I have very little sense that there is much difference between Marxists and someone like Newsweek's Robert Samuelson on the causes of the current mess. Capitalism has no plan. It simply produces on the basis of expected profit. When it overproduces, it lays off workers and liquidates unprofitable firms. What distinguishes Marxists from bourgeois economists, who have read their Marx, is the imperative to eliminate the profit motive, which causes the kind of suffering endemic to societies like Thailand's or South Korea's today. Marx was a revolutionary.
>Heavens no. I'm all for workers occupying plants. What concerned me is that
>the Hyundai workers had no politics behind their sit-in, other than the
>desire to keep their jobs. The sit-in wasn't a rehearsal for a worker
>takeover of production - they just wanted business as usual to carry on.
Socialist consciousness does not arrive like a light-switch being turned on. American workers became communists as a result of victorious sit-ins and the discussions they had with Marxist workers who fought side-by-side with them.
More importantly, workers do not spontaneously make Molotov cocktails to defend factory occupations. This has the footprints of revolutionary interventions in the Korean labor movement. For a full discussion of this, I recommend Martin Hart-Landburgh's new book "Korea: Division, Reunification and US Foreign Policy." He has the following to say about leftist motion in the labor movement:
"Complicating the government's response to these economic trends was the resurgence of a left opposition movement. Events surrounding Kwangju had triggered a political reevaluation among antigovernment activists, the majority of whom previously had looked to the United States for inspiration and support. Their attempt to understand why the U.S. government had supported Chun's coup raised questions about U.S. foreign policy, including why Washington had supported Korea's division and Park's dictatorship. For many, a consistent set of answers emerged, pointing to one underlying determination in U.S. policy toward Korea: the desire to maintain regional dominance. Since regional dominance was strengthened by division and dictatorship, the U.S. government had actively supported both, despite its rhetorical support for democracy. This understanding of U.S. policy promoted a broad anti-imperialist consciousness within activist circles. It also led to a growing political division within the wider community opposing the military dictatorship, as many activists began to distance themselves from the two well-known opposition leaders, Kim Young Sam and Kim Dae Jung, both of whom continued to strongly identify with the United States and 'free market' capitalism.
"Those who sought answers to South Korea's problems through the building of a socialist-oriented movement became increasingly active beginning in 1984. That year, a group of workers who had been blacklisted in the early 1980s formed the Worker's Welfare Association (WWA) to help rebuild the South Korean labor movement. WWA leaders described their efforts as a continuation of the work of the left-led National Coalition of Korean Trade Unions in the 1 940s. That same year, twenty-three organizations of women, workers (including the WWA), farmers, students, writers, and religious activists formed the United Minjung (People's) Movement for Democracy and Unification (UMMDU), which called for the adoption of a 'people's constitution' and a supporting structural transformation of the South Korean political economy. The UMMDU also targeted the United States and Japan as the major obstacles to the achievement of Korean reunification and democracy. Two years later, students started organizations that were also based on a radical understanding and critique of imperialism and capitalism.
"Activists in these organizations wanted to anchor their political movement in the working class. For this reason they strongly supported worker organizing, and played a pivotal role in starting a major labor resurgence in 1985. The two most important strikes that year were at Daewoo Motors and Daewoo Apparel. The former was the first major strike against a chaebol. The latter was noteworthy because it triggered solidarity strikes by other workers in the area and enjoyed the open and direct support of students and the UMMDU.
"Student and UMMDU activists were also successful in challenging Chun's regime on the issue of presidential elections. With Chun's term of office ending, most people wanted to directly elect the next president. Chun, determined to have his fellow military officer Roh Tae Woo succeed him, opposed this idea. Following the ruling party's nomination of Roh for the presidency, these activists joined forces with Kim Dae Jung and Kim Young Sam, both of whom hoped to become president. Together they sparked nineteen consecutive days of massive street demonstrations. The largest included more than 2 million people who demonstrated in thirty-four cities for the release of all political prisoners, the end of tear gas use, the right of freedom of assembly, and direct election of the president. Although rumors of a new military crackdown circulated, Roh finally yielded to public pressure, making a conciliatory speech on June 29, 1987. His most important political concession was to agree to the direct election of the next president. The regime was on the defensive."
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>>Instead, Marxists should welcome
>>signs of resistance. It is out of such resistance that a new society
>>becomes objectively possible. The role of Marxists or radical economists is
>>to prepare the rest of society for accepting the need for a new kind of
>>society, not to accept the status quo as a state of normality.
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>The status quo is almost by definition a kind of normality. If you have
>some evidence that the Hyundai workers were talking about a new kind of
>society, by all means please share it.
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>Doug
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Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)