"Capitalism will not collapse, EVER.
Capitalism will not mutate into something else, EVER.
If you don't hit it, it won't fall.
Slumps and human misery are the health of capitalism."
I know what you mean, but this is a little misleading.
It leaves out the conflicted aspect of capitalism, the self-destructive logic of eternal expansion. I'm not an economist but I'm persuaded by people like Harry Shutt who argue that privitization, mergers, out-sourcing and now financialization (making money off of transactions rather than production) have all been driven by an increasing difficulty of finding profitable investments.
Maybe "moribund" is too strong a word, but nervous, imprudent, self-cannibalizing, might be appropriate.
And Peter Hart Ward's remark points up a different,
non-economic issue -- the separation of capital from
its domestic base, and eventually the nation state.
These are certainly brand new conditions for capital
which no one knows how it will meet.
BobW
>
>
> Peter Hart Ward wrote:
> >
> > capitalism, or what we call capitalism at any rate
> > (the market economy, i.e.), is moribund. This
> raises a question: If
> > this is indeed the case, will the whole thing
> collapse completely or
> > will it transmutate into something else,
>
> This is the trouble with looking at the world in
> moral/ethical terms; it
> blinds one to reality and corrupts the meaning of
> words.
>
> Capitalism is far from moribund; in fact it is just
> getting a good
> start. The fact that it keeps the overwhelming
> proportion of the human
> species in abject misery or, at best, in a state of
> continual anxiety,
> is nothing at all against capitalism in its own
> terms. To use this
> evidence to call capitalism moribund is to desert
> reality for utopian
> morality.
>
> Capitalism will not collapse, EVER.
>
> Capitalism will not mutate into something else,
> EVER.
>
> If you don't hit it, it won't fall.
>
> Slumps and human misery are the health of
> capitalism.
>
> Carrol
>
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