From: Rakesh Bhandari (rakeshb@stanford.edu)
Date: Fri Mar 21 2003 - 15:15:12 EST
> > >Am I being too 'optimistic'? > >In solidarity, Jerry Yes, American support for the war is over 70%; many, if not most, Americans think Saddam is now running al-Qaeda; the Hollywood dissent suffers from a nostalgia for Clinton whose obscene and predictable silence is doing wonders for Bush's legitimacy; quick victory, coupled with some improvement in post-Saddam Iraq, will delegitimize future protest over the unilateral use of American force. And since there will be a tepid, "middle class" economic recovery led by a more centralized capital, Bush will tout i. monopoly (even as its gouges the consumer in circulation--remember Microsoft), ii. regressive tax cuts and iii. eviserated labor law as the keys to economic strength. Social darwinism is after all the only philosophy which has ever had popular roots in the US. And of course once Bush puts Osama bin Laden's decapitated head on a stick and leads a parade down the streets, our fellow Americans--except perhaps in the SF Bay Area--will break the knee caps of the peace protestors. Yet the future is open; a more militant, sophisticated and truly mass opposition may yet take root. Yet I see no reason to assume that it will evolve automatically or is in fact presently evolving out of the anti-war, anti-Bush movement which (it seems to me) is about to be shocked by the quickness and totality of the US "precision-guided" victory and may well collapse in the face of new uncovered evidence of the barbarity of Saddam's regime and the relief of the Iraqi people...at least as it advertised in the US media and by Bill O Reilly in particular (I don't really watch television, and don't get cable, and don't listen to right wing talk radio...and I am still this pessimistic!) Of course a sharp decline in the economy at home, coupled with the unravelling of the oil for food programme in Iraq and consequent mass hunger, will give a powerful impetus to the opposition. Jerry, as you know, I shall be taking a break from email for a couple of weeks. I wish all here the best. Yours, Rakesh ps to Ian Wright; sorry I have not replied on simple commodity production. I would have to read a work about SCP like Enrique Mayer's The Articulated Peasantry ( a study of SCP in the Andes) to have something to say. As you know from offlist email, I don't think SCP could shift resources (esp labor power) in such a way that everyone could come to have or would allow themselves to have the total dependence on the market which your model of SCP requires.
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