Re: [A-List] Populism or Neoliberalism?

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> Today, few economists are leftists and few leftists are economists.
> But there used to be more of both.  People like Harry Magdoff had a
> chance to personally experience a little of how to run a mixed
> economy, and imho, such experience helps leftists ground themselves in
> the real world, so those who have a chance to have it should take it.

Harry Magdoff never wrote a single word about how to run an economy and 
Karl Marx warned against going down that path. Caroll Cox used to deploy 
  his words on the appropriate occasions.

> Those of us who are neither economists nor have a chance to experience
> real-world difficulty of trying to manage national economy under
> capitalism as much in the interest of people as possible should still
> learn to see the world as if we were.  It's not the only perspective
> we should have, but it is an indispensable one.

Go ahead if this is something you find entertaining. I myself prefer the 
NY Times crossword puzzle or playing chess.

> It's clear that whatever choice people make, liberalism, populism,
> socialism, or whatever, the economy that results form it experiences
> difficulties specific to its type as well as brings benefits also
> specific to it.  We have to understand what they are, so we can
> clarify alternatives for people.

Here's my idea of clarifying alternatives:

Friedrich Engels once said: "Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, 
either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism." What does 
"regression into barbarism" mean to our lofty European civilization? 
Until now, we have all probably read and repeated these words 
thoughtlessly, without suspecting their fearsome seriousness. A look 
around us at this moment shows what the regression of bourgeois society 
into barbarism means. This world war is a regression into barbarism. The 
triumph of imperialism leads to the annihilation of civilization. At 
first, this happens sporadically for the duration of a modern war, but 
then when the period of unlimited wars begins it progresses toward its 
inevitable consequences. Today, we face the choice exactly as Friedrich 
Engels foresaw it a generation ago: either the triumph of imperialism 
and the collapse of all civilization as in ancient Rome, depopulation, 
desolation, degeneration - a great cemetery. Or the victory of 
socialism, that means the conscious active struggle of the international 
proletariat against imperialism and its method of war. This is a dilemma 
of world history, an either/or; the scales are wavering before the 
decision of the class-conscious proletariat. The future of civilization 
and humanity depends on whether or not the proletariat resolves manfully 
to throw its revolutionary broadsword into the scales. In this war 
imperialism has won. Its bloody sword of genocide has brutally tilted 
the scale toward the abyss of misery. The only compensation for all the 
misery and all the shame would be if we learn from the war how the 
proletariat can seize mastery of its own destiny and escape the role of 
the lackey to the ruling classes.

Rosa Luxemburg, "The Junius Pamphlet"