[lbo-talk] Wherein Krugman laments his cribbing of Henwood has come to naught

[Gar Lipow]

You left out the most important thing - the existence of left mass
movement with specific demands. Without that no amount of crisis will
drive the system to adapt even mildly left solutions. If faced with a
truly radical left mass  movement with real power, even a mild crisis
could be used to extract some concessions from the ruling class. when
Doug describes the degeneracy or decadence of our ruling class or
power elite, I think an argument could be made that a lot of what they
do today they always would have done in the absence  of any left
threat, and that to the extent they have changed goal and character,
it is due to too long without a threat from the left.  I'm guess I"m
making  an argument that a strong and vibrant left movement plays an
essential role in capitalism.and is part of the capitalist system.
When capitalism defeats the left to the point that(as in the U.S)
there is not left but only leftists, or as in Europe a left exists,
but one so weak it can't do much more than leftists in the U.S. it
destroys something vital to its own long term survival.

On Thu, Sep 22, 2011 at 7:04 PM, Marv Gandall <marvgand at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2011-09-22, at 5:49 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:
>
>> Yes. But I don't admit that the poor policies come from lack of intelligence. They have _some_ sort of material base, and I have seen no real efforts to identify that base. Some sort of systematic pressure on capitalist action and thought is operating. (Nor do I admit it is because of the Yahoos. There is no real opposition to the Yahoos -- and that needs explanation. I have seen none.
>
>
> There is not the same urgency to resuscitate and reform the system as there was in the 30's, because the the economic and political crisis, while provoking great anxiety, has to date not been as severe as the Great Depression, and the capitalists are still hoping to somehow muddle through.
>
> If official unemployment rises to 25% from 9%, if 50% rather than less than 1% of banks fail, if the economy contracts by 25% after recovering from a less than 5% fall, if prices drop by 25% rather than remaining stable, if the stock market falls by 90%, if there is a wave of bankruptcies by today's cash-rich corporations, if a resulting movement of the unemployed and an organized anticapitalist left begin to grow, etc. etc., then you will have the material base for more radical action by the system to save itself.
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