I think it is (unintentionally) sectarian: it implicitly assumes that a radical movement in the u.s. must be _either_ "anarchist" or "Marxist." That is clearly a delusional premise: neither 'ism' will ever have hegemony over the U.S. left. Debate over fundamental theory remains important, but cannot be conducted on the basis that hegemony will be achieved by any one theoretical current. For example: Graeber's definition of capitalism (as passed on to this list in a recent post) is (I think) totally wrong: it implies if you take it seriously that capitalism has been around for 5000 years. But I don't think debate will settle that question. Hence the debate must be carried in terms that allow for collective action by the two (or three or four) 'sides' to the debate.
Carrol
-----Original Message----- From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org] On Behalf Of Eric Beck Sent: Thursday, June 21, 2012 12:31 PM To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Angela Merkel: Most Dangerous Leader in the World
On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 11:12 AM, Angelus Novus
<fuerdenkommunismus at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> Which world leader poses the biggest threat to global order and
> prosperity?
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.
By the way, I very much enjoying the conversations about unions that are happening elsewhere on the Internet and that involve our moderator, both because they begin to address the economic more directly and because they have the potential to bypass some of the alleged antinomies that have plagued other recent debates (autonomy vs. state power, etc.). ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk