Re: understanding Ed (fwd)

i TOTALLY agree, Alan

best,

Mine

>COMMENT from Alan Spector:

>To Doug (& others),

>What you left out of your otherwise incisive point, is the REALITY that
>the
>big capitalists FULLY UNDERSTAND the FAILURE of the Market System, which
>is
>why THEY VERY HEAVILY RELY ON THE STATE, ON BIG GOVERNMENT  1) TO
>SUBSIDIZE
>THEIR ECONOMIC WELL-BEING; 2) STABILIZE THE INSTABILITY CAUSED BY THEIR
>SHORT-SIGHTED GREED; AND 3) ENFORCE THROUGH THE COURTS, POLICE, AND
>MILITARY
>THEIR POLITICAL CONTROL OVER THE POPULATION.

>From zoning codes to selective enforcement of the law;

>from lobbying to supporting anti-working class terrorism in other
>countries
>via the CIA;

>from the privitization of profitable government enterprises so that
>corporations can make a private profit from the economies of scale
>inherent
>in some aspects of collectivity--to the nationalization of those
>enterprises
>which failed because the private interests quickly sucked whatever was
>profitable from those enterprises and then abandoned the inefficient,
>unprofitable aspects of it for society to have to maintain;

>from from tax breaks, government subsidies, outright grants, free
>transfer
>of research information, and inflated government contracts, to full scale
>invasions of other countries, to the jailing of striking workers and the
>purchase of endowed chairs at public universities -- in all these things
>and
>a million more the capitalists know that they need big government.  But
>when
>the big government is employed on behalf of the capitalists, it is not
>Marxism, it moves towards the Corporate State, or Fascism.

>But how to get working class people to accept this?  They have to
>critique
>those parts of big government which might return to the working class
>some
>of our wages  (ie health care, etc.) -- and call that "socialism which is
>destroying individual initiativie."   For that, they have the Ayn Rand
>Fan
>Club, some members of which seem to be on WSN,  extolling in broad
>philosophical strokes the virtues of pure freedom while naively ignoring
>the
>absolutely essential role that use of BIG GOVERNMENT plays in keeping
>capitalism afloat.

>Well, not quite. There are a few acknowledgement, such as this from J
>(Randy) Groves:




>