Corn fed empire

[JBrown72073 at cs.com]

>It totally cracked me up when I read it. It reminded me of this Trotskyist
>paper (that I used to sell door-to-door twenty years ago), which concluded
>EVERY article it ever printed with the above paragraph. Of course, fat
>wasn't always the problem....but whatever the problem was, "it would never
>be resolved until capitalism was overthrown." I objected again and again
>against this formulaic writing -- not to mention the rest of the formulaic
>writing which infected the paper -- but was simply dismissed as a bourgie.
>
>Joanna

The answer is 'smash reformism.'  Now, what was the question?  

I occasionally get leftists who tell me we can't have universal health care 
in the U.S. *until capitalism is overthrown.* I point out all the capitalist 
countries that have it (in the OECD it's Turkey, Mexico, and the U.S. which 
don't) then I brace for the argument that the banks and insurance companies 
here are all interlocked and you're really attacking big capital (a worthy 
response)... instead they mumble something about 'who wants to deal with 
western medicine anyway' and wander off.  Or they give the elitist line, 
Americans will never go for that, they're too brainwashed/stupid/bought off 
etc.  

Those who want health care, meanwhile--not just as a political theory but for 
themselves--perk up and ask good questions, happily unaware that there are 
unfulfilled historic preconditions.

Jenny Brown