Stop Me Before I Vote Again

Is the Naughty Comrade Major's first name Dmitry?

...rhetorical, rhetorical...

If I were FDR, I wouldn't have crafted the Gnu Diehl to bail out my business buddies from the surges of worker dissatisfaction, and surely wouldn't have spent coin or people on foreign matters while so much was going tits-up at home. But that's why I'm just an Ox, a-trotting along on the Toobz, and not Barack Hussein Obama, "con law scholar" and POTUS44.

It's an easy one for me. Uncle out, always, when it concerns affairs abroad. That's the best I can offer. Both expressions of support and denunciations seem silly to me. I usually don't know enough to make either meaningful and there's nothing I can do to back either of them.

"It's an easy one for me. Uncle out, always, when it concerns affairs abroad."

Seriously. Why in the name of Great Fuck should I want the US to invade another oil-rich third-world country? This is a no-brainer.

People everywhere have the right to topple their evil-as-shit governments, and I wish the Libyans (and the Egyptians and the Tunisians and the Yemenis and the Bahrainis and on and on) the best. But the best we can do to help them is stay the fuck away from them - and everyone else in the world, for that matter - and let them run their own lives.

Spain was way clearer than any of these other examples, including the present ME. Who here who's old enough to have lived through it ever thought Tiananmen was ever anything but a fart in the face of the Capitalist Roaders who clearly had the dragon by the balls? Lech wasn't even that. The ME folks are somewhere in the middle, and it certainly could all go nowhere. I don't blame myself or my politics for that fact.

CM, upon further quasi-thought, and not to dare intervene in op-san's Clionic channel, but I assume he's posing the issue of, what if letting Qaddafi re-conquer his nation-state ends up squelching or sapping the regional rebellion? What if the much proposed no-fly zone is actually the empire further undermining itself? It's at least an interesting possibility, given the obvious drunken ramblings of the system, on many fronts.

A couple of clips from LA Times: http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-fg-us-libya-20110311,0,3360662.story

The DIA head Gen.:
"Initially the momentum was with the other side; that has started to shift," he said. "Whether or not it has fully moved to Kadafi's side is not clear at this time, but we have now reached a state of equilibrium."

The "we" is instructive, not that it suggests direct involvement but that it shows that, involved or not, the speaker perceives that "we" are always players even when "we" aren't.

Then Sen. Lindsay Graham to Gen. Clapper:
He called on Clapper to resign, declaring the director has a "lack of situational awareness" and was sending the wrong message to Kadafi and the people in the streets of Libya.

..by suggesting that Q. would win in the long run.

Rephrasing Graham: "How dare you give us your actual opinion."

..by suggesting that Q. K. would win in the long run.

this Q., K., Gh. etc. ambiguity is a chore.

Both Graham and Clapper—in their own very, very special ways—bolster the argument against intervention. Graham is less epistemically astute than Cotton Mather, who ultimately found accusations of ill-wishing problematic. Clapper has mastered the plodding grandiosity of crackpot realism, in which the highest virtues are murder, corporate de-individuation and an inability to learn from experience.

I think they should elope. They're perfect for each other.

i obviously badly botched my poser
it was too diffuse

lets tighten it

two parts

part one
urge uncle sam to intervene
which is here at any rate a no brainer
out for us across the board

but at least in the spain case
we have the option to urge the enforcement of a non intervention hands off
by great powers on great powers
either unilaterally in posse form
or thru some international global or regional
agency

---libya parallel perhaps to some extent
the suez crisis of 67 or the 73 arab israel war ---

example the spain gig
involved the breaking of a pledge of non intervention by italy
a no pledge to break intervention
from hitler
and a complicit neighbor portugal
all "dictatorships"

perfidious albion played the lead bully for
great power neutralism
in the face of blatant scale tipping fascist side backing

if you are a pwog here
not say the Al electric or moi or oxington
just a goo goo with a strong inclination to follow the dictate of john q adams
NOT to travel the globe in quest of monsters to butcher

how now brown cow ???

