> There's nothing intrinsically progressive about a nationalization, of
> course, but it is rich with potential.
Whether we are looking at wholesale nationalisation of the banking sector for a prolonged period is a debatable point, and probably contingent on the fate of the economy. That aside, I agree that nationalisation is rich with potential, but then for us to have a chance to do anything with it, we have to relate to it properly in the first place. This is where I am unconvinced by your next argument, viz.:
> And as for this expropriation, what's your alternative? Let it all fall
> down? Invoke some "better" bailout with no actual chance of adoption?
> Dismiss the problem as "their" crisis, and not "ours"? What?
>
Minor point first: I lack your particular expertise, of course, but I have to say I'm deeply sceptical that this bail-out is actually going to prevent it all from falling down. I'm not even certain that this was the point: the point, in part, seems to have been to hand more power to the executive (which goal partially failed), to relieve economically strong (and politically powerful) investment banks of 'toxic' debt by socialising it, while apparently allowing the remainder of the financial system to tank, and to inject liquidity by giving banks more money to lend to one another (the efficacy of which seems dubious). I am open to correction on all of this, and it is not central to my argument. Larger point: in truth, practically anything we suggest stands little chance of actual adoption short of a serious transformation in the political landscape. But being aware of that doesn't stop us from suggesting things all the time - Stop the War, for instance. We raise demands not to address the political class, who don't listen to us and aren't our friends and allies, but to intervene in a political issue and help shape the mood that exists around it, hopefully in a way that leaves people sympathetic to our ideas. Instead of rejecting public opinion as confused etc, we ought to be trying to build on the perfectly valid resentment and frustration of most working class Americans precisely by trying to create a political subjectivity around concrete demands.
The fact that some of the 'progressive' critique of the bail-out has given way to 'crankery' is hardly unexpected: Kucinich et al are, as a rule, a pretty random bunch. And they are, heaven help them, American liberals. But that doesn't stop *us* from trying to formulate a much more consistent critique of the proposals and raising an alternative, even if only to demonstrate that the expropriation is not inevitable but is a result of political will. Where the left-liberals are in a stronger position is where they try to address the fundamentals of the problem in a surprisingly (if nebulously) class conscious fashion. By clearly raising the language of 'class warfare', incidentally, they clearly undercut any idea that the state's proposed buy-up of bad debts is really some form of 'socialism': one of the creepier memes to come out of the current debate, next to that which holds the profligate poor responsible for the calamity. Kucinich proposes a bail-out of the poor, to defend jobs and homes. This, it seems to me, is a reasonable basis for a social-democratic alternative, and one that could galvanise a mass constituency. And that is what the Left should be doing. It should not subscribe to a version of 'political realism' that involves coat-tailing the neoconservative right and liberal centre, on the grounds that we are far too inadequate to have ideas of our own that we are prepared to argue for.