Observation and Questions.

[Michael Cohen]

1.
It was interesting to read the first of Max's editorials at
http://www.intellectualcapital.com.  Max's point of view is
that government surpluses simply ought to be invested as
infrastructure because the rate of return would be greater
than the 5% obtained by paying down the debt. Other than
confusion about social security, if I had to characterize the
Center of the Point of View it would be somewhere between
liberterian (the state is stealing my money, if I want to sqaunder it
its my right), to distrust, government beaurocrats are incompetent,
we don't want the wasting our money, with the "majority" favoring
a tax refund or perhaps paying down the deficit.

Such a viewpoint among a large proportion of the voting public if true
makes it difficult to accomplish anything progressive.  Either the
individuals are
seeing their interests as coinciding with the ruling class or adopting a

strong form of distrust of any authority which makes accomplishing
anything other than
the status quo difficult.  Other than economic disaster and joint
struggle among a naturally allied
class of such people, I find it hard to see how such attitudes will
change for the better.  Does anybody have any good ideas.

2.
For people who feel that capitalism is going to suffer a long term or
short term
overthrow vary from siezure of power by a Revolutionary Proletariat
following
an economic collapse of capitalism whereby the only people to have a
living
income is a small percentage of  the population.  Presumably there would
also
be a crisis of legitimation, whereby the Army would refuse to fight for
its ruling class masters
making such a revolution possible.  On the other hand there are people
that believed
that in a democratic society the views and needs of Labor would take
power gradually
and the relationship towards the means of production would be gradually
changed towards socialism, say for definiteness in a radicalized version
of Swedish Social Democracy.  What always seemed missing to me in these
accounts is precisely what is compelling in the Marxian analysis of the
rise of capitalism.  That is a concrete discussion of how the day to day
benefits of the new proletariat were simulaneously necessary for and
useful to and destructive of the prior order of society although I know
Marx and Lenin tried on the basis of little evidence to extrapolate
such.  From this point of view,  is there a recent discussion of these
sorts of issues which are really very old  with references to
contemporary examples, by contemporary I mean post WWII.

                              --mike
--
Michael Cohen mike at cns.bu.edu
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