On Sep 29, 2010, at 7:08 PM, James Heartfield wrote:
> Doug: 'If you want to think of productive activity that occurs through corporations as done by people, fine - but why not the same for governments?' Yes, I suppose you could say that the $1 trillion the US spends on defence is activity, but productive? Hardly. And what of the $89 billion spent on the Troubled Asset Relief Program? Productive activity, or paying rich people to stay rich?
>
> Why is the left irrelevant? Because it confused capitalism's growing dependence on the state as some kind of social progress. That's the lesson of European socialism - but I guess it's one not learned in the US.
I could swear that most of the opposition to military spending in the U.S. has come from the left, including me. Much of the left also opposed the TARP - not me, as sucky as it was - though it's turning out not to have cost much money, actually. But social spending and infrastructure spending is humane and often productive. If you think I can't tell the difference, you haven't been paying attention.
The problem with these sorts of debates is that they occur on such a high level of abstraction that they just end up as a flinging of caricatures.
Doug