<html> <blockquote type=cite cite>Date: Tue, 9 Jan 2001 22:39:03 -0800 (PST) From: Dennis Robert Redmond <dredmond@efn.org> Subject: Re: Dude, Where's My Party?</blockquote> <blockquote type=cite cite>On Tue, 9 Jan 2001, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: > Cheer-leading the German Greens & East Asian keiretsu capitalism (at > the same time!) from the USA as you do, Dennis, makes even less </blockquote> <blockquote type=cite cite>Not cheerleading, just concrete analysis of what exists. Keiretsu capitalism is nasty, brutish, and horrid, but it works differently from US neoliberalism, </blockquote> .... Here we see one of the more pernicious effects of left "neoliberal" theory, the dichotomization with other, supposedly "better" regimes of capitalism.   <blockquote type=cite cite>and it does interesting, quasi-socialist things to underwrite the forces of production, which any Left alternative to the status quo has to take very seriously indeed.</blockquote> "Underwrite the forces of production".  Concrete analysis, indeed.  For whom and to what purpose?  The forces of production are not a neutral element. Sorry, Dennis, but this is the very definition of cheerleading.  After the collapse of Stalinism, we now live in an era where we are supposed to be cleaning house, not importing new monsters under the guise of 'socialism', or even 'elements of socialism'. One could just as easily cheerlead the Anglo-American regime of capitalism for its promotion of forms of individual autonomy and the distinction between civil society and the state, however limited this bourgeois form may be.  Both of these were great gains of the period of Anglo-American bourgeois revolution, ranging from the English Revolution to the US Civil War, which decisively broke the bonds of the feudal "great chain of being" in world history.  They also feature prominently in Marxs' vision of communist society, the latter in the abolition of the state itself. So, as part of humanitys' revolutionary heritage, they are certainly necessary elements of any socialist and communist society, in the form of social individuality.  In their present limited form, they (like Social Security and many other such necessary props for the capitalist system) can also be considered elements of the postcapitalist future.  But nobody on the left appears to be promoting American Individualism as a 'quasisocialist' element, why should it be any different for the keiretsu? That is, unless you follow Eduard Bernstein and current fashion.  By that logic, we could easily celebrate this kind of mass manufactured bourgeois individual as a harbinger of socialism.  But I hope not! -Brad Mayer Oakland, CA <blockquote type=cite cite>- -- Dennis </blockquote> /*********************************************************************** "Sure I was young and impulsive once--I wore every conceivable pin. Even went to Socialist meetings and learned all those old union hymns. Ah, but I've grown older and wiser, and that's why I'm turning you in. So Love Me, Love Me, Love Me--I'm A Liberal." <x-tab>        </x-tab><x-tab>        </x-tab><x-tab>        </x-tab><x-tab>        </x-tab>-Phil Ochs ************************************************************************/</html>