The "Social", Keynesian Bourgeois - Robert Reich

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

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Robert Reich is correct, Americans are not 'living beyond their means', their economic system, however, is.
We certainly are in a crisis because American Capitalists have stagnated Workers' real wages since the 1970's and thrown debt at the country to stimulate enough demand to buy the rising amount of products.

But, Reich is wrong that the solution is merely to tax the wealthy.
Wages stopped rising in the 70's crisis for a reason: it was a crisis of profitability. It is not in the interests of competing Profit-seekers to pay their workers more to buy the produced stuff. Capitalism is the Crisis.

In light of this, how should we Communists in the US stand to these social-bourgeois persons, those like Reich who merely advocate higher taxes? I believe that while we should definitely reiterate our opposing position that Capitalism is the problem, we should not treat all bourgeois as the same Bourgeois.
Taking into account that this is not merely a crisis of demand, but an intrinsic capitalist crisis of low rates of profitability; even if these "Left" Bourgeois were to take power, their Keynesian approach would not suffice to solve capitalist crisis; with each month of their governance over the capitalist state, our theories would through practical and hard experience prove superior to theirs.

If ever the populist social-bourgeoisie were to take capitalist state power, then we Communists would have to organize to build a mass opposition party, ready to fight an inevitable right-wing bourgeois reaction to a continually unsolvable capitalist crisis, and provide a concrete socialist alternative.

Until then we have to work on creating proper organs of the working class.

[cyu]

It is not in the interests of competing Profit-seekers to pay their workers more to buy the produced stuff.

Agreed. While Henry Ford may have believed this in years past, this is the stuff they believe now: http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2007/01/08/plutonomics/

The only thing preventing too much blatant conspicuous consumption among the wealthy these days, is basically fear of revolution.

Taxation will always be merely a band-aid on a systemic problem. The only real solution (or at least the only workable one I've come across so far) is to not have the ownership class be in control of the means of production at all.

As for Reich himself, it's hard for me to judge. If you're a public figure, what you're "allowed" to say is always limited. What he says and what he believes may be the same, or they may be different. Public figures say things when they judge the climate of discourse is ready for what they're about to say next.