopian. There'll be a revolution in the US before there's a free health service (something we're just celebrating the first half century of, but that's how long ago social democracy still had any life). Max's politics are dreams, illusions. But this argument goes back and forward like a Newton's cradle: point out the futility of reforms like Tobin or free health care, and Doug Henwood is sure to jump in (not as swiftly as a year ago, true) with ritual noises about Sparts, capital flight, the impossibility of 'operationalising a revolution'.

Voluntarism, spontaneism, defeatism, a profound pessimism that informs nothing more productive than an articulate cynicism -- Doug's book is popular because it gives people the comfort of a shared sense of hopelessness: Hey, if a dissident insider as smart as Henwood knows it's hopeless to bet against Wall St, who am I, John Doe from Peoria, to worry?

There is a terrible narcissism about this. Presumably, the day when the doubters do perceive the logjams breaking up, they'll choose up sides at last. But we don't want fairweather friends. We want people who join us now, because they know it's the right thing to do. That's the only reason anyone needs, actually.

Mark PS Sorry for the -isms.



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