Reply to Hinrich

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Tue Dec 1 12:12:45 PST 1998


Louis Proyect wrote:


>Hinrich, it would be presumptuous for me to make proposals for the US
>working class when I am not even inside it.

What class are you in then? And can useful proposals only come from within the working class, whatever that is exactly?


>Doug
>tosses around the possibility of "market socialism" in the conclusion of
>"Wall Street" while Boris told me that "market socialism" made sense to him
>the last time I saw him up at the Brecht Forum.

I am no fan of market socialism as a utopia. But I don't see anyway to get to a socialist future, as impossibly distant as that seems, except by working on the institutions that we have today - that is, using the power of unions, parties, interest groups, and the state to constrain and transform institutions of capitalist power like corporations and financial markets. Socializing the market, in Diane Elson's evocative but undernourished phrase.

What's your alternative?

Doug



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