i say uncle sam
-- speaking as a go go humanist/ democracy and freedom buff --
force the anglo french
to join in a naval interdiction

enforce a great power hands off

"and that goes for you too uncle joe "
--though i suspect uncle joe would have delighted at the thought of these capitalist contradictions
"sharpening"
and whole heartedly sign on to the interdiction quarantine
as he originally signed on to the non interference pledge ---

now here's the question i direct at pure bystanders that can't help but
"root"

are u all for
the goddess of liberty kids
to succeeed
to oust premier li peng
begin the staged topple
of the chicoms like
the initial solidarity "victory "
by steps determinate
if chaotic in manifestation
ended with the topple in the 89 tsunami
toppling that gubmint without at first toppling the "party"
a wedge in place from then on
that clearly began the institutional
and eventual topple
the polcom rus-compradors
power monopoly that culminated
in the multi "state/party" topple
thru the 89 color tsunami

fwiw

i celebrate all topples
--privately --

even the topple of a "revolution"

--- despite wishing the likes of mr walras
man from the vatican
got his desserts in a homely cottage in sartre's no exit
in the great beyond along side george wafer freak meany

maxim
if a hunk of the people can topple their state
after rising self organizing self arming etc
even if "assisted" by "foreign agents" and outside seed money..anything non decisive

then Clio going more or less au natural
must be respected
reason:
this state is blocking human progress
perhaps even social evolution

necessary steps backward obviously will occur ..must occur
before humanity moves the human condition forward
wrong directions disfunctional constructions
must be swept away
including my beloved gosplan

-------------
now on the other hand
if a state is toppled ala mode
yankee
ie
as was
saddam
noriega
coard
or otherside of that old dividing mirror
ala combodia 79 hungary 56
and alas
the human facers of prague 68

that's what we go into the streets to oppose eh ?

by whatever potentially efficacious
means we can

---------------

the rev state obviously will be subjecgted to maximum shake rattle and roll
by uncle sam types
if it can't take it
hey them's the rubs

where i think we eed to think deeply
what resorts are "fair play "
to retain power

not all cases of "just fate"
are as easy as the soured porogressive-ism
of mr q's regime in libya today

and where great powers mutually independent at at cross purposes abound
the play of one against another doesn't amount to selling out
but that's another post eh ???

http://www.northkoreablues.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Mao-and-Nixon.jpg
or on the otherside spain in 36-37

http://www.britishbattles.com/images/yorktown/yorktown-french.jpg

"China, May 1989 -- are we supporting... the party? If not -- if we're supporting the goddess of liberty kids -- are we siding with a color revolution?"

That one's tricky. One issue is that a lot of the conflict was intra-party. You had Zhao Ziyang supporting the protesters, while Li and Jiang were looking to advance their own positions by taking a hard line. And then there's Deng, who, as usual, seemed to play a conflicting role.

In general, I tend to view mass movements in China (that are allowed to grow at all) as auxiliaries of one faction or another in the CCP.

"Who here who's old enough to have lived through it ever thought Tiananmen was ever anything but a fart in the face of the Capitalist Roaders who clearly had the dragon by the balls? "

Dunno about that. The capitalist roaders in the party were more aligned with the protestors, and the protests started as mourning for Hu, who was a reformer.

op --

this state is blocking human progress
perhaps even social evolution

necessary steps backward obviously will occur ..must occur
before humanity moves the human condition forward

That's why I suggested Gov Walker should crush the ineffectual unions.

Eh?

PS: for a bit more elaboration and one that saves me some typing because it was done by Stan Goff:

http://www.feralscholar.org/blog/index.php/2011/02/25/wisconsin-buzzkill/

I recognize you're talking World and I'm talking Domestic but the same theme applies no matter how broad the geographic/human scope.

It's like the inverse of the Pyrrhic Victory.

FB,

The TS protesters were fighting neoliberal and monetary reforms, not protesting for them.

I am pro-foolish consistency: Uncle out every time.

