[PEN-L:3374] Re: Canada

[Bill Burgess <burgess@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 06:20 PM 13/02/99 -0800, Tom W. wrote:
>
>There's one point that I would differ with Bill on.

>I agree that left nationalists have offered a lot of tactical advice. But I
>think "fighting" the bourgeoisie is too pugilistic and indiscriminate a term
>for what the left should be doing. The left should be "cultivating" the
>bourgeoisie. By this term, I mean the left should figuring out how to weed
>out the parasitic varieties; and how best to select, tend, prune, train and
>harvest the fruitful ones.
>
OK, "fighting" is a crude term. But how can the 'left' "select, prune,
train" and especially "harvest" without political power? Or do you have in
mind some kind of tactical alliance with the most promising capitalist
plants against the bourgeois weeds and deadwood? The NBER study suggests
the latter are the family-controlled corporate pyramids, so I guess this
alliance is exactly opposite to the one you said the left has beein
pursuing in the last couple of decades with 'rentier' capitalism. Boy, that
really is swimming against the stream!

On a related point, I appreciate not wanting to identify "indigneous"
capitalists with the interest of the nation, but isn't the real point that
they identify with the Canadian state because it defends their interests at
home and abroad? Canadian nationalists often suggest the government has
been captured by foreign or 'continental' or 'global' capital, but what is
the evidence for this?

Bill