[lbo-talk] Why Richard Hofstadter Is Still Worth Reading butNotforthe Reasons the Critics Have in Mind

Yoshie Furuhashi critical.montages at gmail.com
Tue Oct 10 22:01:04 PDT 2006


On 10/10/06, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Oct 10, 2006, at 10:38 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:
>
> > I'm pretty pessimistic
> > about the probability of human survival or the achievement of
> > socialism
> > (the two are synonymous) -- but you are turning into a Richard II: Let
> > us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings.
>
> Actually I'm not pessimistic about human survival, just about
> socialist revolution, or even substantial social democracy, in the
> foreseeable future in the USA.

That's all the more reason not to dismiss a political movement that is not "really anti-capitalist" or suggest that a movement that is not "really anti-capitalist" is or will be necessarily anti-Semitic. That's like preemptive sectarianism, i.e., sectarianism against a movement that doesn't even exist.

While a rise of economic populism in the USA is highly unlikely at this point, it is not totally unthinkable. Suppose personal consumer debts and mortgages become finally unbearable sometime in the near future. Then, Americans might once again begin to think about the question of finance. If they do, their first thoughts about it will be probably very wrong, surely not "really anti-capitalist." Leftists will have to think about what to do with those first thoughts.

Beyond the USA, too, the notion that a state or movement that is not "really anti-capitalist" -- whatever being "really anti-capitalist" means -- is not worth defending is a self-defeating and self-marginalizing one. Thankfully, not many hold such a notion in Latin America, though there are some who do. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>



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