Al, you've provocatively taken this a step further: "Both expressions of support **and denunciations** seem silly to me."

I like it, even though I am not there (yet).

Jack,

That's quite an assertion. It seems odd that these protesters would be mourning Hu, and that Zhao Ziyang, China's #1 'neoliberal', was walking amongst them.

Fb
I doubt the faction fight was about the capitalist road
No?
But it was about pluralism vs the party state

The kids in the square were viewed as pawns or symptoms
Depending on your faction

Deng said in the end decided why take the chances it stops with Li
Poland was a clear lesson even b4 the following fall

Regardless we can look at the kids movement in my estimation as very similar to the Iran gig the what ? Jasmine or raisin or fig fuck

I,m trying really to smoke out the crypto purist open society elements that might be lurking here in MDs pocket perhaps

Oxy if walker wins I agree it is a case of CLios judgement on the pub sec union movements lack of a vibrant pri sec fellow movement
But one fights at the alamo right?
if one can't disperse for guerrilla actions

Jc are you by ts talking china 89
If so I hardly get your point

Cz

I think Al is making the point
Our support or our denouncing have no material significance
And I agree
But one must exercise the analytic function to keep it sharp

After all we might have an uncle intervention ala Kosovo
Recall it's support versus the denouncing the Iraq gig got

In the goodness of time the false distinction begins to fade
As Serbia pluralized and fragmented and Iraq fragments and possibly pluralized

I have hope for the Shiites in Iraq the force baby bush released from Sunni captivity
But not for the Albanians or Kurds

No protest because it's an ineffectual gesture might be an unfortunate conclusion
If it leads on to a growing broadening awareness
The damn fact is awareness tends to grow ANDWear off at the same rate

How about the cases where the insurgents play off one great power faction against another

The Yankee patriots partook off the full measure of royal French support
Stuff didn't remain at the volunteer level of laugh eh ette

"Fb
I doubt the faction fight was about the capitalist road
No?
But it was about pluralism vs the party state"

It was a bit of both, I think. Zhao got hammered both for advocating the separation of party and state, and for his economic reforms, both of which Li opposed. Both sides seemed to take the protests as evidence that they were right.

Also, this is in China, land of contradictions. The sides weren't always clear, and you would probably have to do one of those double axis political spectrum graphs to place the actors. For example, Jiang was an economic reformer, but also a hardliner on the political protests, while Zhao was also behind the economic reforms, but supported the protests. Li was against both economic reform and political protest, and you had Chen behind him, who was also conservative on both fronts, even though he was once a market advocate.

I guess my main point in reply to MD and JC is one of "it's complicated". I've read a lot of recent Chinese history, and the more you read, the less any generalization (TS was against neoliberalism, etc.) seems to hold. And that's not just a general point about reading the history of any area, but about China's in particular

"I think they should elope. They're perfect for each other."

That would get them out of our face, for sure. But would it not be more twisted and amusing for them to have really nasty I-hate-you sex right there on the hearing room floor? That is, after they've been force-injected with Caverject and made to inhale amyl non-stop. Bangin' sick, lols fur realz.

FB,

It's an assertion corroborated by the facts. If you care for even a casual reading, Klein undresses the propaganda in Chapter Nine of Shock Doctrine, esp. pages 234-245.

OP,

Sadly, the conflation of "democracy" with electioneering and market liberalization obscures the reality felt by those directly injured by Deng's reforms. Deng proceeded to end political reforms in order to better concentrate state control over the emerging markets.

It's not an exact parallel to Singapore, of course, but the combination of disciplinary state, protected markets and foreign license certainly produced similar results, despite the disparity of scale.

At the time of Tiananmen, there was a big trend on the left arguing that the whole thing was a protest of capitalist roaders' stealing of state property and liberalization of the economy. Two serious China experts I knew gave a lecture to that effect. But they weren't lecturing from anything but external observation from this side of the Pacific, and probably a big dose of wishfulness.

I would certainly defer to FB on this.

