successor as President of S Africa) complained to his
ex-SACP comrades of the unreasonableness of making
socialist demands at a time 'when our financial markets, like
others in other parts of the world, are afflicted by great
turbulence [and] the whole world is gravely concerned about
the Japanese and other East Asian economies and their
impact on the world economy,' *Insurrection* publishes Michael
Perelman's seminal extended essay on just why markets love
to go pear-shaped.
Michael Perelman writes:
"...With the collapse of the Soviet Union, capitalism now
proudly proclaims its ultimate triumph. Formerly socialist
states frantically scramble to remake themselves as market
economies. In the United States, everything left of the
political center has all but disappeared from the national
political dialogue. Markets are now supplanting virtually
every kind of service that the state previously supplied.
Public schools, public prisons, public streets and even police
work are being privatized.
Even so, I am confident that capitalism's victory will be
temporary. The market system is so familiar and our
institutional memories so short, we tend to forget even if we
knew in the first place that capitalism is, by its very
nature, an inherently unstable system. Capital has enjoyed
moments of triumph before, but they have always been followed by a
subsequent disaster...."
The URL is:
http://www.geocities.com/~comparty/content1.htm