>However, a slight disagreement with P.S. 2. Oil shortages, economic
>disaster and global warming ( caused by the capitalist system) ALONE
>will not produce insurrection. However, if capitalism didn't do
>something horrible like these things, there would be no reason to
>get rid of it. So, these shortages and disasters are necessary but
>not sufficient to insurrection and revolution. Their negative
>effects on people are fundamentally necessary to making people turn
>against the system and to making abolition of capitalism rational.
>
>Reference to some kinds of serious problems must be part of the
>appeal for revolution.
I think references to a better future are a more important part of the appeal for revolution. Hard times - economically or ecologically - could just make people nastier, intensifying the war of each against all.
I've quoted this before, but why not quote it again?
>I think it must be conceded that it is possible to create a society
>in which the response to market failure is not a swing to socialism,
>but an exacerbation of individual efforts to stay ahead by making
>and spending yet more money.
> Does the public health service have long waiting lists and
>inadequate facilities? Buy private insurance. Has public transport
>broken down? Buy a car for each member of the family. Is air
>pollution intolerable? Buy an air filtering unit and stay indoors.
>Is what comes out of the tap foul to the taste and chock-full of
>carcinogens? Buy bottled water. And so on. We know it can all hapen
>because it has: I have been doing little more than describing
>Southern California.
>- Brian Barry, from an essay in book Thatcherism, edited by Robert
>Skidelsky (Chatto), quoted by Christopher Huhne in Manchester
>Guardian Weekly, 1/8/89