Re: James Petras on the crisis of capital versus the crisis of labor

[Doyle Saylor <doylesaylor@xxxxxxx>]

Greetings Economists,
My objection to this article is with the strange attack upon
catastrophists?
On Jul 19, 2006, at 1:40 PM, Louis Proyect wrote:

> Crisis of US Capitalism or the Crisis of the US Wage and Salaried
> Worker?
> by James Petras
> www.dissidentvoice.org July 18, 2006

Many a Marxist sees crisis in Capitalism.  Seemingly Petras brings up
the error of seeing crises that has clouded the left for these many
years.  Then Petras turns around says the working class movement has to
be built upon?  The crisis in their losses.  So in other words the left
has been defeated because the wolf crying catastrophists have just lost
credibility.  Yet the way to build is upon the crisis in ordinary
workers lives.

Frankly, the critical attitude of Marxist is missing when they do not
point to the injustice and class based inequalities that continually
undermine working class peoples lives.  So one building a movement
based upon the reality of working class lives is one that recognizes
the constant crisis that affect working class people.   How can one
look at the huge amount of African Americans behind bars without
thinking crisis?

Is it true the capitalist are in stasis?  That is the other theme here.
 There is no crisis for capitalist.  They do fine every time a world
war comes along much less the petty travails of U.S. based workers.  To
me catastrophism is the effort to realistically explain the workings of
the big state.  I see them play with pensions to dump corporate social
responsibility, destroy the means of communication with laws meant to
control information for profit, commit to wars of aggression with
impunity, and so much more, because a robust movement to catastrophize
the policies and actions of the U.S. are lacking.

Of course we have seen no stock crash.  No debt crisis.  But have we
seen things go better for workers?  Or worse for the worlds peoples?
There is no crisis?  For them?  Well of course we build here first.
But is it not obvious here the folly of what we see is a world born
crisis for all?
thanks,
Doyle Saylor