On 2011-07-18, at 10:46 AM, Wojtek S wrote:
> Marv: " It's curious to see Wojtek indicting as vulgar economic
> determinists precisely those who say the Obama administration could
> have taken a different course well within the constraints imposed on
> it by American capitalism."
>
> [WS:] The fact that it is well within the constraints imposed by
> American capitalism in general does not mean that it is within such
> constraint at any particular point in time. It might have been a
> possible course of action a quarter or a half a century ago, when
> capitalists still had to compromise with labor, but I do not think it
> is a possible course of action now, because the balance of power
> changed rather dramatically in favor of capitalists.
But I suggested that the 2008 election marked one of those "particular points in time" when the balance of power was shaken by the financial crisis, job losses, and falling home prices which seemed to many to portend the start of another Great Depression. The pressure for change was not only coming from below, from tens of millions of Americans who had been led to believe that the administration would act to end the crisis and deliver universal health care available in the other advanced capitalist countries. It was also coming, as in the 30's, from deep within elite circles, from those with experience in government and international financial institutions like Simon Johnson, William Black, Robert Reich, Paul Volcker, and Joseph Stiglitz who were calling for structural reform of the financial industry and other sectors which the Obama administration was not prepared to contemplate, in pursuit of what ultimately proved to be a disasterous political strategy.
It can only be inferred from your comments that you would characterize those above instead as political naifs lacking your more hard-headed appreciation of the power relations in modern US capitalism. And that you would have discouraged as equally utopian those groups and individuals who were demanding single payer health care or even a more limited "public option", the amendment of bankruptcy laws to facilitate mortgage default, aligning US labour law to that in Canada and elsewhere, directing fiscal stimulus at labour-intensive infrastructure projects, the end of the Bush tax cuts, the closure of Guantanamo, the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq and Afghanistan, etc. etc.
Where does that leave you, except steeped in a static pessimism? If these kinds of modest reforms are not longer possible under capitalism, what hope for more fundamental change and why bother with politics at all?