(p)opulism

[Justin Schwartz]

Doug, you are in many ways the model of what J C and I have been talking 
about, presenting Marxist ideas in a plain, natural, American idiom. So I 
guess it doesn't have to be "either-or"--your own example shows that it 
doesn't. That's really the only point here. No one here, I think, shares any 
nostalgia for a Jeffersonian era of yeoman farmers and small producers. 
--jks


>J Cullen wrote:
>
>>However I agree that class analysis is most usefully presented in
>>American tones rather than German or Russian ones. You hear a lot of
>>anti-corporate sentiment among working-class people, and even the
>>Pope warns about the dangers of globalization, but you just don't
>>win over many of them by longing for the "good old days" of the
>>Comintern.
>
>Does it have to be an either/or thing like this? A lot of anti-corp
>sentiment is about the defense of or nostalgia for small producers -
>it's not necessarily about workers. It's a fantasy to think we could
>go back to small producers in any significant way - the computer I'm
>typing on, to pick a very immediate example, wouldn't exist if we
>were relying on artisanal labor. (Software, maybe; hardware, no.)
>Sure, the Comintern is dead, but so are the material bases of
>populism. So the question is how to get popular control over the
>behemoths.
>
>Doug

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