Dionne is a horse's ass but he addresses a question that I raised in the Doug Henwood/David Harvey/Mark Weisbrot panel discussion at the Left Forum. Why does the ruling class in the USA seem so incapable of acting in its own class interests?
------- I watche the link posted the other day. At the end it breaks up into a rather stupid, but typical left eats itself argument between member of the audience. http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2011/04/04/left-forum-2011-part-three/ My tentative answer is they have become even more sociopathic than the street gangs who mirror their activities. This relationship between the top and bottom is beautifully illustrated in The Wire, which I've been watching over at Joanna B's place. I think Harvey lives in Baltimore. It would be interesting to get his comment on The Wire and its depiction of the city. For those who haven't seen it, it is basically a study in urban geography and the relationships between the police, city hall, the unions, developers, schools, prisons, etc.which are all both fantastically fucked up and with a few trying to do the right thing and failing. The two central themes follow the consequences of the war on drugs combined with no child left behind, along with the destruction of the unions and the once upon a time era of much greater social stability, i.e the post-war era. What's going on at the more abstract level are the results of artifically imposed regimes of scarcity so that everybody is fighting over their straps while the top horde and misuse their wealth outside any socially redeeming purpose that might address the society's needs. I think you could set up a prety cool radical sociology course with The Wire as an empirical study and Harvey's Engima as the analysis. I haven't read Engima, so I am assuming it covers the material Harvey does in his lectures like the ones I saw at UCB last year and his series on an interpretation of Capital. We in the US are not going to get a better ruling class no matter what happens, unless we fight back much in the manner of what's going on in Egypt. And even that doesn't seem very promising as the weeks drag on. Capital can move to too many other regions to keep its profits flowing, while we tear each other apart. I posted this on LBO the other day, but it seems relevant to this question: ``Part of that-part of that message is that the biggest tax havens in the world are not so much these little islands, but big, rich countries. The United Kingdom, my country, is one of the world's most important tax havens. And right now in Washington, D.C., I'm sitting in one of the world's biggest tax havens, as well: the United States.'' Nicholas Shaxson http://www.democracynow.org/2011/4/15/offshore_banking_and_tax_havens_have The relationship between what Shaxson outlines, the US financial system, and this internation tax haven network, and the current austerity shock doctrine of the neoliberal order can be seen in the activities of one guy, Phil Gramm. Just track Gramm's career, his legislation and political activities while serving in the US congress, and where he went, which was the board of directors of some Swiss bank. Just as the financial crisis hit, Phil made a skip into obscurity. Where is that fucker? Filthy Phil has an amazing profile, which reaches the heights of the ruling class architype.. I think what we see as a vast destruction, isn't seen that way by the ruling elites. What they see are opportunities for even greater exploitation through privatization of all the public systems that they have made into failing institutions with their regimes of scarcity. CG _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
