Rob,
I agree with this institutionalism. No news there for those who saw me accused
of beign an apologist of finance capital for saying similar things.
BUT...
In opposition to the capitalist system of which politicians are often only
playtools, there is a society organized on other principles which can and does
resist. Since I can't see the capitalist system solving the environmental
problem on its own before it's MUCH too late, I have to imagine resistance
coming from somewhere else.
Mark has been ranting for a while on how capitalism needs expansion. I have
yet to see sound economic reasoning or empirical evidence for this even if I
can hardly deny that it has a tendency to expand. You're including waste in this
expansion. Fine. But I argue that the beast can be tamed for there are other
relations down here than economic relations. We don't have to wait for the
"bourgeois" to get their act together. This would be Bunzl-esque. I'll dare to
say that not only the working class has an autonomy (Tahir, don't scream) but
that the whole society has an autonomy as to facing environmental issues.
We aren't talking about alienation of class consciousness or about the rate of
profit. We're talking about people's food and bodies getting alienated, about
widespread antibiotic resistance and increasing number of cancers. We're
talking about the real infrastructure (not the arrogant wannabe economic
infrastructure) beign wrecked, suffering blows from all directions. We're talking
about capitalist trying to patent living organisms. This is not simply
"commodification of the formerly ex-market transactions". This means war,
and not class war but a war between life and death. Expect stronger reactions
from society to those issues than to the one of surplus value. The reactions
might not be savory to us, but I'll bet you there will be some pretty powerful
ones.
And that's without an ecological collapse under the pressure of
overpopulation... The reactions to that one might be even less savory but are
even more unavoidable.
As you say, in the past to save ourselves we changed the rules of the game.
We can do that again. Economic relations are social relations and thus are
relations between *us*. We can change them. Down with TINA!
As to what's on the cards... hey! You never know. The dealer might have been
cheating. :-)
[End of rant... WARNING ! Technical hairsplitting will begin...]
>There is little to direct corporate capitalism
>these days but the institutional shareholders who value their investments
>purely on their short to medium term capacity to extract surplus value
>compared to that of the alternatives. And it's hard to see much hope in
>that until the consequent mergers attain their logical culmination - the
>mega-monopolistic technopoly.
First, it should be obvious that most shareholders are not concerned about
surplus value at all. They're concerned with speculation on asset prices, or in
other words with the inner working of the casino on the top of the bubble. The
amounts extracted are unrelated to the surplus value produced. How can it be
so? Because the gains are not truely realized but reinvested. They just have
too much money on their hands to spend it anyway.
As to the mega-mergers, the regulators would have to allow them first.
Julien
_______________________________________________
Crashlist resources: http://website.lineone.net/~resource_base
To change your options or unsubscribe go to:
http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/crashlist
