'Democratic Money' & the Tragedy of Anti-Marxism(wasRe:Populism)

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Sun Nov 14 10:39:03 PST 1999


Doug Henwood wrote:


> Max Sawicky wrote:
>
> > * Democratic money boils down to two things: a monetary policy
> > dedicated to tight, near-inflationary labor markets;
>
> Then you're talking about changing the balance of class forces
> between K and L. It's cowardly and devious to talk about low interest
> rates and not talk about the real social consequences you're after.
> Central bankers understand this very well, even if their critics
> don't, or pretend not to (like Jamie Galbraith's odd critique of the
> Fed as being "stupid," which it certainly isn't).

I think this helps illuminate why so often politics urging manipulation of money move in a totalitarian direction. "[C]hanging the balance of class forces between K and L": That can be done through more or less open class struggle or (in Max's dreams) by the action of a state power standing above class. But in a bourgeois democracy (especially a federalist one such as the U.S. with a constitution carefully rigged to defend the money interest) state power is always in the hands of capital. So what in reality Max and other populists are doing is petitioning capital to hand power over to workers.

Since of course capital quietly refuses to follow this "obvious" past, and since populists or liberals can't *name* it as capital, it (the state) seems stupid or in the hands of conspirators. " Jamie Galbraith's odd critique of the Fed as being "stupid," which it certainly isn't." And as I said in an earlier post, an all-too-frequent next resort is to counter-conspiracy, to the spellbinder (Bryan) or the coup-leader (Mussolini). The possibility of collective action (except as a mass following a charismatic figure) simply cannot occur in a context which ignores class struggle and capital as a system of production.

At a highly sophisticated intellectual level the move follows Plato:

"as the sculptor sees the form in the air

before he sets hand to mallet,

"and as he sees the in, and the through, the four sides

"not the one face to the painter. . .

Canto 25

That sculptor is both Plato's Philosopher King and Mussolini:

Story told by the mezzo-yit:

That they were to have a consortium

and one of the potbellies says:

will come in for 12 million"

And another: three millyum for my cut;

And another: we will take eight;

And the Boss said: But what will you

DO with that money?"

"But! but! signore, you do not ask a man

what he will *do* with his money.

That is a personal matter.

And the Boss said: but what will you do?

You won't really need all that money

because you are all for the *confine*."

Canto 41

Perhaps someone who remembers movie scenes better than I do can cite here the scene in *Bonnie and Clyde* where Clyde loans his revolver to a farmer to shoot up a bank sign. The choked rage of the petty producer who cannot understand why his labor is unrewarded. Why won't the government *do* something?

Carrol



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