"The consequences in the political and cultural sphere approximated zero."
Nothing changed culturally or politically? Well perhaps not as a result of the wiping out of fictititious capital. But we are witnessing the complete transformation of criminal law including the suspension of habeas corpus and the destruction of the Westphalian order in name of anti-terrorism. In the last thirty years the mixed economy has been de-humanized as govts, social democratic ones included, increasingly attempt to stimulate investment through regressive taxation and tougher labor laws if not through corporate hand outs; the Soviet Union imploded as living standards plunged; and the US has come to occupy permanently, in a stunning reversal of the sentiments of the Bandung era, the Arab world with torture becoming publically acceptable.
Much of the third world has been thrust defacto in the fourth, the slum dwelling population exceeds one billion people and the rate of exploitation is allowed to rise at an increasing rate (to say nothing of the commute times added on to longer working days as escalating housing prices force massive population deconcentration); still unemployment has become structural (especially if we consider the people whose full time work does not raise them above poverty as well as many of the incarcerated and the so called discouraged).
Yet as late as the early 1970s there was no shortage of confident pronouncements about the economic problem having been solved through a combination of science-based productivity advances and the judicious use of fiscal and monetary policy. This level of barbarism was not expected--or perhaps we have just become inured to it--and I fear that we have not seen anything yet.
If capitalism has proven incompatible with a stabilizing, inequality attenuating form of mixed economy, then why can be confident that it will not catapult us into economic chaos and war?
It sickens me to think this. I am not happy about it. And I would rather not think about it. Which only means that I understand profoundly why no class of people with the actual material power to change society in an emancipatory way has yet emerged or seems likely to emerge.
Abu Hartal _________________________________________________________________ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/