File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1997/marxism-thaxis.9710, message 208


Date: Mon, 20 Oct 1997 14:07:32 -0500
From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: M-TH: New Zealand "reforms"?


Gerald Levy wrote:

>Robert Malecki wrote:
>
>> Another thing that bugs me is Doug's pretentions of being a "Marxist"
>> economist with his recent book "Wall Street". I shall in the future come
>> back to this as I am now in the process of collecting material in Workers
>> Vanguard which I believe points out the many fallacies in Henwoods work.
>>And
>> the material they are producing, although quite steep for me is very
>> interesting and certainly should be explored. Who knows maybe somebody will
>> learn something including me!
>
>
>Doug has repeatedly said that he is not a Marxist economist (I can't argue
>with him on that point), but is a "journalist" (self-employed, of course).

Oh wow, dis'd by the dynamic duo! I'm reeling!! I love Malecki's confession
here that even the WV characterization of Wall Street is a bit "steep" for
him, which I suppose implies that reading a whole book would be an
Everest-like challenge.

The WV characterization of my book is a lie. I don't know whether they lie
out of laziness and ignorance or as a conscious political strategy, but
ever since they purged Norden, the average IQ of the Sparts seems to have
fallen down into the double digits. Far from being indifferent to class
struggle, as the WV piece claims, my whole point is that money and finance
have to be understood as instruments of class power. And far from asserting
a deep conflict between finance and industry, in the Keynesian-populist
style, I say repeatedly throughout the book that such splits are typically
family quarrels, and that there is a deep community of interest between
these two branches of capital (which are increasingly hard to tell apart
anyway).

No Jerry, I'm not an economist, though I guess technically speaking you
aren't either, since you never did finish that diss, so you lack the
precious credential of a doctorate. I'm a journalist. In fact, I'm proud of
being a journalist and not an economist, since economics, even in many of
its Marxian manifestations, is a debased discipline. I am, however, proud
to call myself a Marxist, even if I don't meet your standards of purity.
But if I'd written a book that matched your standards of purity, it
wouldn't be in its fourth printing.

Doug





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