But there has been very little after-effect of TS, either way. At the time, I remember believing it was the onset of a big fight. Of course, few in 1989 knew what kind of success they'd have at state-guided capitalism.

Well, I really doubt that, but I'll take a look at the Shock Doctrine. I have been meaning to read it.

Seems everybody wants a hands-off policy,unfortunately our governments have armed these sociopaths. So now what? Let the unarmed people revolt and then be slaughtered and keep doing business as usual?

Fb
I never took the jc comment on neoliberal seriously
These kids never went much beyond typical p,eas for liberation of a highly personal kind
They seem to have settled for affluence
Deng judged the conjuncture about right

Seems from a follow up comment jc may have a very different use of neo liberal then you or I

As to the peng faction and the deng economic reforms per se
That was about pace mostly
Where the clash was real was over some still slightly inchoate notion of political pluralism

I'm always taken by the inner crowds sense of a guiding hand of anti party naughty types
Behind the square dancers
To me that's as silly as putting a sinister anti American cabal behind wood stock

Recall the square was not intend to be Kent state by the demonstrators

They really had much the same impetus as the Egyptian kids
Square for square the difference is in the confidence of the two
State party outfits that they could show force and prevail
On the other hand if the party had thrown them Lis head
How different would the two situations have evolved from that point

Much to wonder at

Al, OP: Do you think anti-war demonstrations and protests are futile? Asking the question neither rhetorically nor argumentatively. Have wrestled with this one for a long time, even (especially?) wondering about the impact of the anti-Nam protests.

I tend to like protests even if they seem futile. Not because I'm a masochist nor a lover of lost causes but....I want to do *something.* Seems to me the anti-war protests of the 60s/70s, the "US out of Central Am" protests, and other forms of street dissent had some impact, even if the greatest deterrent to Uncle is defeat or stalemate on the battlefield.

"I'm always taken by the inner crowds sense of a guiding hand of anti party naughty types"

I don't think this "sense" of the "inner" life of a foreign crowd, now safely ensconced for you in the immovable past, really grasps what they people doing it actually reported about their reasons.

Political reform stopped. Economic reform did not. And it was all in the direction of what we now call neoliberalism, and over which the Chinese segment of the overclass now has strong grip.

To inform her analysis of the meaning of TS, what sources does (the too often overrated) Naomi Klein rely on? The most satisfying interpretation I've seen comes from Li Minqi. He was a student activist and occupier of the square. At the time, he was a classical liberal; after his arrest and a year in jail, he became an independent Marxist of sorts. (Unlike nearly all of his compatriots who became feted by the Hoover Institute.)

As a student activist, he opposed the cronyistic and corrupt way in which capitalist reform was being prosecuted, but was in no way a critic of market logic. This complaint marched under the banner of "democracy" -- of course it had little or nothing to do with democratic empowerment of the working class or the peasantry. He claims that this was the dominant ideology of the student bloc, elite youth about to enter the professions and join the managerial class. Zhao's vision of where the capitalist road should lead involved building up "democratic" yuppies as a constituency, so he intervened on behalf of the TS occupiers. The "hard-liners" of course wanted the party to exercise absolute control over the course of reform, without making any concessions to the "liberal" urban middle class.

Meanwhile, Beijing's working class entered the picture late, just before the TS was routed. Its position was unclear because the iron rice bowl had yet to be smashed -- that came about AFTER the TS events, and not in the least because the aftermath of the TS events paved the way for capitalist reform to be accelerated. Working class sympathizers were mostly agitating against corruption and inflation (the two were intimately related because cadres with access to price-controlled resources could take advantage of the two-track pricing system). Li Minqi argues that the overall direction of capitalist reform might have been altered had the students been more conscious of the ways in which they were prosecuting their own sectional interest, and allied with the working class -- but that seems like a peculiarly un-Marxist point for this otherwise astute witness to make.

Anybody want to do an "international brigade" in Libya, or at least do an Orwell, and join whichever militia lies readiest to hand?

