[lbo-talk] Paul Craig Roberts

[Carl Remick]

>From: bhandari at berkeley.edu
>
>Carl, did just skim the piece but was getting the idea that Roberts isn't
>a Marxist critic of capitalism (commodity production for profit with
>privately owned means production used by wage laborers [which by the way I
>would define to include all kinds of labor arrangements]) but really ticked
>off that US firms have exported so much productive capital abroad under
>the pressure of financiers. It seems that all the elements are
>there--melancholy over loss of national power, singling out of the
>cosmopolitan financial fraction of the capitalist class, anger about
>foreigners' stealing jobs.
>Who exactly is promoting Roberts among the Left?
>If Lou Dobbs ever mentions the name Karl Marx or if his name appears on
>the Vdare site, will our work be done?
>Or given your skepticism of Marx, are we supposed to understand that you
>are criticizing Old Whiskers by showing that Roberts now positively
>invokes him?

Gee, Rakesh, don't forget I'm an old PR guy -- in headlining that post "Paul 
Craig Roberts endorses Marx," I was just engaging in a bit of hype to get 
folks to look at the piece.  Extremism in the pursuit of readership is no 
vice ;-)  As for PCR's leftward-ho navigation, you'll note that in citing 
PCR's past affiliations with the Reagan administration, Wall Street Journal 
and National Review, I said that PCR "has come a long way"; I did not say he 
had arrived.  Yes, there are whiffs of xenophobia, nationalism, etc. about 
PCR's piece.  I do not think he will be posting to Louis Proyect's list 
anytime soon.  But I'm amazed that such a onetime establishment stalwart 
could be so deeply disillusioned about the results of the Reagan Revolution 
and the US's degeneracy into an out-and-out imperialistic plutocracy.

Carl

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