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this libertarian thing would be debilitating entirely in a situation of crisis. if you couple that with arbitrary infotainment (automobile manufacturing is heavily regulated? on what planet?)....well, there's no need to go on.
to say the obvious, there is *no* strict separation between the spheres of economic, political and social activity when you get down to it--the political order under capitalism derives its legitimacy from the regular functioning of the economic, which in turn leans on the social---so economic failures that impact too heavily on the social world are in themselves political problems. given that, states have little choice but to intervene---and if they do not, that is in turn a political action--neoliberals, despite what they say, knew this full well, and if you think about, say, structural adjustment, constraining state action was a political calculation imposed by the north on the south for particular reasons of political expediency from the northern/imperial viewpoint.
anyway, that a state more or less has to intervene when things pass a certain point is given--*how* they do it is not. the bush people have chosen to encourage concentration as a way to "deal with" this crisis. i see them as functionally boxed in to this option as a consequence of their seeming inability to think of the state as a viable actor in the economy and the endless series of ad hoc pseudo-measures.
i think that anyone who is paying attention is just hoping that things hold more or less together until february...but it's not at all given that this will occur. the options obama will have to reverse the concentration-as-tactic moves that the bush people have allowed seems to me minimal--but changing the overall political frame that orients actions is entirely necessary and doable. this is why i am concerned by the number of centrists in obama's cabinet so far---i think an aggressive break with neoliberalism is a prerequisite for coherent action (both in this situation and in general)--i am not sure if the personnel is an indication of policy logic or if it is more an indication of a mode of governing that is neutral as to policy...we'll have to see.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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