Travel direct to Benghazi is probably too difficult, but getting to Egypt is very easy (and cheap right now). The Egyptians are probably keeping things pretty tight on the highways west to Libya, though. Unfortunately, at least in my limited experience over there, Egyptian officials are shockingly uncorrupt, so I'm not sure one could get past the checkpoints just by flashing some cash.

Hopefully once in rebel territory, the other arrangements would recommend themselves.

cz
i agree with your comment at 4:43 pm
completely

------

jc way may be refering to different groups

the inner crowd is the inner party
the naughty knots are what the inner crowd prided itself on distinguishing from the mass of square fever kids
not entirely unlike mr Q's mirage sinister covert forces passing out the drugs to the reckless libyan youth

and this is the "sense" of the "inner" life of inner party
, now still ensconced in power
or at least it is what they actually reported about their reasons to each other at the time
or at least that is what they recorded

seems like a sensible rationalizing way
to absorb reasonable mass criticism
without regarding action as following from demands as presented
since the mass has been manipulated
by the soinister hidden cliques
into pushing
beyond reasonable demands

then of course there is always the instinctive statist urge
to make the masses see
the state
is not to be diddled with
even by innocent sincere
if rash and misguided beings
at least not without
bloody consequence for anyone
in the way of marching riflemen

i think of waco or attica
or the streets of chicago in summer 68
as
limping micro parallels
unlike kent and jackson state
the nasty stuff was stone cold intentional
and its a very keen statement
when the party can order such mass slaughter in cold blood
obviously mosni couldn't do it and his state party or at least the bulk of its inner cliques
are as much as vaporized
by the insurgency
err at least are playing possum till this all blows itself out and they can creep back toward center stage
perhaps under another party banner ...or two ..or three
like much of the old soviet party cadre
as my grand father use to say
"the people rise up
we let em think they've tossed us out
lay low awhile and soon enough
we're back behind the big desks again
in what??
5 10 maybe 15 years .... tops "
or at least that's what my father claimed to have heard him say many times to many friends of his
including the commander of the state militia
over drinks at his town house
the night after the governor
called the soldier boys in
during the boston police strike of 1919

"it was all in the direction of what we now call neoliberalism"
must assuredly not jc

but to convince you might exceed both my interest and your patience
let this suffice'neoliberalism in essence requires supplication to wall street and washington
it involves a "free capital sector " open to foreign inflows and domestic outflows
not china's game
not one bit
in fact neo lib notions of free markets
and existing chinese markets are as different as roy rogers and gary grant

glue gets it

the poor raw youth freedom seekers were the proto neo liberals

if not neo conservatives

"The Egyptians are probably keeping things pretty tight on the highways west to Libya"
if so that and i suspect it must be so
i can't imagine the army wanting volunteers pouring across the border from egypt
or like wise the tunisian military seeing volunteers pouring east of the boder into the lap of q's bastionized north west corner

one gets a fair notion from all this
just how little liberation there is in egypt
and tunisia
so far
liberation in the sense of an arab world liberation

but hey i could be dead wrong maybe units of both armies are crying out to join their freedom fighter brothers in libya

ps

stan goff is a pompous
ex non com pigeon chested
half wit and
a board certified oak tree ass hole
to boot

ya he could prolly kick my ass
so what

-------
oxy god love u

that link stinks like a middle finger
just removed from stans rusty scupper

what a cabbage roll
full
of useless bummerisms

why can't ole stan
see this grapple
for what it is

a class pivot point
a make or break moment

oh ya
he wishes it weren't so
gosh yes
he salutes
our brave union made fools
up there in badger parts usa

but brothers and sisters
the view from inside
stan's maine cabin ..looks mighty grim

fuck you stan
you nickle nutted feral fur ball

hey
another thing
never trust any runty cuss
with some kinda lechish beard action
going on around his yapper

here's stan with a tail feather in his cap
trading pep with the ghost of miami 72

http://www.vvaw.org/gallery/images/dave_cline/StanGoff_DaveCline.jpg

special forces runtsky
malted macho
i prefer ioz

I got one question OP- Stans cabin on Sebago by the point or Long lake by Ricks Cafe? Pigeon Chested is right, I heard he stuffs his shirt with 2 Chateuabriands before he leaves the house, and North of the knee caps and South of the belt buckle are three English cucumbers sistered together with some flashing cement! Toss a salad in his sleep I bet.

