> The central tendency of capital is to Soros' right - he's an outlier.
> How many other big American capitalists besides Soros think of
> themselves as social democrats (which is what his pal Anatole
> Kaletsky once told me)? Soros commands lots of respect on Wall Street
> as a brilliant speculator, but almost no one shares his politics.
Huh. I sort of had the idea that the politics of finance in general were to the left of capital's central tendency. Not left left, but Clinton left. For various reasons -- less labor-intensive, less vulnerable to international competition, less (directly) affected by many forms of regulation. More attuned to the needs of capital as a whole. Some superficial evidence that this is so from, for instance, comparison of Clinton and Bush's Treasury secretaries. And Wall Street skews Democratic in campaign donations, no?
(That's Thomas Ferguson's argument anyway. Maybe he's out of date.)
I am (obviously) on your side in the larger debate here. But, I'm a little uncomfortable with the idea that Soros' politics stem from personal eccentricity rather than his class position.
Josh