CB:>>>I thought PEN-L was supposed to be to the left of Sun-Times. That means a lot more emphasis on the shortcomings of the capitalist system. Why would we want PEN-L to fall to the level of a capitalist rag newspaper in its discussion of capitalism ?... <<<
me: >> isn't denouncing the shortcomings of capitalism on pen-l mostly just a matter of preaching to the converted? sure, it's great to get new information about capitalism's depredations, but harping on capitalism's sins is no substitute for serious analysis. << CB: > I don't know. Does pen-l say capitalism has got to go ? < me: I guess not, but it sure looks like most of the people on pen-l are highly critical of capitalism already. CB: >Why do the converted need anymore serious analysis ? The converted of PEN-L have had all the serious analysis they need. Isn't the proposition that capitalism has such great failings that it's got to go the conclusion that serious analysis renders ? < the existing analyses of the left are often poor. Getting rid of capitalism is a goal, not an analysis of strategy, tactics, the current situation, or the like. It might also be based on the wrong analysis. CB: >>>There is economic hardship in lots of America. There may not be a "recession" as defined 40 years ago or "depression" as defined 80 years ago, but there is mass economic hardship, poverty, unemployment, misery. Left economists should find a way to characterize this, as the concept of "recession" doesn't seem to be able to capture it anymore. <<< me: >> how about "the Silent Depression" as Wallace C. Peterson's book calls it? Alain Lipietz called it the "slow 1929," if I remember correctly. I call it the "neoliberal phase" of capitalism's development (starting in about 1980, though it might have started in 1973, in Chile at least). CB: >Sounds like the right stuff. What's new about neo-liberalism's "recessions" , downturns ? They are slow ? Are they "silent" because the new left orthdoxy is not to talk about them ? Not to talk about poverty ? < for Peterson, it's not a recession (business cycle downturn) that's "silent." To Lipietz, it's not 1929 that's slow, but instead the aftermath. neoliberalism involves the rapid shift to free-market "solutions" of the last 25 years or so. I don't know of any "new left orthodoxy." Seems like a straw man. ... -- Jim Devine / "The truth is more important than the facts." -- Frank Lloyd Wright