ah the samster son !!!!

true greatness visits
father S's humble vestry

to check out the sacred
choir boy auxilary short arm collection ??

welcome back corporal long pants
welcome back

the medicine pipe and goods
are as usual behind
the false panel under the window
with a view to the parish cemetery

enjoy relax
try on some seasonal robes

i'll ring up father sunshine
to send over a fresh uncut
alter boy to assist you

"To inform her analysis of the meaning of TS, what sources does (the too often overrated) Naomi Klein rely on?"

Basically just two: Meisner and Wang Hui. with an extremely high conjecture-to-citation ratio.

OP, have you read Meisner? You would love him. Hardcore Trotskyist revisionist history. I haven't read his book on Deng that Klein cites, but I read as much as I could bear of Mao's China and After, which seems to contain (or recycle parts of) the same book on Deng as an add-on section.

It's interesting stuff. I've learned that state ownership of the means of production is categorically NOT socialism, and that the only thing that can be called socialism is low-level worker-run cooperatives. OK, sure you can argue that, but to use that as a basic premise for a history book on China is, well, pretty much fucked. To summarize: Hu Yaobang (who, in reality was Deng's protege -- a fact that Meisner completely omits) was a Trotskyist Hero undermined by the Evil Omnipotent Stalinist Deng Xiaoping, who completely controlled absolutely every single thing that happened in China from 1978 to 1994. Chen and Li are all but invisible.

On Klein's completely mangled reading of Chinese history in chapter 9, I agree with this guy on the major points:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/sep/10/thetiananmensquarepeg
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/sep/12/thedebatesofar
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/sep/14/anabsorbingdebate

"To inform her analysis of the meaning of TS, what sources does (the too often overrated) Naomi Klein rely on?"

Basically just two: Meisner and Wang Hui. with an extremely high conjecture-to-citation ratio.

OP, have you read Meisner? You would love him. Hardcore Trotskyist revisionist history. I haven't read his book on Deng that Klein cites, but I read as much as I could bear of Mao's China and After, which seems to contain (or recycle parts of) the same book on Deng as an add-on section.

It's interesting stuff. I've learned that state ownership of the means of production is categorically NOT socialism, and that the only thing that can be called socialism is low-level worker-run cooperatives. OK, sure you can argue that, but to use that as a basic premise for a history book on China is, well, pretty much fucked. To summarize: Hu Yaobang (who, in reality was Deng's protege -- a fact that Meisner completely omits AFAICT) was a Trotskyist Hero undermined by the Evil Omnipotent Stalinist Deng Xiaoping, who completely controlled absolutely every single thing that happened in China from 1978 to 1994. Chen and Li are all but invisible.

On Klein's completely mangled reading of Chinese history in chapter 9, I mostly agree with this guy:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/sep/10/thetiananmensquarepeg
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/sep/12/thedebatesofar

one more:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/sep/14/anabsorbingdebate

fb

".. state ownership of the means of production is categorically NOT socialism"
u must give socialism a higher status
then i do
to me the continuos face of history suggests ever more "socialization" of necessary production
of course one can put special meanings into the use of socialism
as an ideological notion
that are not there in the more matter of fact word socialization

let me add the large scale modern corporation with"absentee ownership"
hardly differes in form
from a state enterprise
in a marketized "socialist system"
that seems clear even in a few notes by endgels and marx on joint stock companies
the various forms the enterprise might take as the credit system --finacialization--
becomes ever more pervasive ...well

notice the ease with which firms in public corporation form to begin with
can be nationalized and then privatized

