>It depends on what you mean by indefinitely. Left to itself the
>capitalist system can recover from about anything except the sun's >going
>nova.
If it's "left to itself", don't you get crashes and panics in capitalism? It required conscious state intervention to get things going again after the Big Crash in the Twenties, didn't it? The point I was aiming for was that "pure capitalism" as I took Wojtek to be describing it eventually runs itself into the ground where it can't get up on its own. It takes conscious actions on the part of the polity to keep it going (badly).
>It is inherently expansive, and economic collapse and destructive
>war merely give it more room to begin further expansion.
Yes, a la Schumpeter. But what happens when that expansion slows down enough to bugger up returns? Or what if it's too expensive to expand in a particular direction?
>For all
>practical purposes it can go on forever, becoming ever more >destructive.
Forgive me if I have my doubts about that. If it could go on forever, why would it need to expand and bring new areas under its sway? It's not a static phenomenon. It's driven by its own logic and carries us along with it.
>It may become so destructive that it returns us to something worse than
>the stone age, but that would be the only "natural" end to it.
Yes, and even that would require that all human beings on the planet be gone first. It won't "die" because those dependant on it keep resuscitating it, but it goes into death-like "comas" like the Crash in the States. But it can be consciously "put to death".
>Socialism (the alternative to barbarism & death) has to be created by
>collective struggle.
Well, yes.
Y'know I keep getting this suspicious feeling that I'm missing something. We, my interlocutors and I, keep trading these simple statements back and forth: Wojtek and Carrol keep insisting on the deathlessness of capitalism, and I keep insisting that it can be killed.
Since I'm the less learned, could you please explain to me where I'm going wrong, as you see it? My argument seems like Capital 101, but I'm only a layman.
Confused Todd
Anthony says:
>----- Original Message ----- From: Todd Archer <todda39 at hotmail.com> To:
><lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Thursday, December 12, 2002 11:34 AM
>Subject: RE: Weak Links?
> >
>> >In fact, there has been not a single communit revolution in an
>> >industrial democracy - all such revolutions took place in backward,
>> >rural societies which further underscore their essentially peasant
>> >character. The only "revolutionary" force that managed to subvert >an
>> >industrial democracy is fascism. With that track record, praying >for a
>> >revolutionary overthrow of a capitalist society is a scary thing,
>> >indeed.
> And how do you, or anyone else, describe Spain during the >Revolution?
>Did not the working class take over the running of the economy say in
>Catalonia? The achievements of the revolution were pretty impressive >to me
>before they were crushed by both east and west.-Tony
First, that was Wojtek's statement, not mine.
Second, what little I know about Spain then hinted that it was pretty rural still. I finished reading Homage to Catalonia a few weeks ago. Seems to me, as far as they went, the achievement of the anarchists and left communists weren't bad, but they couldn't have gotten much further without some kind of overarching structure(s) in place. Unfortunately, the only ones with that and the clout to use it in Spain were the Stalinists.
Todd
>Carrol
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