[lbo-talk] competence, not ideology ... again

[SA]

Carrol Cox wrote:
> SA wrote:
>   
>> Meanwhile,
>> capitalism is flailing so egregiously
>>     
>
> How so? The world is a nasty place -- as everyone has known for many
> millenia. Slumps happen. They've happened before. There is no mass
> movement, and only in the presence of a mass movement does it make any
> sense at all to speak of the "failure" of capitalism as capitalism. A
> bit of fancy buzz about Marx here and there hardly adds up to a mass
> movement.
>
> Even in the worst of The Great Depression only a minority in the
> capitalist core thought of capitalism as failing; and part of that
> minority went right (Hitler, etc) rather than left, and most of those
> that went left gave their power away to politicians rather than massed
> in the streets, and those politicians gave them a weak-breweed Social
> Democracy which has been coming apart since 1974.
>
> Where's the evidence for _any_ threat whatever at the present time to
> capitalism as a system?
>   

Yes, that's exactly right. When I say "capitalism" is flailing 
egregiously, I mean that, simultaneously, (a) the economy is flailing 
egregiously and (b) a lot of people seem to be *perceiving* this to be 
evidence that capitalism as a system doesn't "work" well. I happen to 
think that in some ways this reflects a lot of muddled thinking, but 
it's a fact that a lot of people are thinking along those lines. This is 
important to the extent that people's perceptions of the world affect 
what they end up doing (like, for example, starting a mass movement). 
I'm not sure you agree with that premise, but that's what I mean.

SA