>"The People" though have no way of organizing to achieve their demands
>other than by the appeal to the state to exercise its police power to
>suppress certain practices (e.g., high interest rates, high
>transportation costs, etc etc). In other words, some form of
>authoritarian state is implicit in populist goals.
>
>This is crudely stated. Do you have any comment on it?
Well, I do. What about Seattle and what followed? Ain't we talking spontaneous networking in an unprecedented communications environment? Ain't we talking new modes of class composition, organisation and agency? Just as Lenin didn't predict, in and to the moment, the occurrence and power of Zetkin's Petrograd shinanigans and the revolutionary tumult to which it gave clarion voice, so did none of us predict Seattle's power and legacy.
Stuff's new, and the state has an inevitable legitimation problem on its hands all round (even if everyone's suddenly looking to the poor maligned thing for guidance and bailouts just now) - not just from the right.
I think.
Cheers, Rob.