Revolutionary Defeatism

[joanna bujes]

At 11:08 PM 03/26/2003 -0500, you wrote:
> >US leftists, as far as I can see, are as sophisticated in
> >understanding capitalism as leftists in nations such as France and
> >Venezuela who are far better organized and more powerful than here.
> >I conclude that US leftists are lacking not in what Marx was good at
> >but in what Lenin excelled.
>
>I don't see it that way. On the U.S. left, broadly defined, there are
>a lot of delusions about the charms of petty capitalism - the problem
>is more one of scale rather than structure. The "corporation" is
>demonized with little understanding of what a corporation is, except
>in a very legalistic sense. So if we could have locally owned
>businesses and locally traded currencies, proprietorships rather than
>large firms, everything would be all right. Fantasies that some
>malignant neoplasm called finance has grown on a fundamentally
>virtuous system of production are rampant. There's little
>understanding of the class relations of capital or of the origins of
>profit or of finance as a system of power. I think that kind of
>thinking is much less prevalent in Western Europe or Latin America.

I agree with Doug. There's very, very little class consciousness in the 
USA. There is deep, deep shame at being working class. Add to this the most 
awesome commercial propaganda machine in the world and mix in a good dollop 
of racism. Ugly, ugly, ugly.

Joanna