re 6581 >Rakesh, > >The point you are making re difficulty in sustaining a sizable >'middle class' as the crisis deepens is precisely why the US has to >see off any challenge to its hegemony. David, aren't you tiptoeing towards a Renner-like theory of social imperialism here? But our friend Grossman did not understand the cooption of the masses to be the driving force of imperialism but the search for extra surplus value as the rate of profit declined. I think your implicit understanding makes it difficult to clarify the great price the working class has to pay for the imperialism of its bourgeoisie. And that price is becoming very clear in the US case, I believe. >It is the growing crisis which is responsible for inter-imperialist >rivalries. In fact my argument in the articles is that the >privileged working class which British capitalism will be able to >sustain will necessarily get smaller as the crisis confronts growing >sections of the privileged working class and 'middle class' with >'proletarianisation'. On this we are indeed agreed. >Their political influence is what is decisive. > >David And I can see how this analysis recalls Lenin a Moscow volume of whose writings on revisionism I once did read, cover to cover. I do agree that politically Lenin was an important and revolutionary critic of the Second Intl, but I am convinced by the anti Lenin political writings by Mattick Sr and Draper and my former teacher Paul Thomas. rb rb
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