Of course I have ideas about how to move the class struggle forward. They center on mass actions independent of the boss parties. Right now there should be a priority on:
1) Confronting right-wing violence: gays, Asian immigrants, blacks, abortion services providers, are all increasingly coming under violent attack. "Same boat" coalitions should be organized to drive back the right-wing attacks.
2) Defending trade union democracy: The impending Hoffa victory in the Teamsters would turn back the clock. Marxists in both the teamsters union and in other progressive unions should work together to build a class-struggle left-wing that incorporates the gains of the Ron Carey presidency but without the ties to the scuzzy Democrat Party that got him in trouble.
3) Defending indigenous rights: Makah, Blackfoot and Navajo are all involved in extremely militant actions in defense of their traditions. There should be support from the broader progressive movement.
These are the sorts of items that should get prioritized at conferences of Marxist or radical organizations. Your grotesque ideas about "financial reform" are the stuff of liberal think-tanks. At least when Max Sawicky proposes them, he doesn't try to justify them with quotes from Marx or Lenin.
>He has failed to take the debate forward by
>arguing how it is possible to support a bourgeois party on particular
>issues without promoting illusions in them.
Are you serious? Bourgeois politicians in the north were verbal supporters of desegregation, but it took the confrontational, passive resistance tactics of SNCC and similar groups to actually beat down the door of Jim Crow. These very same bourgeois politicians regarded SNCC--and Dr. King for that matter--as "extremists." I advocate this kind of extremism. Marx and Lenin were extremists as well. You are a fabian Socialist which is no sin. Quoting Marx to buttress Fabian socialism is a sin.
>Does the technical nature of finance mean that is cannot be a target for
>progressive campaigns?
I have not objected to the technical nature of financial reform. I have simply stated that it has nothing to do with the class struggle. The imperialists got together at Bretton Woods immediately after WWII in order to reform the international financial system. They wanted to impose institutional controls that could prevent the sort of wildfire contagion that destroyed international trade in the 1930s. As the WWII economies gained strength in the 1960s and 70s, there was increased competition and the Bretton Woods agreements were superseded by the new, more open approach to capital flows. That in combination with large-scale automation has produced a more unstable financial environment. They want to reduce the instability. That is what George Soros has been arguing. It is essentially an intra-capitalist discussion. The working-class parties have to expose the machinations of all these gangsters, as in the spirit of a recent Castro speech where he described the problems as "genetic."
*** 29-Sep-98 ***
Title: CUBA: Castro Terms Global Crisis a 'Genetic Defect of Capitalism'
By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Sep 29 (IPS) - Cuban President Fidel Castro described the global financial crisis as ''a genetic defect of capitalism,'' and compared it to the Great Depression of the 1930s.
A depression similar to that triggered in 1929 would have much more serious repercussions ''in this globalised world,'' Castro warned in a speech which began Monday night and stretched into the early hours of Tuesday morning.
In Castro's opinion, nothing has been more similar to the infamous crash of 1929, whose fallout was felt for more than 10 years, than what is happening on the U.S. stock markets today.
Castro, whose words were broadcast nationwide by Cuba's state radio and TV stations, closed the sessions of the fifth congress of the Committees for Defence of the Revolution, which group 7.8 million of Cuba's 11 million inhabitants.
The president said neither socialism nor communism could be blamed for the global markets crisis, and the cause must be sought in capitalism and ''the world order it has imposed.''
He put special emphasis on the grave situation in Russia, which he warned could have serious economic as well as political consequences, and even repercussions for global security. He noted that 200 to 500 billion dollars had fled Russia, and added that there is ''a mafia that has taken control of everything.''
> A revolution occurred in Albania, a couple
>of years ago, but needed much more informed progressive knowledge about how
>to manage the financial system in the interests of working people rather
>than the interests of capital.
This is a joke, right? You think that what the Albanian workers needed was advice on how to manage the capitalist finances of their ruined country. Go see the movie Lamerica if you want to understand Albania's problems. Essentially, the country is being victimized by scam artists who either in the guise of industrialists or securities traders are stealing the country blind. The answer is not more adroit management of capitalism, but to bring back socialism without Hoxha's brutal and arbitrary rule. (Thank god, there are no pro-Albanian parties on LBO.)
Many others were incorrectly advised that an endowment mortgage was
>in their interests. From afar Louis Proyect may say that Gordon Brown's
>plans to impose a financial and securities regulatory body on the City of
>London, is a mere reform of capital of no interest to the working class or
>working people. Ditto for the plans for regulation within the European
>Union. But Brown has only been able to move forward on this because of the
>wave of public opinion from working people.
I'm sorry, old stick, our minds just work differently. My idea of a reform in the financial arena is to impose steep fines against banks that "red line" the black community, or to enact laws that would protect the right of personal bankruptcy.
>
>On a global scale the acceptance by capitalism through its adminstrators
>like Brown and Clinton, that there has to be reform, is of course partly a
>reform that capitalists are considering very much from their own interests
>alone, but it is ultra-leftist to say that the protests and refusal of
>millions of people to accept the blind hand of the market in destroying
>their lives, is also part of the balance of forces.
What socialists must provide is an analysis of WHY capitalism is destroying people's lives. In Indonesia, for example, socialists should be hammering away at a basic class analysis and making sure that ethnic hatreds are overcome. Meanwhile Burford is obsessed with the rising Hong Kong stock market. Could it be more obvious that he is living in his own little world?
>
>For a real opening in the interests of working people, a lot of work has to
>be done now by progressive intellectuals. I called through this list for
>left wing seminars to be set up speedily on alternative reforms of the
>world financial system.
Perhaps you talking to the wrong people. There is a post-Keynsian mailing-list which is filled to the rafters with other people who have meliorative approaches to the cancerous capitalist system.
Louis's attempt to characterise my position as
>*automatically* tailing behind the bourgeoisie will convince fewer and
>fewer people. Some of the more serious economists on this list are no doubt
>already looking at the fine print of the official statements and discussing
>among themselves how they could do better.
Frankly, I don't give a rat's ass what Max Sawicky or Brad Delong have to say about financial reform. It is only when people start quoting Marx and Lenin in order to lend authority to reformist schemas that I get miffed. Max and Brad, bless their pointy heads, do no such thing.
>It has been suggested to me in a well meant private communication that
>Louis just gets out of the wrong side of the bed every so often. I do not
>think that is the case.
Interesting. I got a private communication yesterday that suggested your problems are that you have sectarian habits, but instead of nagging people about the need to form Soviets this afternoon, you pester them for months in the same spirit to endorse NATO bombing in former Yugoslavia, or other lamebrained class-collaborationist notions. In other words you have the fanaticism of the "vanguardist" married to the politics of Anthony Giddens. Quite a toxic combination.
Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)