Dear bon moun,
Great post. Don't lurk anymore; participate, please!
I am generally in agreement with your assessment of the potential for
dragging down capitalism. I have been asking the crashlist for a while now
to describe the mechanism that would do it -- so far no serious takers.
In the spirit of ...
>Just a few random reactions. Fire away.<
.. here is where I disagree with you ... <g>
You write:
>Is there any
>chance at all of stopping it without socialism? Not a chance in hell.
I do not object to the attempt to use socialism to "stop it". (really,
honestly!) I object to thinking it's the only way, IF that's what you are
saying. There are several ways of "stopping it" , all of them mostly
unpalatable, and some of them worse choices than socialism. (Hypothetical:
Picture some kind of Global Fundamentalist Islamic regime. It could also
"stop it".) Robert Heilbroner, in his "Inquiry into the Human Prospect"
predicted that as the crash gets closer (I am paraphrasing) the most likely
successor to what we have now is a brutal totalitarian state. I hate that I
agree with him, but I do.
IMHO, it is NOT adherance to a kind of governmental system which will stop
it. ANY system will do, be it Feudalism, Technocracy, Socialism, small "c"
capitalism, or a host of other "isms", even a combination of "isms". It
doesn't matter what vehicle(s) we use, what matters is the road we take, and
the way we drive.
What IS important is attitude. Attitude. We could run all the way back to
the Greeks and their "philosopher king" for the truth of this point.
Julien alluded to this the other day when he posted that we need to pay
attention to leadership.
A simple change of mind among enough people and quietly the job of "stopping
it" could be done (I can hear you muttering "Pollyanna", and a number of
less kind epithets.) That's the way the Industrial Revolution functioned,
which had no leader and no single political nor single economic system in
its beginnings; yet it changed attitudes around the world (relax Julien et
al, I'm not advocating that kind of program, just showing an example of
another way it happened, once upon a time.)
In the end what you, bon moun, posted supports this:
"When these peripheral crises sharpen the economic, social, political
contradictions at the core, and particualrly in the US, to the point that
certain sectors increase their militancy and begin to assert themselves in
organized ways. ..."
Those crises -- views of the abyss -- are what will educate, enlighten, and
change attitudes. This is what will wake people up to their peril. It may be
too late, but that is ALL that will "stop" it. All of us -- Marxists,
Socialists, and capitalist bastards alike -- can work to point out the bars
of the cage we are trapped in. We can work to insure that the facts get out,
and that the options get reviewed. I think that is what this diverse
coming-together here on Crashlist is about, and I am glad to add my voice to
the dissonance.
Thank you, bon moun, for providing a review of the cold hard facts of our
political options. Thanks for holding all our feet to the fire.
I would feel better if between "economic" and "political" you had placed
"environmental", for from my biased and unpopular "neo-malthusian" viewpoint
the ecological imperatives are rapidly beginning to outweigh those others.
But I will just pretend you included the biospheric variables as well. <g>
Thanks for the dance,
Tom
"They counted on being able to punish them into being better, on being able
to inspire them into being better, on being able to educate them into being
better. And after ten thousand years of trying to improve people-- without a
trace of success -- they wouldn't dream of turning their attention
elsewhere." - My Ishmael, Daniel Quinn
"We put the egg of civilization in one basket woven from the fibers
of virtual reality and suspended by an electrical cord." --- Allen
Comstock
"It's a hell of a thing, killin' a man. You take away all he's got,
... and all he's ever gonna have."
"Well, ... looks like they had it coming."
"We all have it coming, kid."
--Unforgiven
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