From: Rakesh Bhandari (rakeshb@stanford.edu)
Date: Thu Mar 20 2003 - 14:23:18 EST
I wrote this last night in response to Fred. > Rather, I mean that the value transferred from the means of >production to the value (or price) of the output in the current period is >equal to the price of the means of production in the current period. Fred, our agreement is substantial enough. I had indeed misunderstood you. I feel pretty sure however that neither of us wants to continue a conversation on a point like this at this point in history. Though the the use of shock and awe tactics against Arabs abroad, as well as the divisiveness over foreign workers here, fills me with dread, there are reasons for hope. But I don't think there is a split in the US ruling class, though I see Michael Perelman seemed to agree on his PEN-L with Michael Lind that Bush's base is in in the heirs of the plantation/mining economy which has historically survived on super-exploitation, not high tech and advanced industrial capital (Lind's examples are Michael Dell and Ross Perot, his heroic creative entrepreneurs). To be sure, some leading voices for the business community are worried that there are long term costs to the failure to pay lip service to international institutions and to Bush's running up of the national federal debt , but I don't think the business community is confident that it has any real option at this moment other than Bush's military Keynesianism and unilateral foreign policy, aimed at short term advantage. Which is not say that it will not pathetically voice a preference for other options. Take for example Jon Corzine, who was a bond trader and co chair of Goldman Sachs before he bought himself one of New Jersey's seats on the Senate. I have heard him say to a small gathering of Indians for the Democrats that Bush's combination of tax cuts and military spending is a grand experiment in Keynesian economics to ride out the collapse of capital spending (I don't think the high tech community is confident that the wireless age and biotech will open up massive new fields of investment to which they are thus happy to see the government contribute in the form of militarism). Corzine didn't seem to think there was a real alternative, though his tax cuts wouldn't be so locked in and his spending not entirely weighted towards the military; that qualified support for military Keynesianism coupled with this former Marine's support of Israel means that he won't be leading a revolt from within the business community against the Bush Administration. At any rate, he walked off with Sun Founder Vinod Khosla to get down to the real nitty gritty--should options be expensed? The Democrats are doomed to be voted down as pathetic imitations of the Republicans by those who even bother to vote. Bourgeois opposition as expressed through the Democratic Party will continue to be tame and unconfident. I thus don't have confidence that a new bloc of capital (Lind's creative entrepreneurs) will be forced to capture the Democratic Party out of respect to popular opposition which it will then hegemonize as it fashions a diluted, American-style pseudo social democratic programme. I hope that there is such an easy electoral way out of this mess and mounting horror. But I don't think so. Though in fact I am unable to make any confident predictions. Perhaps the most effective electoral opposition to Bush in 2004 will be a Patrick Buchanan who will run on the principle of a Republic in opposition to Bush's Empire. But who knows? Bush I's regime fell ignominously even after a short and victorious military campaign. Perhaps Bush II wins this war while the economy sours, and there is a change of guard. The American voting public reaches the conclusion that the war against Iraq was not meant to secure their safety against terrorism, and intended only to give oil men some easy profits, draw attention away from regressive domestic politics and the illegitimacy of the Bush presidency itself? Or perhaps Bush II wins this war in short order and with a minimum of American casualities, and American business finally acts on the backlog of replacement and innovatory investment that has been building up for the last three years. Out with the old PC's. In with the wireless ones. Voila! Military victory, coupled with economic and stock market recovery. Bush II then wins 2004 by a landslide (perhaps with Osama bin Laden's head on a stick), and enjoys a position of unprecedented domestic power, which allows him to privatize social security, break collective bargaining once and for all, desecularize the school system, etc. But things probably won't work out so well for the Republicans. At any rate, things working out well for the Republicans will bring no relief to the working masses. By the way, I think the American weekend anti war movement is not only politically impotent, it is is even for the most part ideologically trapped as Perry Anderson has shown. The opposition still features those plaintive cries for the re-uniting of the international community which has slowly murdered Iraq for a decade and broadcasts those who find it radical to reveal that the "oil man" Bush is "really" fighting for ownership of an increasingly scarce resource controlled by price fixing cartel which he intends to break...as if this patent falsehood turned into a "bold insight" would prompt most Americans to oppose war and the occupation of Iraq. In fact many will infer from this so called radical analysis that if the US can indeed get control of Iraq without Saddam burning down the oil fields and inciting of the Arab masses, the US will be under less threat of being held "HOSTAGE" by the Arab-dominated OPEC. Indeed liberal, putatively anti war Representative Charles Rangel said so much in the WSJ piece which I forwarded. I am quite anxious to know what you and others think. Yours, Rakesh
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