Japan

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>> dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx 03/21/01 01:03PM >>>
Forstater, Mathew wrote:

>Soemone on another list recently reminded me of ch. 25 of the
>_Grapes of Wrath_.
>Food spoiling while people are hungry, the incredible unreasonableness of this
>sick economic system.

Yeah, that's the stuff to focus on, not tales of impending possible
collapse. I swear, nothing seems to get PEN-Lers' juices going more
than hints of 1929. Why? Some kind of intellectual vindication?

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CB: Yea, the antedote effect on all the "rah, rah, capitalism has reached permanent, continuous, universal prosperity" rhetoric that the bourgeois propagandists spout through the commanding heights of the monopoly media everytime there is a boom, of course. Since Americans don't seem to be able to cognize anything but what is happening today, can't remember last month let alone develop historical consciousness, the effect of facts as stubborn things right now seems a necessary first step in a wake up call.

Marx, Engels and Lenin never shied away from discussing impending possible collapse, the periodic crisis, why should we ?

"The contradictions inherent in the movement of capitalist society impress themselves upon the practical bourgeois most strikingly in the changes of the periodic cycle, through which modern industry runs, and whose crowning point is the universal crisis. That crisis is once again approaching, although as yet but in its preliminary stage; and by the universality of its theatre and the intensity of its action it will drum dialectics even into the heads of the mushroom-upstarts of the new, holy Prusso-German empire. "


Karl Marx
London
January 24, 1873

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A
hope that the jobless masses will turn to us for guidance? They could
just as easily turn to stormtroopers. The system is horrific enough
when it's working reasonably well.

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CB; There's nothing we can do to stop the business cycle and recessions, so we can't avoid this phase , and we must therefore develop propaganda appropriate to recessionary times from the standpoint of working class interests. That means finding ways to emphasize the bad stuff.

We have to go to them. They won't turn to "us" . Who is "us" ?