At 19:29 23/10/99 +0000, Patrick wrote: >> From: Chris Burford <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >> What are the openings in the North therefore for reform of the >> international systems even if Patrick and his allies would denounce them as >> timid and reformist? >> Of the top of my head I can think of two: the consumer movement in the >> North, and the interests of capital. > >3: The coming crash? How inevitable and how big do you think that is going to be? My hunch is that the periphery is bearing the burden of the crisis and the centre does not need to contract much. Also service industries are still commodities and can go on circulating. There is such intense belief in the new means of communication that people will go on struggling to circulate goods and services even if capital is devalued by 50%. That is my hunch. Any credit crisis will be temporary. The dollar will still remain as the international reserve currency - world money. >The kind of dramatic power shift between >state and financial capital that seventy years ago led to the >semi-dissolution of JP Morgan's empire? What effect are you describing, and why should a power shift between state and financial capital in its own right be beneficial since the state will represent the dominant class interests behind it? If those remain finance capital then the state will merely shore its position up. Are you describing anything more than something like the enhanced role of the state in Japan's bank restructuring over the last year or so? Why would that lead to the end of the rudimentary institutions of global governance? > >> ... Therefore all the demands for boycotting the institutions of global >> governance rather than reforming them, will merely add to the balance of >> forces by which they are reformed. > >Chris, in your world-view, is there anything that doesn't, >dialectically to be sure, lead to ever-concentrating "finance >capital," and thus a world state, and thus gradualist socialism? There are many contradictions in the world. I have argued an analysis of the balance of forces. Why is your analysis different? >Is >there a counterfactual to be found here? A counterfactual is a replay of past history assuming only slight changes, like if the butterfly had not flapped its wings, in order to discuss the underlying forces (like if Hitler had been a succesful landscape painter). What period of history are you seeking to re-run and why? >> Rather than regretting the different perspective of progressives in the >> North and the South it would therefore be better to argue, including >> fiercely at times, about what the likely development of the reform agenda >> will be, and how different consituencies can be brought it to shape it in >> different ways. > >Ok, you've seen my JWSR paper on these various agenda options. Sorry, you will need to refocus me. JWSR stands for? Date? >What's >the next level of debate then? The SA left is going ahead in concrete >ways on debt repudiation, defunding the IMF/WB, no new WTO round, >capital controls, and a new "Africa Consensus" on people-centred >development. Your team? I have no team, in the sense that perhaps you do have one or are influential in one. But there are various politicised charities in the UK who want a bigger type of reform than just annulment of the debt. Nor are they any longer restricting themselves to calling for advantageous trade deals. My own view is that radical reform has to develop opportunities presented by less radical reform. I am not trying to persuade you not to campaign as effectively as you can, but I cannot see that third world countries have much leverage. What do you think progressives in first world countries should do? There is no social base in the UK for withdrawal from the IMF and World Bank. Are you suggesting that in the USA left wingers should unite with isolationist Republicans to pull the US out of these institutions? That would surely leave capitalism even more laissez faire than it is. Why would that be in the interests of the people of the world. You write as if the problem was policies of the IMF. These are not the fundamental problem. The fundamental problem is the inherently uneven workings of the world capitalist system. That will remain even if the IMF is abolished. Chris Burford London
