Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> >andie nachgeborenen wrote:
> >
> >>NB, have people noticed that this is a case for relative autonomy.
> >>Despite the importance of oil in this equation, the war and the US
> >>hegemonic drive is decidedly NOT reflecting the wishes or interests
> >>of the big bourgeoisie. This is state-driven, primarily.
> >
>
I believe my last related post was one arguing that we should back off, at least temporarily, at efforts to _explain_ what is happening. I reproduce the entire post here:
*****
Subject: Re: Note to Doug re Powell
Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2003 17:45:12 -0600
Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> loupaulsen at attbi.com wrote:
>
> >Doug, remember last week or so Powell was saying that it was pretty certain
> >they would get the war resolution through the Security Council, and you
> >asked "would Powell say that if it wasn't true?"
>
> Yeah, I remember, and I'm glad it's looking like he was wrong. But
> they must have known this at the time, so I still don't understand
> why he'd say something with confidence that wouldn't work out a week
> later. Was it part of the sales effort, or are they thoroughly
> self-deluded?
I think all leading bureaucrats (state and corporate, and probably NGOs) are _always_, to some extent, self-deluded. This explains (for example)the occasionally _really_disastrous failure of safety in mines, automobile design, space flights, etc., or Enron type collapses(thinking they will somehow find a way out of the hole they are digging), lunatic military decisions (the battles of the Somme and of Verdun), etc. Bureaucracies have to operate by predicting the future -- and a large proportion of such predictions are always wrong, some disastrously so.
That's why my favorite quotation is not from Marx or Lenin but from John Adams (quoted by Pound): Never trust the english government to act in its own interests. *****
Yoshie responds to Justin & Doug:
> If the big bourgeoisie in the USA are unhappy with the war on Iraq,
> why have they not done more to pull the plug?
>
What Justin calls "state driven" policy occurs, I suspect, under several conditions, but one set of such conditions is when the Capitalist Class are, as individuals, strongly divided. (Note: _As Individuals_: I am not implying the kind of deep divisions or contradictions within a ruling class that in any way threaten its capacity to rule _as a class_.) I don't think capitalists have any coherent position on the Iraq War; hence, for example, the lukewarm support in some media, the lukewarm opposition in others, and the plain confusion in some.
They may be more or less unhappy, even (as in the BW piece) seriously concerned: but I don't think at present u.s. capitalists on the whole are capable of imagining a really serious threat to either class hegemony or u.s. imperialist hegemony. Hence (as is sometimes officially the case on votes in a Parliament) they are relieved of (or free from) any class discipline and are simply responding as individuals. Hence no pulling of the plug.
If the War comes off, and if the resulting long-term occupation of Iraq begins to generate real and visible threats (as the Vietnam War did), then we will see stronger attempts at a coherent response.
Carrol
> Yoshie