On Oct 8, 2008, at 11:22 AM, Doug Henwood wrote
> On Oct 8, 2008, at 11:09 AM, Lenin's Tomb wrote:
>> ...This has been a massive expropriation, a
>> redistribution of wealth from the working class to the rich.
> ...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?...
Those whose intellectual tradition includes revolutionary Marxism will
recall that in 1914, while the Kautskys and Guesdes were moaning about
how defeat would be so terrible for "their" national working class
that the war had to be accepted, and that it would be irresponsible to
invoke some "better" way to protect the people "with no actual chance
of adoption," the tiny minority of Luxemburgs and Trotskys Just Said
No. Lenin was so extreme in his vocabulary that he described the
Opposition position as "Revolutionary Defeatism." Military defeat (or
financial collapse), even if made more likely by workingclass
opposition, would always be less bad than capitalist military victory
(or capitalist rehabilitation of the giant banks).
>
>> I'm not sure what 'populist' means in this context either.
> It means vague appeals to The People as somehow authentic...
You will find nothing of the sort from Ralph Nader, (the candidate Doug slanders as a Populist as freely as the Liberals slander Huey Long) while the defenders of the giveaway--exemplified last night by Oblablabla and McNothing--spew vague appeals to "The People" all over the airwaves and internet.
And, by the way, the Dumbocrats had the votes to insist on such "better" measures (measures they pretend to favor) as emergency aid to cities and states, prescribing bankruptcy rewriting of defaulting home mortgages, insisting on an equity stake in return for any emergency loans to failing banks, extending unemployment insurance, etc. Of course they did nothing of the sort.
And beyond all that, if the crisis were as terribly threatening as Doug, Bush, Paulson, Pelosi, Frank, et. al., would portray it, the obvious first step would be to have the incompetent lame-duck Cheney/ Bush administration resign immediately (like Chamberlain in 1940) and replace it with a transitional government headed by some capitalist national figure of unquestioned stature who had seen the crisis coming years ahead and warned vehemently against it. Of course, nobody even suggested that.
Shane Mage
"This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire, kindling in measures and going out in measures."
Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 30