Late Capitalism
The stock market seems wildly exuberant considering the overall global situation but it is just this irrationality that best exemplifies the period. "Late capitalism has an irreversibly destructive logic" says Walden Bello, pointing to the failed policy prescriptions trotted out to counter-act the crises of over accumulation. These "kinder, gentler" globalizations recognize the damage of the neoliberal "Washington Consensus" but don't solve the inherant contradictions and so the Band Plays On! Bigger Mergers, Bigger Bombs, Bigger Yachts!
Meanwhile, down at the Union Club in Missoula Montana, the Wobblies are patiently and diligently organizing for the day society finally looks into the mirror and sees nothing. We (our community) have a great speaker coming on the 18th to talk about the uprising in Oaxaca and a conference coming up later in the month for a discussion on New possibilities for organizing labor, including getting rid of the bosses! Meanwhile Ann Coulter is showing some leg on the Today show and flipping her blond mane while cracking wise, the traders on the floor are furiously buying and selling their promises, hopes and fears and the distant rumbling continues.
I have been trying to work through Jameson's Late Marxism word by word but it is heavier than wet concrete. Mandels Late Capitalism is far more accessible.
Despite the hegemony of neoliberalism, an examination of the different aspects of 'the new world order' hardly warrants confidence in the systems stability.Decisive economic events and class conflicts loom over the horizon. Got to go ,it's getting late.
posted by troutsky @ 9:47 AM
23 comments
23 Comments:
Decisive economic events and class conflicts loom over the horizon.,
Yeah, right.
I suggest you visit Barcelona, Santiago de Chile, Dublin, Shanghai, Bengalore, Budapest and Dubai before writing epitaphs to capitalism.
The only system going down the drain is Communism, along with rusting oil rigs in Venezuela, crumbling buildings in Pyonyang and rotting shantytowns in Harare...
Speaking of capitalism, I haven't heard a peep out of the stir going round wall street about the impending possibility that someone stood to make $2 billion if a major disaster occurred by Sept 15th or so. Is there a follow up on that anywhere, or was that a little more experimental mind control while profiting on reaction to the rumor?
I suggest you do the same sonia, only try leaving the shopping and financial districts and head to the outskirts.In your dream world of a "rising tide lifting all boats" you need never think about the violence, neglect, alienation,pollution and poverty which is reproducing itself at unprecedented rates. Try Mike Davis' Planet of Slums without the rose colored glasses.
Greg, Im clueless, was this some sort of wager?
I think this economy is much more fragile than we are led to believe. I don't trust the DOW to tell me what is going on, on the street.
Sonia is right. Capitalism is stable, at least in comparison to Communism, Socialism or even feudalism.
One of Marx's biggest embarrassments was that his predictions about which countries would go Communist first were precisely backwards. Capitalistic societies like the U.S. and Britain continued as they were, while the feudal countries like Russian and China joined in the revolution.
Just because capitalism is flawed doesn't mean that the proletariat is going to rise up in revolt. As long as we all have Wal-Mart for cheap goods and the hope of material progress (the American dream), capitalism will stick around.
The only system going down the drain is Communism, along with rusting oil rigs in Venezuela, crumbling buildings in Pyonyang and rotting shantytowns in Harare...
Those are all capitalist countries.
The stock market is stable only if viewed in $US denomination. When compared to everything else it is sinking.
The Fed is disguising the collapse with more cheap funny money which can only increase core inflation while productive growth continues to drop below the margin of error.
GDP growth figures have included foreign capital input for several years now (a trick to mask the gutting of US industry), so now that capital flight is a probability, expect the worst.
There is a looming catastrophe as trillions of dollars of trade paper starts to become due for rollover.
Trout, from what I gathered from the early September buzz was that some convoluted purchase or put order or whatever kind of deal one may make on the stock market someone leaked and at least five bloggers remarked about how someone was wagering his several hundred thousand dollars against a chance to make $2 billion if another 9/11 size disaster occurred before 9/15 or thereabout.
Like so many MSM messages of terror alert, it disappeared with no further word after predictions proved overblown. You may scoff all you will about black ops and government conspiracy, I read you as among the neutralized because they have a category for you — moon-bat wing-nut 911 Truthers bother them much more. I see the heat being turned up under the pot in which the frog of US gullibility has been boiling for many decades. Even the accepted, blatantly criminal ineptitude and genocide of King George and Dick-tater seems like just another test of our state of hypnosis which we passed with flying colors, if you are being graded by the legal system in this country. Hell folks keep on voting even though their hasn't been two parties in forever.
I think you guys are mistaking the capitalistic nonsense we endure in the first world for capitalism. Von Hayek may have been right, but no one listens to him anymore.
It's not as if the iron law of supply and demand, that upon which capitalism is founded, is going to go away anytime soon. Or ever for that matter.
Ren Did you break the news to Kim Jong "mentally" Ill that he isn't a commie.
