[lbo-talk] Class Power vs. Profit Maximization (wasTacticaldifferences at the top)

Yoshie Furuhashi critical.montages at gmail.com
Mon Aug 14 16:22:14 PDT 2006


On 8/14/06, Marvin Gandall <marvgandall at videotron.ca> wrote:
> Yoshie wrote:.
>
> > IMHO, Wall Street -- whether you mean the stock market in general or
> > investment bankers, hedge funds, mutual funds, pension funds, and
> > other fund managers, etc. in particular -- neither agitates for nor
> > agitates against any war.
> ==============================================
> I'm not aware of any unified voice through which the corporate sector
> actively and publicly "agitates" for or against wars, although there are
> many channels through which it more discretely communicates its views on
> these and all major issues to the political leadership in Washington. My
> impression, though, is that Wall Street's position on the war, broadly
> speaking, has been closer to that of the multilateralist, pro-European,
> northeastern, "moderate" wing of the Republican party associated with the
> Bush the Elder (and the Democrats) than to the socially conservative,
> militaristic, sunbelt Republican wing associated with Bush the Younger.

If you poll those who own or work Wall Street, it may be possible that a majority express a preference for a multilateralist, pro-European, "moderate" position. But if they do, they don't appear to have organized themselves into a formidable bloc to prompt the government to adopt it.


> In any case, this is tangential to the discussion we were having. I
> expressed what I think is a pretty commonplace view on the left that the
> purpose of US foreign policy is to secure resources and open markets for US
> corporations. This was in response to your question about what its interests
> were. For some reason, you didn't like my answer.

If securing oil and opening the market were the point, Washington would not have imposed crippling economic sanctions on Iraq or at least would have ended them before George W. Bush came into the White House, just to take one example.


> Your own answer seems to be that there is no design to US foreign policy;

The power elite do have conscious design, in the present case, the Project for the New American Century, a position held by people who -- correctly -- believe that multilateralism failed to secure consensus for continuing economic sanctions on Iraq: "The policy of "containment" of Saddam Hussein has been steadily eroding over the past several months. As recent events have demonstrated, we can no longer depend on our partners in the Gulf War coalition to continue to uphold the sanctions or to punish Saddam when he blocks or evades UN inspections" ("Letter to President Clinton on Iraq," 26 January 1998, <//www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm>). But those conscious designs don't seem to prioritize securing resources or opening markets.


> that it's architects just want to project power for power's sake - or, at
> best, to nebulously "hold on to class power", without defining the purpose
> to which that class power is being put.

Capitalism doesn't have any purpose, except M-C-M'. Its political expression may be P-W-P', P being political power and W being war (which is politics by other means). -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>



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