Somebody Somebody wrote:
>
> Eric Beck: Since I don't understand it and won't bother to learn it, it is
> abstract, unknowable, parasitic.
>
> Somebody: Well, that's just the problem now, isn't it? Even if every member of this mailing list took it upon themselves to understand our financial system, it'd still remain far too arcane to be intelligible by anything approaching the number of people needed for a sizable left. Isn't that why anti-Semitism was so appealing in the 20th century? It put a face everyone could understand on the bankers. It created a compelling narrative about the concrete individuals and conspiracies purported to lie behind financial crises.
>
> Frankly, the truth is far too complex to ever provide fodder for revolution makers. The best you can hope for is to pin the blame on their political leaders,
Read Doug's post & reference to his own book. He is about 2/3s right. The financial system is not all that obscure, and his book does a pretty good job of making it clear.
So (to use the Kautsky/Lenin categorization) it can be made clear to workers (at any level of education) at the level of propaganda, but it is useless at the level of agitation. So Doug's personal pique is understandable but aimed in the wrong direction. Probably quite a few leftists have 'taken' it in; what is lacking is not their fault: there is no mass movement within which larger circles can be 'educated.' This is my old point: there are plenty of leftists but there is no left, and the rise of a (coherent) left depends on contingencies beyond our control. Doug's book may have an impact yet. I wish we had had it in the '60s and early '70s.
Carrol
Carrol