Re: Gintis: TINA

[Doug Henwood <dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx>]

You know, all that old fashioned stuff like production for use not
profit, collective ownership, self-management, the end to exploitation
and class rule - all those impossible dreamy demands without which even
social democracy, RIP, would never have been possible.

That you have to ask the question speaks volumes in itself - either
you've forgotten, or you're evading the point.

TINA is a remarkably authoritarian concept, which is not surprising given
its pedigree. It relies on assertion, not argument, and declares certain
ideas not merely mistaken but virtually nonexistent.

Dismissing the sort of dreamy impossibilities mentioned in my first
paragraph as the standard New Left laundry list, a list Gintis once
subscribed to, is to dismiss it as either a product of a long-dead
Zeitgeist, or its author's youthful hormonal storms. So is the conversion
to TINA the product of a reactionary Zeitgeist and involutional
climbdown?

Doug

Doug Henwood [dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx]
Left Business Observer
212-874-4020 (voice)
212-874-3137 (fax)


On Wed, 20 Jul 1994, Herbert Gintis wrote:

> Doug Henwood says:
>
> >Herb Gintis says there is no alternative (TINA, in Thatcher-speak) to the
> >mixed economy. Why has this model been under such savage attack, almost
> >to the point of its disappearance, for 20 years? Politically speaking,
> >can there ever be a mixed economy if there are no socialists demanding a
> >thorough transformation?
>
> 	Transformation to what?
>
> Herb gintis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>