Replying to Martin

[Gary MacLennan <g.maclennan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Martin,

I too have bouts of that kind of pessimism (or realism). Thus I have often
talked of how Australia will need to be invaded by a Red Army before we
have socialism here.

At the moment things look unbelievably grim. Still the truth remains that
you never can tell where change is  going to come from. It is now a quarter
of a century since the collapse of the Long Boom and the beginning of the
erosion of the Keynesian Social compromise that was dialectically related
to it.

My understanding of economics is a good deal below basic but trying to read
the clever people I think we are being driven towards a massive crisis of
demand.  We are also doing enormous damage in terms of the ecology.  That's
all the bad news.  The last thing I want to see is a Depression or a major
ecological disaster.

Nevertheless that is what is on the cards.

The good news is that the capitalist system is running down its
credit.  For instance someone on the radio here talked of how we still
didn't know who the "leader of the Free World" was.  That phrase struck me
as a genuine whiff from the past; a true piece of hoary old Cold War left
overs.  Moreover I am not the only one that thinks that way.

Young people now openly boast about being 'anti-capitalist'.  Of course I
am aware that the ending of the Cold War has opened up a space for a safe
kind of oppositionalism, but opposition it is.

Our task as Leftists is to take part in this embryonic movement.  We have a
lot to offer if we can only get over our Zinoviest fantasies of "intervening".

regards

Gary