Re: Re: on the "anti-globalization" movement (fwd)

[Jim Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 02:12 AM 04/27/2000 -0700, you wrote:
> > UNDERSTANDING THE BATTLES OF SEATTLE AND WASHINGTON
> > By Dick Platkin and Chuck O'Connell*
>
> > anti-globalization groups.  They are (unknowingly) recycling Kautsky's
> > argument when they claim that the WTO, IMF, and World Bank represent a new
> > capitalist consensus to override national sovereignty and democracy
> when they
> > impinge upon profitability.

this isn't Kautsky's argument (is it?). Rather, didn't  K argue that a
world government (seen in embryo, perhaps, in the form of  the WTO, IMF, &
WB, but especially the US/NATO which stands behind them) would solve the
problems of the world-wide anarchy of production, dealing with world
disproportionalities and preventing crises? It seems to me one could
believe that these organizations could "override national sovereignty and
democracy when they  impinge upon profitability" without believing that
they could abolish crises.

BTW, it's really too bad that the debates amongst Kautsky, Lenin,
Luxemburg, Bukharin, et al weren't thrashed out on a theoretical level
instead of getting into the sectarian biz about "renegade K" and the like.
(I know that Lenin started out as a follower of K and that his later verbal
attacks on him occurred because Lenin was a mite peeved by K's weak
position on WW1 and his later attacks on the revolution. But the whole
set-to was the beginning of a process that shut down serious theoretical
debate for a generation.)

Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx & http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~JDevine