Pop Answers

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Sun Nov 14 13:50:59 PST 1999


Max Sawicky wrote:


>In summary, populists offer the following points
>of superiority relative to some would-be marxists:
>
>they do not cede monetary policy to elites;

What kind of political environment would it take to get your kind of guy running the Fed? Wouldn't it take a near-revolutionary state of mobilization?


>they do not oppose free trade with futile,
> imaginary internationalist rhetoric;

How about non-futile, non-imaginary, non-rhetorical internationalism (e.g., some actual support by the UAW for independent Mexican auto unions)?


>they do not fetishize "capital" in a way that
> narrows the working class;

This is unusually murky for you; what does this mean?


>they acknowledge the legitimate role of enterprise
> in a social economy;

This too. Social as in the German social market economy? Enterprises owned & controlled by whom?


>they recognize trade unions as works-in-progress,
> not things that are essentially this or that.

I'm no essentialist, so you must be talking about someone else.


>they are comfortable with a notion of class that
> encompasses race and gender, rather than
> being somehow co-equal with them;

What is a class relation that isn't also somehow raced and gendered? Haven't race and gender figured importantly - both historically and still today and probably tomorrow - in one's role in the labor market and one's access to property?


>they would rather err on the side of pragmatism
> than on the side of doctrinal purity.

Nothing doctrinal about pragmatism, for sure.

Doug



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