>Chris Burford wrote:
>>but it does seem
>>to me that Doug and I share some pretty deep differences of approach.
>
>You think?
>
>>I guess Doug is still stuck in seeing the Third Way as some comptemptible
>>form of social democracy delivered in sound bites.
>
>Not even social democracy. It's rule by financiers and CEOs with the
>assistance of counselors and spin doctors. It is contemptible, no argument
>there.
>
>Doug
In this at present rather undifferentiated stage of the development of left and marxist ideas on the internet, a pattern does seem to be emerging. You are instinctively against any reforms against tobacco capital despite its particularly reactionary politics. You instinctively stand aside from reforms against gun capital.
> But I've never been a big fan of
>liberal gun control mania either.
...
> Rather than contrive suits against "gun capital," I'd rather ask why
>the U.S. is so violent. Just why is it that two kids wanted to shoot up
>their suburban high school?
This is in a situation where the mayor of Denver has appealed to the RNA to suspend its convention in that city.
So it is more interesting to analyse the society as a whole (with which in some ways I agree) than to identify the political movement that is trying to control gun capital.
A public organ such as LBO-talk will be monitored by such agencies on behalf of tobacco capital and gun capital, and I accept that your broad editorial approach to content may differ at times with your own personal political views. I suggest that this forum is best seen as one component part of a much wider civil society.
On finance, which of course I very much agree is the dominant form of late capitalism, you appear to resist discussion of reforms that may bring it under greater control.
What is common to this approach and the comments above, that see Third Way as undifferentiated capitalist power, nothing else, is a failure to see the contradictions within the state. Doug is certainly not a dogmatist but I suspect the debate has been distorted by left dogmatism. For left dogmatists the state is purely an instrument by which the bourgeoisie exercises dictatorship over the proletariat. There is no secondary aspect that it must appear to stand above classes, it must appear to support a rule of law, and of justice, and that this creates areas of ideological and political struggle that have their own contradictions.
This is a simplistic unanalytical view. Thus it assumes that Blair's only aspect is to be the spin doctor for capitalism. The fact that he is introducing extensive constitutional changes which will give greater autonomy to Wales and Scotland even at the expense of Labour domination there, for example, is ignored. The fact that his Home Secretary initiated a major public inquiry into the death of a black teenager, is ignored. The fact that New Labour can reverse the market trends in the delivery of health care (while admittedly making concessions to the financing of the building stock of the national health service) is too subtle to notice.
Doug thinks Blair is just a series of sound bites, managed by a spin doctor in the interests of finance capital. Impossible.
BUT on war and peace, the purpose of this thread title was to conceptualise what was trailed as a major speech by Blair in Chicago laying down a new strategic concept of spheres of influence, comparable to the Brezhnev doctrine. For some reason this is not featured prominently today and it is not clear whether his text was altered at the last moment in the interests of timing.
The news this morning in London is of a grave escalation of the war. Not only have the two top floors of the building transmitting the main Serbian tv been destroyed with highly credible reports of 15 people killed, but there are other reports on the BBC of large parts of Belgrade being blacked out which suggest the possibility that power stations have been hit.
This suggests that it has become NATO strategy to hit the morale of the Serb population as a whole, and impress on them the inevitability of defeat, as essential if the control of the Serb nationalists over the political process in the former Yugoslavia is to be broken.
Shocking though the news is about the deaths of the broadcasters, on what basis can it be effectively protested? Surely that stations like B92 should also be allowed to broadcast (and Doug drew early attention to its suppression) and that contrary to the social fascist ideas of Mirjana Milosevic a wide variety of independent media should be able to report not just in Serbia but above all in Kosovo.
That I suggest is the most effective internationalist way of protesting the latest escalation.
Chris Burford
London