Greggra&gar
You need to get off the pot and stop wearing tin foil hats. Stick with Bill and Ted movies and Scooby Doo.
The market forces of supply and demand were implemented by the state. Demand is largely manufactured.
I can't even watch a movie in a movie theater without having advertisements shoved up my ass.
as Karl Polanyi argued in the early 40s, laissez-faire was planned and social protectionism was spontaneous.
The market forces of supply and demand were implemented by the state. Demand is largely manufactured.
Wrong, wrong, wrong! The market forces are built into the very nature of things. Take a look at a prison camp. Cigarettes, or something similar, becomes the currency of choice, and the market plays out according to the rule of supply and demand.
If the State had anything to do with it, the Commies in Russia could have come up with something better than a third-world dictatorship.
Wiser, I hope you can appreciate the irony of your choice of examples, ie a prison camp! Just as we mistake the "capitalistic nonsense we endure in the first world for capitalism" you mistake true socialism for the comunistic nonsense they endured in the East Bloc.But let's not go there, let's stick to theory and compare how each stacks up.Yes, to the degree Marx, lenin or Trotsky tried to "predict" things these prophesies failed. Does this negate the foundations on which the analysis is built? The other question which must be answered is whether the status quo is sustainable?Defenders of capitalism are required to explain how or provide alternative.
Cringing, doesn't the fall of the dollar mean China is holding less and less value each week? Are they actually fine with this?
Beak, how is John Bolton dealing with successful negotiating with the evil empire? Should we send Chris Hill to Iran?
Wiser, are you saying that Capitalist countries are like a prison? I wouldn't go that far....
Surely market capitalism was invented and injected into society, with force. How else do you get a rural, self-sufficient society to move to the city and sell themselves?
How else do you get a rural, self-sufficient society to move to the city and sell themselves?
...and/or, how do you get so many to buy useless crap in lieu of things they definitely need to survive?
Careful planning and marketing Wiser.
"Cringing, doesn't the fall of the dollar mean China is holding less and less value each week? Are they actually fine with this?"
Yes it does. Which is the bind they are in, but also the bind that the US public is in (as opposed to the Wall St cartel).
It will be a matter of who blinks first I suspect. The Chinese may well come to a point where they see that crashing the US$ is the only way to limit US military aggression and stop the implementation of full spectrum dominance.
The communist party leadership may be arch capitalists, but they are also nationalist and unlikely to go along with the global enslavement plan.
They may well see that they are better off taking a financial hit now, which they can trade out of by bouying the euro as the new reserve currency, rather than waiting for the US to defend the dollar with nukes later on.
Iran could well be the catalyst that tips their thinking, though they don't seem all that worried by Us economic belligerence at this point.
They've given all your blusterers the bird in recent months.
Troutsky
I have posted on Iran many times. All the US has to do is wait. Iran is growing weaker every day and in roughly twelve years it will have to import oil.
An airstrike or two is the probable extent of actions.
Wiser, are you saying that Capitalist countries are like a prison? I wouldn't go that far....
Ha! Sometimes I lapse into unintentional humor.
I used the prison camp example because it was something I recall reading somewhere that demonstrated the laws of supply and demand outside of a government controlled construct.
Yes, you could claim that the prison was like the government, but the prison wasn't rationing cigarettes, etc. to mold the local economy; it was more that the limited availability of resources was indicative of scarcity: that which drives the iron laws of supply and demand.
Yes, to the degree Marx, lenin or Trotsky tried to "predict" things these prophesies failed. Does this negate the foundations on which the analysis is built?
Only insofar as it shows that when controlled economies attempt to circumvent the aforesaid iron laws, they inevitably fail.
The other question which must be answered is whether the status quo is sustainable?
It probably isn't. Nothing is. "This too shall pass." But the laws of supply and demand remain, and since capitalism recognizes this at some level, it is likely to stick around in some form. Capitalism is more sound and stable than socialism. Whether not it is more benevolent is another matter entirely.
" Capitalism is more sound and stable than socialism"
Sounds like another religious leap of faith to me. Post WW2 economic history doesn't support that view.
If the US economy crumbles, as is more than a distinct short to medium term possibility now, those socialist Northern European socialists will be even further ahead. I daresay Venezuela will hang in there too.
Sounds like another religious leap of faith to me. Post WW2 economic history doesn't support that view.
Perhaps. Which economic system do you say is most stable?
Clearly, a mixed economy where the government runs noneconomic goods and services and commerce does it's own thing within it's natural sector.
Mixing the two is a recipe for fascism via monopoly capitalism.
Clearly, a mixed economy where the government runs noneconomic goods and services and commerce does it's own thing within it's natural sector.
Judging from Europe, this results (eventually) in populations which can't replace themselves. Now that I think about it, feudalism seems the most stable, though I'm not certain we should go back to a feudal system.
Oh please. The birth rate canard?
I'm not going to even bother with that.
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