CONGRATULATIONS, PATRIOTS
There was a great Super Bowl last night. New England beat Carolina 32-29 at the last minute. It almost became the first Super Bowl ever to go into overtime. Paul Wassenich and I were rooting for Carolina, which made an impressive comeback to tie the game with one minute to go after being down 21-10. A few spectacular plays! But the field goal finished them off with four seconds left. Still, great game.

WORLD SOCIAL FORUM continued...
It seems that the gathering is attracting a lot of Dalits, the Indian caste we usually call untouchables. The Dalit presence is illustrative of something, namely it is a problem that is clearly not a result of "the system" (of global capitalism, that is). This injustice is rooted in ancient Indian traditions. India's traditions have remained much more intact than those of China, which was swept by a Communist revolution.

Subversive thought of the day: does Communism work? It sounds absurd after the Soviet bloc stagnated economically and collapsed, and grotesque after the tens of millions murdered or starved by Stalin and Mao. But things are different now: now, China and Vietnam are the world's fastest-growing economies. Of course, it's conventional to say that that's because they're really just capitalist now, but that's not quite right. If capitalist, they practice a very eccentric form of capitalism. And the political system is still Communist, and you can't act like Communism is part of it. Maybe the most fitting label would be Communist capitalism, and the response to those who say this is contradictory is that China is proving that it is not. Anyway, what are the traits of Communist capitalism. First, bloody revolution to put an end to feudalism and unproductive, hereditary inequality. Second, a strong state (not likely to be secured by democratic procedures) led by a disciplined party. Third, an instrumental approach to property rights: respect them enough to give people an incentive to work hard, but don't make them sacred or absolute. Fourth, real economic sovereignty, meaning no freely convertible currency. Of course, all this would contradict the WSF's commitments to "real democracy" and the absence of "domination." But any remote realizable program will have be less quixotic than the Charter or Principles. I wouldn't put it past them.

Here's an interview with a group participating in WSF (I think). Still old-style opposition to "globalization." Yawn. But seriously, it's disturbing that people still think that opposing imperialism and advocating democracy is a coherent point of view. For decades, the spread of democracy has taken place mostly under the aegis of either British or American power. These people will remain stupid as long as they keep attributing wholly bad intentions to the US, the IMF, and the World Bank. That is just not the way the world is, and efforts to make sense of the world with those assumptions will, like Marxism, fail.