O'Connor on local money etc.

[Max Sawicky]

> . . .
> Anyway, to get to my main point. Here we have Big Capital with most of the
> economic wealth in productive forces, etc. There we have Big State with
> almost all the legitimate authority, i.e., it's got law on its side. The
> essence of populism, localism, varieties of anarchism, communalism etc.
> etc. is two fold: first, ignore the monopoly that big capital has on
> economic productive wealth, and instead, build alternative economies
> locally; second ignore the monopoly the state has on legitimate coercion
> and instead "devolve" power via civil society (ignoring the state) to the
> local level.

You're talking about some modern-day populists here,
some dregs of the New Left, as opposed to those
of 1890, for whom monopoly of credit
and rail were central concerns.  I do agree that
there was and is no high-falutin' populist theory,
and also that there was and is a populist interest
in alternative economies.  But in the case of
the traditional populists, the alternative was
not understood in an excessively localist framework.
Part of their alternative, after all, was a substitute
monetary/credit system.


> . . .

mbs