>Marx described a time when the capitalist class was revolutionising the
>means of production, organising an objective mass of workers, and
>promoting a particualr version of social progress. The character of the
>challenge to capitalism was necessarily shaped by its opponents. It does
>not follow that the social conflicts of the present are of the same
>character.
I recognize here on of the LM themes, the capitalists' loss of nerve. There's more than a little truth to this in an era of multibillion dollar bailouts and generalized coupon-clipping. But the capitalists are still revolutionizing production - the industrialization of Latin America and Southeast Asia, the development of outsourcing techniques (replacing internalized production), the attack on unions and the welfare state, and a massive ideological offensive against even the most tepid forms of collectivism. Jeremy Rifkin (who always has to be fact-checked, and I haven't checked this one) cited a late-1970s Harvard Business Review survey of CEOs finding most expected that capitalism's days were numbered; just 20 years later, it's impossible to imagine such a thing. So there's still some revolution left in capitalism.
Doug