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

[Gar Lipow]

On Fri, Sep 23, 2011 at 9:35 AM, c b <cb31450 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.
>
> ^^^^^
> CB: I admire your optimism and nice "the worse , the better"
> dialectic.  What a silver lining !
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> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>

Not really worse the better. The vitality of a left in preserving
capitalism does not mean that the absence of a left leaves anything
better. If capitalism destroys itself in the absence of a left the
odds are overwhelming that it would so in a way that takes the rest of
us with it. It would be the presence of a healthy left that would
provide an optimistic rather than pessimistic dialectic - preserving
capitalism in the short run but also serving as a threat to it that
might bring it down in long run.

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