After announcing to LBO-Talk that he was going to take up these questions on the Marxism list, Buford just unsubbed. Too bad. At any rate, I plan to continue thrashing them out here since they are important questions.
I have no idea what Burford means by "progressive." When he says that it would be progressive to demand that Congress "dialogue" with the president, I have the woozy feeling that I have turned on some Sunday morning talk-show. The kind called something like "Washington Perspective," sponsored by Archer-Midland or Exxon. This usually consists of reporters from the Wall St. Journal or Washington Post agonizing over how the Lewinsky scandal is diverting the "country" from discussing important matters. Whenever I hear the word "country," I feel like screaming at the TV: "What country? The country of the ruling class or the country of the working class?" One of the main contributions of Marxism is that it is based on a class analysis. What you don't get from Burford's posts or these talk shows is exactly that: a class analysis.
Buford suggests that a "Citizens for Economic Reconstruction" movement might be sparked by plunging stock prices. This is utterly ridiculous. Not only does such a campaign lack class content, it also assumes that there are measures that can be taken within the capitalist system to resolve its own contradictions. The only way that capitalism can deal with overcapacity is through liquidation, which means selling off assets in a "fire sale," firing millions of workers or going to war. That's the way the system works. That is what is staring us in the face. The first two things are happening in East Asia and threaten to spread to the rest of the world before long. And with respect to the third thing--War--we have to be vigilant. One of the main points that Doug Henwood and Ellen Meiksins Wood have made in the "globalization" debate with people like Edward Herman is that the old-line state structures are just as important as they've always been. Just keep an eye on the tensions between Japan, the US and Germany unfold as "beggar-thy-neighbor" policies get in the way of global fixes. We are entering dangerous times.
Louis Proyect
(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)