Can't say that it ever has, noper.
>The Sweezy argument is that, because of the advantages of bigness,
>corporations prove to be very effective long-run maximizers of elite
>property incomes. Their effectiveness is such that there tends to be more
>money at the top than those at the top can easily re-invest. As a result
>the masters of the universe seek "artificial" (non-free-market) ways to
>boost their ability to make more money from last year's income. These
>artifices include military spending, financial speculation, and corporate
>marketing to stimulate demand for the products sold by the corporations in
>one's portfolios. As corporate capital proceeds, these items all tend to
>grow along with it. Sound a bit more explanatorily powerful, Dick? I think
>so!
Yah. That's pretty much my training in soc of work and the economy: grounded Sweezy's work was a springboard for debates over how to theorize the more concrete organizational/occupational manifestations of what, in that literature, was called managerial capitalism and, later, multinational capitalism.
>The upshot of the latter view is that capitalism is irrational at its very
>core,
As I try to understand the Leninist view, though, it seems to me that they say the same thing. I must point out, though, that I've never read Lenin, only interpretations from the ComRods (I nub you guys!) and I hope I'm being fair to what they've said during these debates.
>as it requires immense amounts of social and ecological waste, all to
>prop up a ruling class that insists on always expanding the waste and
>irrationality, despite its immense and growing wealth and power. Capitalism
>does not and will not snuff itself out (at least not at the economic level).
>It can and must be replaced by democratic socialism.
Again, I've never gotten the impression from Carrol, Charles or Yoshie that this is so. I've observed what Doug has called Depressive Marxist glee when it looks like an economic crisis is imminent: it takes the form of a flurry of forwarded articles to this and other lists, the substance of which appear to indicate an intensification of crisis tendencies (e.g., Wall Streeters looking as if they might hurl themselves from buildings....)
Finally, I don't think my questions were addressed. What does it matter if you subscribe to FROP or Sweezy? Does it change the political goals one thinks we should pursue? It doesn't appear to me to have any import at all--from the perspective of someone who doesn't have much of a dog in this fight.
In the end, whether it's FROP or Sweezy or Doug or or or, does it make one more or less inclined to agree with Marx's letter to Arnold Ruge:
For even though the question "where from" presents no problems, the question "where to?" is a rich source of confusion....If we have no business with the construction of the future or with organizing it...there can still be no doubt about the task confronting us at present: the ruthless criticism of the existing order...
[W]e wish to influence our contemporaries [earlier he notes the importance of recognizing particular historical exigencies within each country that critical theory must attend to and take seriously]...The problem is how best to achieve this. In this context there are two incontestable facts. Both religion and politics are matters of the first importance in contemporary Germany. Our task must be to latch onto these as they are and not to oppose them with any ready-made system such as the _Voyage en Icarie_. [...] Just as religion [by which marx means theory, philosophy] is the table of contents of the theoretical struggles of mankind, so the political state enumerates its practical struggles. Thus the particular form and nature of the political state contains all social struggles, needs and truths within itself. It is therefore anything but beneath its dignity to make even the most specialized political problem--such as the distinction between the representative system and the Estates system--into an object of its criticism. For this problem only expresses at the political level the distinction between the rule of man and the rule of private property. Hence the critic must concern himself with these political questions [which the crude socialists find beneath their dignity]. By demonstrating the superiority of the representative system over the Estates system he will interest a great party in practice. By raising the representative system from its political form to a general one...he will force this party to transcend itself--for its victory is also its defeat.
Nothing prevents us...from taking sides in politics, i.e. from entering into real struggles and identifying ourselves with them. This does not mean that we shall confront the world with new doctrinaire principles and proclaim: Here is the truth, on your knees before it...We shall not say: Abandon your struggles, they are mere folly; let us provide you with the true campaign-slogans. Instead we shall show the world why it is struggling.... [...] Our programme must be: the reform of consciousness not through dogmas but by analyzing mystical consciousness obscure to itself, whether it appear in religious or political form. It will then become plain that the world has long since dreamed of something of which it needs only to become conscious for it to possess it in reality. It will then become plain that our task is not to draw a sharp mental line between past and future but to complete the thought of the past. Lastly, it will become plain that mankind will not begin any new work, but will consciously bring about the completion of its old work.
from Letters from the Franco-German Yearbooks--a reply to Ruge's claims about the futility of engaging in actually existing political struggles.
Kelley
(my dick was broken before I envied it)