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

[Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

At 14/05/02 10:46 -0400, Louis Proyect wrote:


> Hutton joins the bandwagon of critics who oppose the symptoms of
> capitalism, but stop short of any solution that will go to the roots.

That is the sort of central question that we should be debating. Do you
have any direct quotes from Hutton's book to support this?


>  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.


Hutton is probably proposing Keynesian solutions. It would certainly not be
socialism. But even a capitalist programme really to eradicate global
inequality would be a big shock to the privileged populations of the
imperialist countries, let alone their bourgeoisies.

This could only be overcome if Keynesian measures brought so much
underutilised means of production in the third world into play, (especially
their underutilised labour power) that the total social product of the
world increased substantially at the same time as surplus was invested
almost exclusively in the the third world. This would allow a great
increase in available use value in the world to disguise a massive
redistribution of exchange value, within the total social product of the
world.

A bourgeois programme however moving more gradually in this direction might
be possible and might get the backing of international finance capital as a
way to stabilise continued capitalist exploitation.


>  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.


I presume this is a reference to George Soros. I would have thought that he
has been invited to a forum for commercial reasons of his  notoriety and
because he has argued for capital to be recirculated to the global
peripheries, (no doubt at public expense).

Hutton, who is a fairly honest radical bourgeois, may well also be arguing
for capital to be redistributed to the peripheries.

Chris Burford