Jim Kelly at MHCA Forum

From: "Andrew Phelps" <starfish@northcoast.com>

Sender: s-acc@yahoogroups.com

Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2012 23:26:08 -0800

Subject: [s-acc] political economy

Hi

As a person with more than 40 years experience as a grassroots activist/community organizer, I know that the "political economy" of one's critical overview is key to doing sound and sensible work.

Tonite I attended a KPFA-sponsored event where Richard Wolff, emeritus professor of economics, Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst, and self-styled "Marxist economist," spoke to more than 800 people. The title of his talk was "The Problem is Capitalism: The Solution is Democracy at Work." For me, that was "Political Economy 101."

I tried to ask a question that would put forward the "behavior object" problematic which I find unresolved by progressive activism, still, at this point. What I wrote was:

As is the usual way of KPFA, my question was brushed aside by the person moderating the questions. Dr. Wolff for his part made a comment about how in the "capitalist reorganization" of the 17th century, [which can be googled under "Cromwell's rebellion"] some person had to "cut the head of the King." I thought to myself, "That was General Gough. After the restoration of Wm. and Mary, he fled to America. He ended up on the frontier in that Puritan land. My direct ancestor Rev. John Russell (founder of the nearby town of Hadley) housed him in the basement."

It is not that Dr. Wolff would know that. It's that my lived experience of political economy took my mind to the North Hadley gravesite of my parents, from which one can view in the distance the towers of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.