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This is a fairly long presentation by Dr. David Harvey given at the Penn Humanities Forum in Nov. of last year. He gives a very good history of the situation in Europe as well as here. What lead up to it, why it was inevitable and the obvious outcome. And as the title suggests, why the end of capitalism is not only likely but also necessary. [h/t to SouthernDragon for turning me on to this as well]
If you watched the whole thing through you will see how Dr. Harvey says that a centrally managed zero growth economy is necessary. Before you ask how this could be done remember that during WWII that is exactly what we had. We also had some of the most technological innovation and advancement during those three years. And the remnants of this during the cold war years of the 1950s through the 1970s was nearly as great. Dr. Harvey’s website.
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One of the biggest problems we have is that there are still a lot of people who either consciously or subconsciously still believe in the Fantasy of capitalism. Who still insist on playing the game the way TPTB have set it up. That things will “Get back to normal” if only _______________.
They fail to realize that THIS is the normal condition and that the previous decades or time up until the 1970s were the aberration and anomaly. And that they have a snowball’s chance in hell of ever “making it big”. Mostly the upper 20% and until they themselves are sleeping under some underpass, this is not likely to change.
Everything that Bush and Obama has done as is doing to to hide this economic reality from the top 20% so they go on with their little fantasy. The financial equivalent of soma.
Harvey’s books are even better. If you haven’t already take a look at Capital Volume One and, as a good primer for what’s been happening here for the past thirty-one years, the Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/index.htm
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/index.htm
Another good read is Michael Hudson’s Superimperialism.
http://www.amazon.com/Super-Imperialism-Origin-Fundamentals-Dominanc/dp/0745319890/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1329943517&sr=8-1
This is the perfect answer to those who say “well the reason we had such a booming economy during and after the war is because Europe, Japan and Russia lay in ruins and couldn’t compete with us”. (Of course, they ignore that all of those places that compete with us all have much better safety nets than we do.)
Strong tariffs and the lack of free trade agreements that we have today probably helped our economy in those days, as well.
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I think thriving in a zero growth economy also requires much tighter immigration control. But I find that most who advocate for strong social safety nets also advocate for relatively unchecked immigration in a country that’s already immigrant generous by world standards.
President Demetris Christofias, a member of the AKEL party, the communist party of Cyprus, is the only communist leader of any member nation of the EU.
Perhaps a few more would change a few counties’ policies.
Highly recommended and hopefully front paged.
Not likely.
But thanks anyway.
Glad to see you mention AKEL. The KKE and PAME are leading the struggles in Greece which is seldom mentioned.
I find the advances made by Cheddi Jagan in Guyana also worth studying.
Gee, I hope we don’t need a world war to bring all this about.
Good point.
> the end of capitalism is not only likely but also necessary
Make that “inevitable.”
The oligarchs have already reached this conclusion and are decisively acting on it. Next stop: feudalism.
60 degrees in NYC today (Feb 23). Climate change is gonna make these other changes happen, real fast.
Actually I’m beginning to think that the trees were a bad idea.
I know nobody read this much, but even the folks at Davos this year were a mite worried about the existing version of capitalism, though they didn’t admit that it’s really Lemon Socialism at work…
But the Global Risks Report mentioned risks of dystopia from the masses, and so Davos had a ‘Remodeling Capitalism’ workshop. All of it was pretty hilarious in the end, at least if ya love irony (I do).
Never did hear how many attended that talk; most were prolly over with Chelsea Clinton. ;o)
http://my.firedoglake.com/wendydavis/2012/01/25/davos-wef-global-risks-2012-report-and-side-splitting-hilarity/
I have been trying to get this across myself for a while. These people know damn well what’s going on and the loss of their power from the decline and fall of the capitalists – at their own hands, mind you – scares the piss out of them.
Which to a large extent explains a lot of their nutty behavior. For scared people behave in an irrational manner. Quite often against their own interests.