[Marxism] The elephant in the budgetary room

[Aaron Aarons]

>Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2008 23:51:27 -0400
>From: "Ruthless Critic of All that Exists" <ok.president+marxml at gmail.com>
>
>On Thu, Sep 25, 2008 at 11:38 PM, Aaron Aarons
><aaron at mylists.fastmail.fm> wrote:
>> Am I the only one who notices that both these protest calls ignore what is an even larger, and far more harmful, expenditure of money by the U.S. government. Do I have to say what it is?
>
>As a matter of strategy, it is probably best not to drag the war issue in. Even some workers who support the war are willing to oppose the bailout. Why alienate them?  Best to keep focused on the single issue and build as large a movement as possible.

As if the size of a movement is all that matters! Even if you can get more people out in the streets by sticking with a social-patriotic, economist program, how can such a movement that ignores the most important aspect of the U.S. state apparatus do anything to subvert that apparatus?

And, when Obama says he may have to delay some of the meager social spending that he's promised, shouldn't we point out that he hasn't said anything about delaying spending for a larger military and for more troops in Afghanistan?

While I wouldn't lose any sleep -- except in celebration! -- if a mob of angry middle-class/working-class people without anti-imperialist consciousness were to string up Paulson or burn down a few banks or Federal Reserve buildings, I maintain that the job of anti-imperialists/anti-capitalists is to use the present crisis to advance anti-imperialist/anti-capitalist consciousness among a modest segment of the U.S. population, not to demagogically build a movement on the basis of appealing to the self-interested side of the actively or passively pro-imperialist consciousness that exists.

 - Aaron