> The falling rate of profit and liberation movements here and abroad
> scared the pants off capital. It correctly perceived a significant
> loss of its political and economic grip. This had to be reversed by
> any means necessary: police action, law, propaganda, education,
> industrial technology, general power of the purse, national and
> local control of government, etc.
It would be nice if a falling rate of profit could be neatly correlated with the political developments you mention, and if we could get a clear indication of when the "rate of profit" is rising and falling. Then an awful lot of what happens in the political world would become crystal clear. I'm afraid though, that these "ifs" are a case of "if we had ham, we could have ham and eggs, if we had eggs." But perhaps I'm being too skeptical (I often am).
> I'm not saying much that you already don't know. It's just a
> reminder that right wing forces put in motion decades ago have to be
> dealt with. That's our political challenge.
That's a good part of it. But how to meet it? One thing we need badly, IMHO, is a new vision of where we should be going that will win agreement from a broad swath of the working class. "Socialism" is, unfortunately, no longer a useful word in this country; I don't mind using it myself, and I'd like to keep the historical continuity with the great movement of the past, but as a name for what we are fighting for it's pretty much dead at this point. The old SDS phrase "participation in the decisions which affect our lives" is much too abstract to arouse a desire to struggle in the masses, but it points in the right direction. At any rate, we need a lot of work on "the vision thing."
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ A gentleman haranguing on the perfection of our law, and that it was equally open to the poor and the rich, was answered by another, 'So is the London Tavern.' -- "Tom Paine's Jests..." (1794); also attr. to John Horne Tooke (1736-1812) by Hazlitt