---------------------

".... the only thing that can be called socialism is low-level worker-run cooperatives"

the co op has limitations well displayed in its checkered 200 hundred year history

to me its one of several "promising" transitional forms but in fact a fairly low level of socialization if its autonmy and self government includes relying on its own funds
to keep in operation
except for commercial borrowing
and land mortgages

its often suggested a friendly state banker could help
by extending credit with an equity conversion option
but alas there goes your pristine model eh ??

i can't read ideologians craftings of economic history that are really
about current events
example
the post deng heep prc
so i haven't read meisner
and wouldn't
even if he wasn't a trot
and as for naomi
never read her

i like to watch her talk
but i don't listen very hard

http://mhpbooks.com/mobylives/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/naomi_klein_on_strikesized.jpg

"the people rise up
we let em think they've tossed us out
lay low awhile and soon enough
we're back behind the big desks again
in what??
5 10 maybe 15 years .... tops "

op,

I often remark that even the most intelligent Americans I disagree with (because they're wrong, natch, heh) make mistakes because they think of 5 years as a long view, while those with big money/power, multi-generational wealth, see in terms of 50 yrs, 100 yrs. This is why land speculators buy big chunks of land now, which they plan to "develop" in 15-20 years. This is the essence of how to profit in life insurance. This is the essence of gaming people's will to "invest" in stocks, bonds, etc.

The Average bumpkin thinks long-term planning is thinking about "summer vacation" during February's coldest days... or thinking about winning the 2012 POTUS election come early 2011.

This short-view/long-view dichotomy also does a bit to explain Zion and other ME meddling, eh?

"u must give socialism a higher status"

Not sure what you mean by higher status. I just use socialism broadly to mean de jure collective ownership of the means of production, either at the state level or in co-ops. My problem with Meisner is that he flatly and repeatedly asserts that co-ops are the only thing that can ever be called socialism, period.

it occurs to me from time to time
we marxists spend more time doing analytics on the kleins and harveys
and not enough on the white job class "losers"
that voted in their own wage and benefit cuts
and pink slips this past fall

no i don't mean the pub sec folks
they knew the score
i mean the pri sec wagery types
that don't get
how "the system " is wired together

why don't they ??
this is where the democratic wing of the democratic party falls on its face
and i doubt harvey and klein care to prioritize policy that addresses
this complex of disaffected jobsters

---white male-iacs
named bubba bobby sean stan and vinny --

a set of policies that might decouple
these fitful thinking slobs
from the back end of the tea bagger express

of course that's my special focus so naturally i notice the lacunae

as son of sam might say

watch out for em they'll hit ya with a down field clip

especially when they just told some woman

"i'm not angry anymore"

fb
oh that's meisners view...fine ...figures

i thought that was your view

sorry

--------------------
as to higher status
i mean like i give the word communism

to me socialism is all the various critters we've seen produced "in the name of socialism"
of whatever intrinsic interest of whatever class it turns out in practice to serve
or even is intended to serve

to mean the key concept is
captured by the notion
dictatorship of the prolers
not that it leads me around
like a spooky successful divining stick

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_hPCyqY-O8W0/TNNyWUD9KaI/AAAAAAAAAhY/_2q-GWI1YcI/s1600/Y+Dowsing+Rod.jpg

but it does capture the dynamic governence
of state praxis i hanker after
asking the question
cui bono class wise
over and over again
usually leads one to certain clear if tentative conclusions

example

the capitalist road deng style
not the d of p
but as to what might be the d of p move
circa 78 china wise
i have my thoughts
but i suspect
they have the street value of used bubble gum

oxy
i agree

take the nonsense low ball
of cash surrender value

btw
i think lots of obligations oughta be converted into life insurance policies
where the premium is the payment

but that takes us far afield
to a future stage
of the inevitable
greater
objective socialization of the market system

hint
some day my son

there will be no defaults
only
fully insured decedents

err

and dead beats and outlaws
pursued to the ends of the earth
by the collections wing of the us marshals

Easy enough when hard currency disappears, replaced by e-representation of what you "earned" or "own", monetarily.

