As I pointed out in my comment, there is absolutely no indication that the ruling class of today is willing to act in its own long-term interests. If serious financial re-regulation is the only way to avoid a new financial meltdown, why is it so hard for Wall Street to back serious reform? If “fracking” will unleash carcinogens in the water supply that will cause cancer for the rich and poor alike, why won’t the billionaires who live on Park Avenue do something to protect our waterways?
full: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2011/04/04/left-forum-2011-part-three/ --- From: Nikolai Bukharin, "Economic Theory of the Leisure Class", 1927 The third characteristic trait of the rentier, as of all the bourgeoisie in general, is the fear of the proletariat, the fear of impending social catastrophes. The rentier is not capable of looking forward. His philosophy of life may be resolved into the maxim: “Enjoy the moment.” Carpe diem; his horizon does not extend beyond the present; if he thinks of the future, he thinks of it only after the pattern of the present; in fact, he cannot imagine a period in which persons of his type will not be collecting interest on paper securities; his eyes close in horror at such a possibility; he hides his face at the prospect of coming things and tries not to see in the present the germs of the future; his thinking is thoroughly unhistorical. Quite different is the psychology of the proletariat, which presents none of these elements of conservative thought. The class struggle, as it unfolds, confronts the proletariat with the task of surmounting the existing social-economic order; the proletariat is not only not interested in the maintenance of the social status quo, but it is interested precisely in its destruction; the proletariat lives chiefly in the future; even the problems of the present are evaluated by it from the point of view of the future. Therefore its mode of thought may be declared outright — and particularly its scientific thought — as distinctly and pronouncedly dynamic in character. This is the third antithesis between the psychology of the rentier and that of the proletariat. full: http://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1927/leisure-economics/introduction.htm _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
