[lbo-talk] Donald Sassoon interviews Marx

Michael Hoover hooverm at scc-fl.edu
Sat May 6 18:24:20 PDT 2006



>>> jaccuse at gmail.com 05/06/06 1:11 PM >>>
DS No one doubts your integrity. It is your analysis which is questionable. If democratic governments can be a threat to the bourgeoisie, then it is surely wrong to say, as you wrote in the Manifesto, that the "executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie."

KM Well, was I that much off the mark? Is it not the case that all governments are constrained by capitalism's own structures? That, when all is said and done, they are forced to do all they can to ensure its profitability, train its workforce, repair its failures, and mop up the debris it excretes on the way? And they all do it, all slaves to the imperatives of capitalism: the left and the right and the middle and the socialists and fascists and liberals and greens. Once in power they must keep the show on the road. If the show runs well, then they tax and spend and redistribute this and that and help the poor and the sick just as the Victorians did. When the profits roll in they bask in morality and ethics. When profits decline and the economy enters into one of the economic cycles I had predicted, philanthropy is discarded like an ageing mistress. Then your good bourgeois discovers that you cannot tax and spend, that the unemployed are scroungers, that public medicine costs too much, that single mothers are feckless. The conscience of the bourgeoisie is closely wired to the vicissitudes of the stock exchange. <<<<<>>>>>

this guy is clearly an imposter, having chanelled km a number of times, i can say with much confidence that he would have answered above question like this: you - and too many others - have, rather unfortunately, misinterpreted the line that you quote, my pal fred and i were pointing out the importance of the executive - as in monarch, president, prime minister - in sustaining capitalist relations...you see, bourgeois government is not a monolith, the legislature is, in fact, an arena of class struggle...toodles (he always signs off like that)... mh

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