On Wed, 4 Jun 1997, Michael Perelman wrote: > The answer is that I would not even think of coming up with such a > program. I would devote my energies to reinvigorating the grass roots. > In the U.S., much the most progressive legislation in our history came > during the Nixon years. Did Nixon have an effective reformist program? > Of course not. People were in the streets. But Michael, that's a cheap way out of the question. I don't think any of us -- well maybe Max -- would rather be in Jospin's place than where we already are building grassroots movements. The question was, "Well, what do you expect?" You had bemoaned the fact that the "left" had won without any program and suggested that this might mean things will get worse. I really don't know what kind of a program you might have hoped for. If the new government passes a 35-hour workweek, fucks up the timetable for the Maastricht treaty, and stops privatizations, it will be (well I may be having a memory lapse and this is a bold thing to say but I'll say it) better than anything Mitterand did and he stayed in power for an awful long time. Of course Mitterand discredited "socialism" but then most social-democratic leaders discredit social democracy by the time they leave power. Saying that that makes a social- democratic victory depressing, as if it will make things worse, sort of has the ring of "first Hitler, then us...." > In some sense, we might excuse Clinton by this standard. Lacking strong > left pressure, he capitulates to the right. Were we doing our jobs > better, we might have something to be proud of coming out of the Nixon > years. We could excuse Clinton, or Bush, or Reagan.... who knows what any of them "really" wanted to do after they got elected? The point is that Maastricht is near death because of popular discontent, and the change in leadership reflects that (in part because Juppe was so relentless in not caving in). The bulwark of the neoliberal program is -- for now -- unable to survive popular discontent in France and and some major reforms are now on the table. That's nothing to be depressed about. For free baloney after the revolution, Tavis
