File spoon-archives/aut-op-sy.archive/aut-op-sy_2001/aut-op-sy.0107, message 198


Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 12:53:36 +0100 (BST)
From: Jon Beasley-Murray <Jon.Beasley-Murray-AT-man.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: AUT: Re: aut-op-sy-digest V1 #341


On Mon, 9 Jul 2001, aut-op-sy-digest wrote:

> aut-op-sy-digest         Monday, July 9 2001         Volume 01 : Number 342

> 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.

The question was not that of who can *provide* a social wage; it was to
whom one should make one's demands.  The EU's "social charter," and the
use of the European Court of Human Rights, for instance, are both good
examples of the ways in which certain groups are certainly raising demands
at levels other than that of the nation-state.  The demonstrations at the
recent Gothenburg summit (as well as Seattle and so on) are also examples
of pressure brought to bear directly on transnational organizations.  
Again, what seems odd is that inadvertently perhaps you echo the EU
leaders who argue that it's absolutely right that *they* should meet and
organize on a transnational basis, but wrong for anyone else to conduct
politics on anything but a national level.

> >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.

Well, some politics takes place this way.  Other politics takes place, for
instance, on the level of the firm, through trades union disputes.  Again,
surely you can't be restricting politics only to the national arena?

> >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.

Who's the pomo now, Lou?

> Louis Proyect

Take care

Jon

Jon Beasley-Murray
Spanish and Portuguese
University of Manchester
jon.beasley-murray-AT-man.ac.uk

http://www.art.man.ac.uk/spanish/jbm.html
http://www.art.man.ac.uk/lacs/



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