What I find striking is the speed at which a fair few on the left rush to the defense of the status quo. Isn't the whole point of being a leftist figuring out what viable alternatives there are?
Incidentally:
By defending the present set-up one is in effect defending horrendous injustice; torture, mass murder, the destruction of homes and personal property, the destruction of the environment...to site a few examples. Besides, this situation can hardly either be considered a "viable alternative" for most people on the planet--it's an alternative that's killing them. At any rate, "pragmatists" and "realists" need to own up to these facts rather than hypocritically try to bury them as they generally do.
You can't ask for a magic bullet: its only through organized and intelligent experimentation that alternative may be found; no one can say in advance, beyond general principles, what is going to work and what isn't in a giving situation. The fact that such a truism needs to be mentioned is illustrative of just how divorced from the world of fact much of the left is.
> Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2008 13:57:57 -0700
> From: dustinrr7 at yahoo.com
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Liza Featherstone on SBUX
>
> Well it can theoretically can't it? And anyways what's the viable alternative?
>
>
> --- On Thu, 10/30/08, Dwayne Monroe <dwayne.monroe at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> >
> > It brings to mind something Leo Panitch said during your
> > 10/4/08
> > interview with him and Sam Gindon (paraphrasing): 'one
> > of the
> > paradoxes of the mainstream left is its insistence that
> > capitalism can
> > be made to work for the poor. '
> >
> >> ___________________________________
> > http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
>
>
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