> On 16-Nov-12 17:19, Julio Huato wrote: >> Very useful documentary on inequality: http://video.pbs.org/video/2300849486 >> >> Free to watch until 11/19/2012.
Watched it last night. It's an excellent complement to Inside Job. My only criticism is that it shares the widespread liberal (in some cases, leftist) misconception that the extremes of wealth and poverty and the arrogant greed and insensitivity of the rich and powerful are a fairly recent phenomenon resulting from stepped-up capitalist organization and lobbying and the wave of financial deregulation at the end of the century. The implicit assumption is that before then capitalists were good corporate citizens with a strong sense of responsibilty for those less fortunate than themselves. The film portrays the reptilian Stephen Schwartzman and Koch brothers as the face of contemporary capitalism. But not all capitalists are as sleazy, and all capitalists then and now have equally and ruthlessly pursued their interests. But so much historical memory has been lost or rewritten that this broader understanding may be expecting too much. What did change at the end of the century was the balance of class forces. This profound shift, rather than sudden appearance of a generation of Gordon Gekkos, is what underlies today's "neoliberal" capitalist excesses. The regulated welfare state and modest reduction in inequality were the the product of an expanding industrial economy and labour shortages which produced strong trade unions able to place some restraint on unbridled capitalism. By the same token, the assault on the welfare state and widening inequality are a consequence of the abrupt decline of the labour and socialist movement under the combined pressure of new communications, transportation, and production technologies which have allowed capital to shed workers at home and tap huge new reserves of cheaper labour overseas. Politically, the unexpected restoration of capitalism in the fSU and China also discredited left-wing ideas everywhere, and we're only now beginning to see their revival under the impact! of crisis in the older capitalist economies. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
