"Marx unfortunately didn't understand the prisoners' dilemma game, and thought solidarity would grow monotonically, while capitalist accumulation would run into increasing difficulties and eventually grind to a halt. The reality seems to be the opposite.
I frankly don't know what to do about this problem; I hope some one else does."
Jon, thanks for your thoughtful and responsible responses to my lame efforts at finding positives in negative-appearing stuff, or trying to approach history as an unfolding complex process that seems to be in broad conformity with Marx. There have been past solidarities that produced big differences in the quality of life of the toiling classes (worldwide), but never without immense sacrifices. There may be a hiatus at this time in the richer capitalist countries, but I can't imagine why there won't be future working class solidarities that run in tandem with future capitalist crises. These will require great sacrifices and possibly produce a chaos that most of us are reluctant to anticipate. I don't pretend to understand this in its details, so it's probably an article of faith in some general historical trend, hopefully aided by a limited knowledge of the real world. Whatever, it helps keep me sane.
But to the extent my sense of things is true, there's reason for organizing whatever resistance is possible right now, studying its ways and means, and hopefully pass a contribution on to future generations.
Bob Mast -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20040327/e8ebc317/attachment.htm>