David,
What is it about scientific materialism that you find at fault? What do
you mean when you say I hold a "reified" history? Are you arguing that
collective behavior is not qualitatively different from individual
behavior? Why is the idea of elite management so unbelievable for you? Do
you deny that the IMF imposes structural adjustment on countries in debt
crisis? Do you deny that Bretton Woods, the United Nations, the World
Bank, the World Trade Organization represent planning at the global level
and implement policies that affect populations? Why did or do these
organizations exist? When the board of directors for a mammoth TNC makes a
decision about where to locate production, you do not think this is
planned? Is there no complex of organizations moving at the global level?
How do all these trade deals get done? GATT? NAFTA? Do you not believe
that things that happen in the world are objective reality? You have
argued that the "processes of history are ex post facto analytical
constructs"; how can the past be if the analytical constructs that make up
the processes of history occur at a point temporally subsequent to the
past? Isn't this akin to saying that we must first analytically construct
a tree before a tree can be a material reality? Is history even important?
In your view, what is a social democrat? Is Jenny your secretary? And if
you can't find your dialectic, you may borrow mine.
Peace,
Andrew Austin