On 8/24/06, Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
me:
> > so what is to be done?
Yoshie:
> That's worth discussing. First off, we have to control rampant
> sectarianism of American leftists.
present company excepted, of course!
Ha, ha, ha. I spent a good deal of time trying to get ANSWER and UFPJ
to get along and work together. I've given up.
It seems to me that US leftists are capable of episodic protests, even
fairly big ones, but we seem incapable of building any mass socialist
organization or even just a mass left-wing organization out of them.
> > leaders can be held accountable for not resisting careerism and corporatism.
> How?
stronger democracy. It's a struggle.
Independent trade unions and other organizations, even if they are
antagonistic to the state, must be allowed, so long as they do not
associate themselves with any hostile foreign power. But that has
never been the case in any socialist state.
> Outside the West, countries that respect workers' rights to organize,
> strike, and so on are few and far between, and the Middle East and
> Africa, where dictatorship has been commoner than elsewhere, is worse
> than most other places. It's just that Iran's illiberal democracy is
> not as dictatorial as the Ba'ath party dictatorships in Syria and
> pre-war Iraq, Egypt under its emergency law*, the Gulf states, and so
> on.
it's also possible that Iran has worker rebellions because it's
chaotic (without being Hobbesian like Iraq). See the op-ed on Iran in
today's NY TIMES.
Power is much less centralized in Iran than in almost any other
country in the Middle East except Lebanon and Palestine, and that's
the main difference, I think.
> How did they survive the McCarthy era?
how did Sweezy & Magdoff survive?
Sweezy didn't have to work for wages, and Magdoff had a group of
supportive New Deal businessmen:
<blockquote>During the late 1950s and early 1960s, Magdoff taught
classes for a number of business firms, in response to the requests
from a group of pro-New Deal businessmen. After the president of the
New School for Social Research heard about these sessions, Magdoff was
invited to teach at that institution as an adjunct, which he did
throughout the 1960s; he also taught at Yale for one semester on a
similar basis. His courses included the economics of planning,
economic development, the history of economic thought, the structure
of U.S. business, imperialism, and Marxian economics.
<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/foster020106.html></blockquote>
how are we going to survive?
Beats me! I don't know any New Deal businessman or any other
businessman or woman who would pay for my expenses. I suppose there
is always a seminary. :->
--
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
<http://mrzine.org>
<http://monthlyreview.org/>
