[lbo-talk] They're teaching The Wire at Harvard

[c b]

"The social machine's limit is not attrition, but rather its
misfirings; it can operate only by fits and starts, by grinding and
breaking down, in spasms of minor explosions. The dysfunctions are an
essential element of its very ability to function, which is not the
least important aspect of the system of cruelty. The death of a social
machine has never been heralded by a disharmony or a dysfunction; on
the contrary, social machines make a habit of feeding on the
contradictions they give rise to, on the crises they provoke, on the
anxieties they engender, and on the infernal operations they
regenerate. Capitalism has learned this, and has ceased doubting
itself, while even socialists have abandoned belief in the possibility
of capitalism's natural death by attrition. No one has ever died from
contradictions. And the more it breaks down, the more it
schizophrenizes, the better it works, the American way."

^^^^
CB:[ I'm stealing this from Eric to comment on the other thread now going on.]

 I wonder if this stays within the sociological tradition of
functionalism, i.e. a sophisticated functionalism. Social
functionalism is built on a metaphor to physiological structural
functionalism.   Organisms all have to have the ability to heal
themselves from disease since into to every life a little rain must
fall. Our bodies have immune systems and the ability to recover from
sickness.  Similarly with social "organisms": they have defense
mechanisms. But no organism, physical or social, is immortal.

The slave mode of production existed for thousands of years. Feudalism
lasted for a thousand. Capitalism has existed 500 or so, and the
beginnings of its replacement have already started to appear in the
last century.  Declarations (not by Eric) of the permanent end of
capitalism's actual replacement seriously lack historical sense of
proportion. Capitalism is very young as modes of production go.  It is
an unreasonable and unwarranted to leap from the fact that capitalism
has been able to force socialism into retreat for a couple of decades
to the conclusion that capitalism is now the eternal and permanent
human mode of production.  It cannot be concluded ,even, from these
retreats that socialism will not revive and make a come back within
the next decade or two.

 Thirty-five years ago, the historical record and trend was of a
steady growth of socialist , socialist oriented and non-aligned,
liberated/former colonial nations.  The most popular American
economics textbook declared the US a "mixed economy".  For the last
several decades, the capitalist ruling class has mounted  successful
counter-revolution and counter-reform. Again , it is historically
nearsighted - lacking in sense of proportion , sort of left American
presentism - to conclude from this ebb in the historical ebb and flow
-  that the Communist movement is somehow permanently defeated
(????!!!).  On the scale of history, it's just getting started.

 The bourgeoisie don't even think that. Otherwise , the New York Times
wouldn't dedicate so much ink to slandering the Venezuelan reforms nor
would the right-wing accuse Obama of being a socialist.