Re: "The World We're In" by Will Hutton

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

>But even though Hutton is funamentally a moralist and will indulge in vivid
>journalistic  formulations, his economic criticisms will not be nonsense,
>and will probably suggest viable reforms from a social democratic point of
>view.
>
>Even if the rival imperialist blocs patch over their differences, some
>changes may be part of the agenda.
>
>Has anyone read even bits of the book, in the original?
>
>
>Chris Burford

Hutton joins the bandwagon of critics who oppose the symptoms of
capitalism, but stop short of any solution that will go to the roots. Like
George Soros, Edward Luttwak, Joseph Stiglitz and William Greider, he is
upset with global inequality but would be equally upset with structural
changes to eradicate inequality. Last Friday night I heard Richard Levins,
co-author with Richard Lewontin of "The Dialectical Biologist", speak on
Cuba and ecology at the Brecht Forum. He is on the faculty of Harvard's
school of public health. He used a series of graphs to show what an anomaly
Cuba was. It correlated infant mortality rates with GDP, which results in a
curve with rich social democratic countries having the most impressive
stats. Christian Democratic countries like Italy came next, followed by
neoliberal states like Great Britain and the USA. These G-7 type nations
were trailed by third world countries, which followed pretty much the same
pattern but Cuba did not fit in. It had a low GDP but a very low incidence
of infant deaths. So, the Cuba socialist path is really the only
alternative, not vaporous calls for social justice from the likes of George
Soros. How this scumbag worms his way into left circles is beyond me.
Robert Fitch has a profile on Immanuel Wallerstein at
http://logosonline.home.igc.org/fitch.htm, from which we learn:

>>On the afternoon of my visit to the Maison, Wallerstein scans the morning
mail which happens to bring letters from France's most famous sociologists
- Alain Touraine and Pierre Bourdieu - who invented the concept of cultural
capital. Touraine, it turns out, will be participating in a two-day
international conference in April, devoted to exploring the themes of
Wallerstein's work. It's being sponsored jointly by Le Monde, L'Expansion,
Le Nouvel Observateur and the Paribas Foundation (created by France's most
powerful investment bank formerly known as the Banque de Paris et des Pays
bas). The sponsors bill him as Braudel's successor. "With his resolutely
interdisciplinary scientific approach," the conference brochure reads, "we
have invited him to interrogate the recent past to be able to understand
the present and the future." Speakers and commentators form an intellectual
bouillabaisse of academic disciplines, countries, and ideologies: from the
Dakar-based Maoist, Samir Amin, the author of Eurocentrism to the Wall
Street-based billionaire currency speculator George Soros.<<






Louis Proyect
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