I find this very interesting. The FT also has a full-page interview with Noami Klein covering her book with the usual snide remarks about her views.
I think it speaks volumes of the deep insecurity the high priests of capitalism currently feel about their mode of production. They wouldn't need these hit jobs (using second-class Blackwater-type journalists) on Klein or any other critic of capitalism if they were as cocksure as they were back in the late 1980s or early 1990s when -- if I remember correctly -- History officially Ended. But now it's the Age of Turbulence. Of course, they will be safe without broader working-class unity and organization. But they care deeply about the Battle of Ideas. That's where it all begins. And I'll use the last paragraphs of my posting to plug again David Laibman's _Deep History_. It's a good starting point for people, even those without a Marxist intellectual upbringing, to reflect anew on the big picture. By the way, back in those times of euphoria and champagne toasts dedicated to the eternity of capitalism that accompanied the disintegration of the Soviet Union, David wrote: "I am confident as never before in the soundness of the progressive, scientific, and humanist project in social science, and in politics; and in the ability of humanity to apply its enormous creative potential in overcoming obstacles to human development -- whether those obstacles stem from the external environment, from the powerful weight of responsibility in the deployment of modern technologies, or from archaic and irresponsible social arrangements. With all the clamor about the 'death of Marx' that is currently fashionable, there is no greater testament to the enduring importance of the Marxist tradition, in both scholarship and politics, than the fact that questions about continuing progress in the face of the monumental problems facing us today cannot even be posed without confronting that tradition and incorporating it into the quest for solutions." (Value, Technical Change, and Crisis: Explorations in Marxist Economic Theory.) I cannot think of any other Weltanschauung capable of dispelling the illusion of the epoch as that associated to the name of Karl Marx.
