[lbo-talk] Angela Merkel: Most Dangerous Leader in the World

c b cb31450 at gmail.com
Thu Jun 21 13:38:23 PDT 2012


Eric Beck

Right. All the contradictions of the current conjuncture are unresolved because of Angela Merkel.

So anarchists are accused of emphasizing the state/politics too much, but almost every socialist/Marxist response to the current crises is like the one in this article (less stupid perhaps, but not qualitatively different): largely finding the crises' sources in myopic state policies and their solutions in technocratic political rearrangements. Which for the most part is fine; I'm with Marx: "Every class struggle is a political struggle." But you can't then turn around and accuse anarchists of stupidly stressing the state.

^^^^^^^ CB: That's an interesting take, Eric. I think Lenin said politics is concentrated economics, too. Also, Merkel is sort of playing the CEO of the state as Executive Committee of the ruling class , to paraphrase the Manifesto's image.  Merkel is acting as head banker, I believe, which puts her more over in "economics".

But I agree with you in general that lefts, Marxist/Communist and anarchist, should not buy in so much to the monopoly media meme that it is state fiscal and monetary policies that are the cause of capitalist crises. It's the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall; and "[t]he ultimate cause of all real crises is always the poverty and restricted consumption of the masses" (Capital III, 528, ). It is the capitalist system's inherent tendencies not state policy that cause crises.

China may be demonstrating that with Marxists controlling state policy the tendency to crisis can be ameliorated.



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