A. Just because prominent bourgeois politicians do catch onto different themes does not mean that the differences are totally unimportant. Nor on the other hand that progressive people have to tail behind them.
The populist noises about campaign reform by McCain and Bradley of course suit their short term need but add to the momentum that will in due course produce a more democratic and less plutocratic electoral system in the USA. Meanwhile progressives should support whatever bodies in civil society are campaigning most effectively for campaign finance reform.
b. On the strategy of reform of the organs of international finance, progressives simply do not have to produce one neat coherent plan to have an effect. Even just keeping up the pressure of London on June 18 and of Seattle strikingly demonstrates the lack of mandate that global capital has for running the world. It will strengthen the influence of the new body, G20, which has a claim to represent the people of the world and not just accumulated money. The capitalists themselves will try reform after reform each of which can be criticised as inadequate.
More important than reform of the WTO is reform of the World Bank which should change the rules by which countries bid for access to funds in order to counter the centipetal effects of the uneven accumulation of capital. The IMF should dampen down the volatility of short term financial movements and increasingly consciously manage "world money". Of course they will be concerned about the instabilities of for example the loss in value of 14% by the euro against the dollar this year. If the people of the world enjoy the benefits and suffer the risks of a single global market they want it rationally and fairly managed with a view to social justice and not merely to fragmented bourgeois democratic rights.
We do not have to take the responsibility to fix anything for capitalism. We have complete discretion tactically and strategically to demand that the world be run in the interests of the working people of the world, and we can still demand this even if we do not yet know exactly how that will be done.
Chris Burford
London