-----Original Message----- From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org] On Behalf Of // ravi Sent: Sunday, November 13, 2011 10:13 AM To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] too cool for jazz hands
Great stuff below, and a continuation of Mark Ames's rant about that Jon Stewart rally: http://l.ravi.be/gitzkJ.
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I couldn't read all the way through the text at that web site -- trying to stay close enough to the screen to decipher that font was giving me a neck ache. But I want to make again my repeated complaint at one idea: "how it happened that in the depths of America's decline."
This myth of "America's decline" stems from a profoundly false conception of the nature of capitalism. The tributary empires of the past did decline and fall. But capitalist "empires" are different in fundamental ways. There is also always a bit of naivety involved: it is assumed that "America" (a label that covers some very different elements) has tried to "serve its people" and the present economic crisis and the relative immiseration of parts of the populace represents a failure of some kind. That is nonsense. Only if the domination of the capitalist class _and_ of capitalism itself is threatened can it be said that "America" is in decline. It is truer than ever that the working class when it knows itself knows no national boundaries. The idea that America is in decline assumes an identity of interests between the working class and the capitalist class, an identity the name of which is America.
Carrol