Pop Answers

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Mon Nov 15 09:35:27 PST 1999


Max Sawicky wrote:


>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?
>
>mbs: Who knows? Are you making a general
>case against ambitious or far-reaching demands?

Not at all. My unspoken point was that getting the kinds of reforms (nonreformist ones, essentially) that you're talking about - interest rates low enough to tighten the labor market enough to change the balance of forces between K & L - would require a pretty substantial threat to bourgeois rule. In your pragmatism, I think you underestimate the importance of this.


>A demand can't be too radical and not radical
>enough at the same time. Which is it? If too
>radical, shouldn't you be working with me in
>the ADA?

Without the threat from folks further to the left of the ADA, the ADA is toothless. Left-liberals need wild-eyed radicals, so that they (you?) can look like the sensible alternative.


>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?
>
>mbs: workers v. capital, where race & gender do
>not play important roles (quite often, I would think,
>though not always).

Are you claiming that labor markets aren't race- and gender-segmented?

Doug



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list