Klein & radicalism

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Fri Apr 7 11:28:16 PDT 2000


At 01:16 PM 4/7/00 -0400, Doug wrote:
>Naomi Klein said on my radio show last night that over the last few
>weeks she's noticed that when she talks to student audiences, she's
>now getting the objection: "You keep talking about corporations. But
>isn't the real problem capitalism?" Things are happening out there...
>

That does not sound very encouraging at all. Corporations are real entities with names and addresses, endowed with material resources, whereas capitalism is well.... and abstraction, a heuristic model if you will. It is easy to challenge real life entities and demand they change their specific policies, e.g. allow workers' represenation on the board 9as many European corps do), stop union-busting and anti-labor practices here and abroad, pay better wages, stop discriminate against women & minorities etc.

But how in the world are you going fo fight "capitalism?" What are the specific demands? Directed to whom in particular?

Anti-capitalism, anarchy etc. are romantic attitudes that may look cool and help the bearer "get lucky" in the cafes of the Lower East Side - but otherwise offer very little in terms of concrete strategy and action.

wojtek



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