Jeffrey Fisher wrote:
>
>
> Agreed, that's an impossible amount of work. But it does go to Doug's point
> about any new publication: you really do want the money to (have the staff
> to) edit properly. It's not about how Jeff St. Clair is falling down on the
> job so much as that he needs support. IMO.
[NOTE: My perspective is always from the point of view of organizing a non-electoral mass movement on the left. That is not the only possible perspective, obviously, but just about _all_ my posts reflect that and should be read accordingly.]
This focus on proper editing of an adequately financed publication explains my indifference to this whole thread on a left FT -- it can't exist. There will _never_ be a left periodical that is andequately financed to edit this carefully (certainly if the period is a day, week, or month; for the most part if it is a quarterly). I believe at one time (and perhaps still) the CPUSA had sufficient funds for this purpose, and if a left party as large as the CP at its peak (or financed by outside funds fromCuba or Venezuela) comes into existence, it might be possible. But under present political conditions I believe the image you and Doug have been developing would be a criminal waste of left resources -- so serious a waste that I could no longer see its producers as a serious part of a potential "Left."
Incidentally, those who actually need the kind of information BW or FT or the Economist provide (leftist writers writing, mostly unpaid, for other leftists) can get it from those periodicals, and the rest of us have no need for (can have no use of) such fine-grained economic information.
Under the conditions in which an "alternative economist" could be published probably no one would need it.
Carrol