[lbo-talk] European cities...

Wojtek S wsoko52 at gmail.com
Thu Sep 30 18:53:38 PDT 2010


Re: "Shouldn't we say Abolish the government, close the banks, free movement for all migrants"

[WS:] Somalia accomplished that and it ain't pretty.

wojtek

On Thu, Sep 30, 2010 at 7:29 PM, James Heartfield <Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
> 'Most Americans are in the pockets of banks and corporations - one paycheck away from homelessness. So instead of risking their jobs and their way of life by barking at banks and corporations, they bark at safe targets - the government and the immigrants. It is relatively safe. And if some of them get really angry, they go postal.'
>
> Maybe I read it wrong, but anti-banker sentiment is quite strong, no?
>
> It is in the UK, and listening to Brian Lenihan in Ireland, and to looking at the French protestors, there, too.
>
> I see that there might be pitfalls in restricting the anger to banks not 'the capitalist system as a whole' - but I don't see how raging at the bank bailouts is like attacking immigrants, or indeed how railing at the government is like railing at immigrants.
>
> The government is the representative of the capitalist class as a whole, Engels said. It ought to be despised - it ought to be overthrown.
>
> The banks are not the totality of capitalism, but they are a part of capitalism, not equal to benighted and persecuted immigrants workers at all.
>
> Isn't the conceputal slippage that makes banks equivalent to government and it in turn equivalent to immigrants a peculiar aspect of the discourse here?
>
> Shouldn't we say Abolish the government, close the banks, free movement for all migrants.
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