Re: US Consumer Confidence index surges

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

Doug laments:

> disaster-sniffing

Jim has a point, though, when he says that you get carried away with
"castigating the poor hopeful pessimists for their lack of allegiance
to the One True Skepticism," in that analysis of economic downturns
isn't necessarily the same as hoping that our political fortune will
automatically rise in the event of a catastrophe.

> It's stunning how this list comes alive at a hint of panic.

That is probably because Marxists have lost self-confidence in our
own political tradition.  Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, etc. used to
argue that humanity can do better than even what the *best* of
capitalism can offer.  Many of us today, in contrast, sound as if
Marxism can be *no competition* to capitalism in *boom times* (even
though the neoliberal recovery has been a *paltry* one).  *If* the
only virtue of Marxism were that it's better than the Great
Depression, the working class would be correct not to take interest
in it.

Yoshie