On Dec 21, 2008, at 2:29 AM, Patrick Bond wrote:
> Doug Henwood wrote:
>> ... Patrick, if I were given to nattering on about
>> overaccumulation, the LA Times would never have asked me to do
>> this, and if by some weird chance they had, no one would read it.
>> You have to think about audience.
>
> And if six months ago, I'd have suggested raising the question of
> widespread economic crisis requiring nationalisation of a vast chunk
> of the US financial system, your answer would have been ditto on
> above, I'd guess. At what point can you, as a Marxist, proudly fly a
> red banner and not that limp capitalist-revival flag, when I suspect
> you also believe Keynesianism can't work?
I'll be very honest and say this: I have no idea of how to inject a Marxist program into American political discourse. And if I were, by some weird accident, made Secretary of the Treasury or chair of the Fed, I have no fucking idea what I'd do beyond a left Keynesian program. Even that is pushing the envelope. There is no movement that makes anything more radical than that thinkable, and uttering words that fall on unprepared, unreceptive ears is little better than a monologue designed to make the speaker feel righteous to no real political effect.
> So go back to that jerk's writings, like Radicals for Capitalism,
> and find some quote about deregulating Wall Street, delegitimise
> him, and end the damn hegemony. You treated him with kid gloves, Doug.
It's complicated by the fact that I know him and like him, so I didn't want to get mean. But that really wasn't the way this thing is structured. I was supposed to answer questions they asked, and respond to what he wrote, in 500-word bites.
You can't argue with a libertarian on these terms anyway. They'll always say that state intervention is the problem, and that deregulation with a safety net is a serious problem. He wants no safety net. He thinks deflation can be ok.
> That's my point. They didn't do the devalorisation of productive
> capital plus restructuring of social relations, and at the global
> scale, that WWII and McCarthyism allowed for last time around. So
> Keynesian remedies like 0% interest rates is just pushing on a string.
>>
Would you please explain just how things are so terrible in Japan?
Doug