----- Original Message ----- From: "Carrol Cox" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> I agree with Ian, but he does not go far enough. > > You _start_ by trying to imagine the social context in which any of this > might happen -- which is _not_ the social context in which we now live. ================ Well I'd start with asking what the workers etc.want that they don't have with regards to health care, access to education and the like and aks them to imagine the kind of social institutions etc. *they* think would be needed to achieve those goals not only for themselves but for their neighbors, fellow citizens and then go into the institutional barriers, identifiable groups that have an interest in blocking such goals from being achieved and let them keep talking and asking questions. > > Marx & Engels contributed essentially _nothing_ to the movements of the > 1840s; rather, those movements constituted the framework within which > M&E could (a) begin to work out what they wanted to say and (b) find and > audience which would listen to them. Talk about socialism now, > similarly, will contribute little or nothing to the appearance of a > context in which anyone than other socialists will be in the least > interested in hearing about socialism. > > A response I just made to Ian on lob-talk may be relevant here. The > context was a discussion of the relevance or non-relevance of contesting > state power, but I think it also applies to thinking about articulating > new views of the economy. > > ------ > Ian wrote: > > > Right now, and for a while, we need to *create* our own powers, skills > > etc. of self governance at a non-state level of organizing --workers have > > no country and all that. > > Of course, and we can only do that by action on the terrain of some > particular state. In fact, that education and that creation can only > occur within the context of struggle against state power. ================== I think we need to displace state-centric discourse/analysis/communication with class-centric d/a/c. Global class compositionality has changed quite a bit in the past decade and state-centric IPE & IR misses alot of those changes. Focusing on the state at this conjuncture lets a boatload of agents/institutions that are the source of many fetters we wnat to eliminate/transform off the hook. As Utah Phillips says, these people have names and addresses, let's talk about them rather than the usual suspects. At this conjunture, too many states do what they do because they've been captured by factions of classes that have rendered the party/state distinction moot. I'm not sure that creating yet more parties to contest the current parties across the globe will not recreate the very problems that we already have. On this score I don't think I'm too far from a problem James Madison was talking about a long time ago, but this may be because I've read too much into Charles Tilly for my own good. Ian
