Re: [Marxism] Walden Bello on Reagan

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

In a message dated 6/12/2004 1:01:35 PM Central Standard Time, 
elgusanorojo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:

>Reagan deserves neither praise nor admiration nor even the respect due a
worthy opponent. 

He was simply one more representative of a class and social system that
has long been bereft of any historic mission or justification, rotting
and decaying until history gets around to taking out the garbage.<

José


Comment

There was no "Carter Revolution," "Bush Revolution" or "Clinton Revolution." 

The "Reagan Revolution" - in my estimate, expressed the ending of a specific 
quantitative boundary in the development of the industrial system and the rise 
of what has come to be called the speculator as dominator of the world total 
social capital. Every sector of the Marxists movement grappled with the 
meaning of the Reagan era as it was unfolding and spoke of the 
deindustrialization 
of America. 

This was the era of the theory of "the underclass" and in the back of my mind 
I recalled a book or article called "Beneath the Underclass." Today, no one 
speaks of the "underclass" or deindustrialization as such as the features of 
our new era slowly come into focus for millions of people. The Reagan 
Revolution 
is indissolubly fused to the transition to a new era in the specific mode of 
accumulation peculiar to speculative capital as dominator, and the emergence 
of an extreme polarization between wealth and poverty. 

It is now pretty clear what Reagan meant when he told Mikhail Gorbachev to 
"tear down this wall" - referring to the Berlin Wall. The eye of history can 
now 
see the specific logic of speculative capital . . . tear down the walls - 
barriers, to speculative capital. 

Reagan's appearance in history as President during a specific stage in the 
evolution of capital and the industrial system cast him on the historical stage 
somewhat different from President Jimmy Carter and this is not a matter of 
bourgeois propaganda. Unbounded selfishness and greed was his administrations 
creed, down to the expensive China used in the White House. 

The Reagan Revolution was the overthrow of a distinct set of policies of one 
sector of the ruling class by another and ushered in the era of the 
speculator. A huge section of the working class remember Ronald Reagan as the 
man that 
"took my job." 

Melvin P. 

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