Thursday, October 02, 2008

Poverty of Crisis Debate

Leftists, especially Marxists, are fond of debates on crises. But our debates have often revolved around questions that are not exactly helpful to people in crisis. We tend to debate such questions as:

What are the underlying causes of crisis -- overaccumulation, overproduction, underconsumption, or what?

But the question that we should have been really debating, learning from historical examples, is: in case of a crisis, how do we counter a financial blackmail of capital (e.g., if you don't give us $700 billion, we'll commit suicide bombing and take you all down)? As long as we capitulate to this blackmail and seek a solution on capital's terms, we'll remain social democrats.

1 comment:

Sean Guillory said...

Interestingly, Yoshie, I think part of the problem you present here is a similar problem that you point to in your History post above.

As you say, we all tend to "seek a solution on capital's terms." If we can't think beyond capital, how can we then counter the financial blackmail? I say we can't if the financial blackmail (though in different terms) is part of our own logic.

My point is that I don't think we (i.e. those of us who still call ourselves Marxists) can ever counter anything politically until we are able to go beyond our own liberal saturated thought which makes capital as the end of History an accepted truth.

On another note, have you read Fukuyama's latest in Newsweek? It's interestingly titled, "The Fall of America Inc."