Re: [Marxism] The end of the Green Party?

[Haines Brown <brownh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The press of other matters has prevented me from continuing to follow
this thread, but I did encounter an article yesterday that seems
relevant to it.

Jean Bricmont, "Who will make our shirts when China is rich?" _Le
Monde diplomatique_, September 2007. Unfortunately, this article is
not accessible to the public on its website, but I have _Le Monde
dip's_ permission to publish it on line, and so if anyone would like
to read it online, just let me know.

Basically, Bricmont suggests that socialists (his immediate concern is
France, but he speaks in much more general terms) have lost a sense of
direction. He argues that the focus should be freedom and control of
our own destiny, by which he means control of some kind over the
economy. On the other hand, he doesn't seem to imply that we need to
seize power in political terms to achieve that economic control.

He understands that the developed nations will no longer to be able to
sustain their high standard of living in the face of global
competition. He does not address the implications of this for
working-class control over the economy, but feels that as developed
nations loose their competitive edge, political freedoms will further
deteriorate, so that sucn a democratic control of the economy must be
our principle objective.

Bricmont is the co-author of _Intellectual Impostors_, which is a fun
book but doesn't, if I recall, make Bricmont's own position clear. He
may well be an anarchist, and if so that would help explain why in
this article he remains at a high level of generality concerning what
is to be done. But he does address some of the basic issues that came
up in this thread and so it should be of interest to its participants.

Although sketchy and vague, which means I can't say I endorse his
views, Bricmont does, I believe, very usefully bring a focus to bear
on the central issue: what are we really up to?

-- 
 
       Haines Brown, KB1GRM

         
        

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