File spoon-archives/aut-op-sy.archive/aut-op-sy_2001/aut-op-sy.0107, message 195


Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2001 23:42:42 -0400
From: Louis Proyect <lnp3-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: AUT: Re: aut-op-sy-digest V1 #341


>The EU?

Jon, the EU can not provide a "social wage". It has no provisions for
social spending of any sort, from education to health to housing. This is
the function of state powers that get elected in the traditional manner.

>Lou, what seems odd to me about your position is the way in which you take
>only one of the three demands you paraphrase in your clarification, and
>ignore both the connections between them (surely, for instance, the
>constitution of a global citizenship--hardly, incidentally, something one 
>could ask of any single nation-state--would make a difference as to whom
>one might demand of a social wage) and the differences (citizenship, a
>wage, and reappropriation are surely three quite different demands that
>one might make of three quite different bodies).

Sorry, it seems clear as day to me. In Germany "osties" are getting a raw
deal. The left has to push for the right to a job and other benefits
enjoyed under Communism. What is the target of such mobilizations other
than the capitalist state in Bonn.

>And I'll ask the same question again: Can you explain the reasons why you
>say that these demands you cite "are only meaningful when made on the
>government of a nation-state"?

Because this is how politics takes place. Workers vote for parliamentary
parties. When they get sold out, the natural tendency is to demonstrate in
the capital like they did in Washington DC in 1932, or in Petrograd in
1917. That's the way it goes. They don't press their demands on
international or transnational institutions. It is one thing to protest
against the eurodollar, it is another thing to fight to implement a "jobs
for all" program.

>By the way, this point also illustrates what I mentioned before was a
>reason you may not be getting the responses your desire from your
>"crititue" of _Empire_.  

I have been getting exactly the responses I expected. Cheers from old
school Marxists and consternation (and worse) from the Spinoza-ist
lower-case brigade.

>After all, what's most puzzling about your statement (and why I suggest it
>goes much further than what you'd said before) is that it seems to imply
>that the only politics that is meaningful is national politics, or
>politics designed to impact on the nation-state. 

This is not what I argued, but you are entitled to your own interpretation.

Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/


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