Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
>
> It would be as difficult to get union density back up to the 1953
> level, bring back the GINI index to the 1968 level, etc. as to obtain
> what we should have.
I picked up on the structure of argument here from something Paul Sweezy wrote several decades ago, referring to some proposed reform (I forget the specific reform at issue). _If_, he said, the working class were sufficiently powerful to achieve _that_, it would be sufficently powerful to make a revolution.
It is surprising how many of the ideas that pop around in liberal (and some left) circuits are subject to this critique or some form of it.
Take the proposal to change the basis of representation in the Senate. If we were powerful enough to do that there would be no need to do that. I think this also applies to various proposals to control campaign financing.
(Power here of course refers to both its objective and subjective elements.)
There may be (probably are) conditions in which it makes sense for a growing left to demand reforms that cannot be won without fundamental social changes, but those conditions cannot even be recognized by leftists who do not first recognize what I privately call The Sweezy Principle. (Doubtless it is expressed someplace in the works of every serious left thinker or leader.)
Carrol