The incremental loss of fiscal power sprints forward. How easy is it to be apathetic about paying too much for something when it's just a transaction enabled by a debit card or the punching of keys in a coded order? Much easier than when pulling bills & coins out of a pocket, seeing how much you hold, and how much of that you must hand over.

And the race continues. I know who's losing and who's winning (it's already over, basically), but the other folks watching seem to imagine it's a real footrace.

"Hey Bob, what do you make, if you don't mind me asking?"

"They're supposed to put $1462.38 in my account every two weeks. I've never bothered checking, honestly. I don't even look at my statements, though they're easy to get on this here smartphone."

(bartender approaches)

"That'll be $12.50 for those two beers, sir."

"Here's my card. Thanks. Give yourself a 15% tip, bartender."

the fully electronic digital payment system is a key building block of gosplan II

you wipe out the value of cash as a store of wealth by running a brisk inflation
the electronic system of course has
an indexed adjuster to retain real purshasing power

all the better to centrally "see"
all the transactions in the system

heh heh heh

as a serious debt blow out
i lived by neccesity outside and below
the electronic system
strictly cash and carry
for the years 2000-2009

i appreciate how nasty that can be
but with stable exchange value cash is kool
transactions in cash leave no audit trail
for your creditors to "look at"
ah much to ponder here
only lots of experience on the outer edge
of our credit system both
as householder and firm proprietor
teaches
these things
beyond forgetfulness

intervention agit prop
by uncle universal

stop the gillman !!!!

http://southdakotapolitics.blogs.com/south_dakota_politics/images/2008/03/13/creature.jpg

We uh gonna all look like thuh creetshuh if of these Japanese nuke plants keep esplodin... Solready affektin mah spellun...

OP,

I just read back over this thread and wanted to address a bunch of points you made that I didn't really respond to, and also clarify some points that I expressed poorly.

"These kids never went much beyond typical p,eas for liberation of a highly personal kind"
"Regardless we can look at the kids movement in my estimation as very similar to the Iran gig"

I agree. There were other issues in play (which is why I don't write off the economic dimensions of the protest), but generally I would characterize the protests as mainly in support of some sort of vague political liberalism.

Originally I was trying to prove that the protests can't be characterized as being against the market reforms, but I wasn't arguing that they were protesting in favour of more market reforms either. From one of Jack's responses it seems like I may have given that impression.

"As to the peng faction and the deng economic reforms per se
That was about pace mostly
Where the clash was real was over some still slightly inchoate notion of political pluralism"

I do agree, but that "mostly" is doing some heavy lifting. I'd say that even if the general direction of reform was agreed upon, there were big differences over the type of reforms to be implemented, depending on whose power base they threatened. There were a lot of very important differences between the 1980s reforms leading up to Tiananmen Square, and the reforms that were resumed in the early-mid 90s under Jiang (TVEs vs. MNC partnerships), another thing that Klein completely messes up.

""i can't read ideologians craftings of economic history that are really
about current events"

Again, agreed. They remind me of Chomsky and Zinn on Lord of The Rings.

"as to what might be the d of p move
circa 78 china wise
i have my thoughts"

I'd like to know them

Naomi Klein's strength has never been careful institutional analysis, a.k.a. the details.

No Logo is anti-corporate, but not very analytic of what "corporate" is. Shock Doctrine even less so.

Not really her fault, as she's a journalist. One reads her for the stories and facts, not the sociology, at which she isn't very satisfying.

Why she dared shove China into her "disaster capitalism" story is a bit of a mystery. In any event, she's even less a Sinologist than a Marxist.

MD,

No doubt. I'm really not a Klein-basher. I have enjoyed her newspaper articles and television appearances, and I also saw her give a good speech at an anti-police brutality protest here following the G20, but up until now I've never read her books. I can't say that I'm impressed by what she does in that format, and I really don't see what is to be gained by fudging facts. I actually agree with her general disaster capitalism thesis, and it can be applied to many events, but Tiananmen Square is just not one of them. A mystery is right.