On Sat, Aug 25, 2001 at 09:17:57AM -0400, Doug Henwood wrote:
> Lawrence wrote:
>
> >From: "Doug Henwood" <dhenwood at panix.com>
> >> By the way, I am not now, nor have I ever been, a populist.
> >
> >Is that because of the threat the majority constantly poses, in any society,
> >to the civil rights of minorities, or for some other reason?
>
> I'm no scholar of populism, but it's mainly struck me as deeply petty
> bourgeois politics - not against capitalists, just big capitalists;
> not against money, just big money; not against a system of private
> property enforced by money, but just for easy credit. Sometimes it's
> pro-worker, sometimes it's not; and it's often xenophobic and
> anti-urban. It denounces finance, without noticing the connections of
> finance to ownership, or the fact that the whole end of capitalist
> production is not the satisfaction of needs or the making of neat
> things, but the accumulation of capital. It's a shallow form of class
> politics that can often see poor people as being just as parasitic on
> virtuous producers as Jewish bankers in New York.
>
> Doug
-- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu