[lbo-talk] Michael Heinrich on Capitalism and the State

Eric Beck ersatzdog at gmail.com
Fri Sep 3 08:34:49 PDT 2010


On Thu, Sep 2, 2010 at 7:19 PM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:


> SA can read very well and he's the furthest thing from an asshole.

I know he's smart and that he can read, which is why his, and yours, unwillingness to on these questions is so annoying. Of course I can't spell out all the finer points of what I'm getting at in every email, so I use shorthand. I feel like I've elaborated enough on this list to at least get the benefit of the doubt and have it assumed I'm not a crypto-libertarian. But maybe you guys see it differently.

And I'm sorry for calling you an asshole, SA, though it should be said that, for me, calling someone an anarcho-capitalist and a Texas libertarian is almost as bad as calling them a cop, so it's not like I was totally unprovoked.


> And the point he made is the same I was trying to make. You really
> do come off that way sometimes.

Is it capitalist to point out that Keynesian arrangements depended on a centralized and nationalized workforce? I thought this was pretty standard commie/socialist analysis. Productivity deals would have been impossible to enforce without unions. Does it make me a libertarian to notice this? And am I really such a cretin for pointing out that contemporary calls for a return to those Keynesian arrangements would have the same effect today as they have had historically? The return of capital to safe, national forms has already brought about all sorts of popular nationalist idiocies. Keynesian regulations would only make it worse (though maybe more "rational").

Of course I'm not against unionization--I even belong to one--or even mediation or centralization. But I think it should be centralization on our terms, not theirs. Reregulation is their terms. Since SA is, as far as I can tell, something like a radical liberal, I can see why this would offend him. But Doug knows all this, so I'm not sure why he acts like what I say is so scandalous.



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