[lbo-talk] new spirit of capitalism

Lenin's Tomb leninstombblog at googlemail.com
Tue Oct 9 09:24:08 PDT 2007


On 10/9/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> Yeah, I know you've got an English litterateur's sense of language,
> but that doesn't make it a bad or useless word. Sometimes concepts
> from social science and even, gasp, econometrics can help one think
> clearly.

I appreciate that, and the backhanded compliment even though I'm not actually English or even a litterateur, but it is true that the idea is almost always used by people like Niall Ferguson to legitimise empire and capitalism.

And there's nothing grubby or reactionary about it. In this
> case, I was trying to figure out what alternative universe you were
> writing from.

It's called Greenwich Mean Time.

Yeah we would be. But that's not the way it happened. We make
> history, etc.
>
> Doug

Clearly, which is why we always learn important lessons the hard way, and I think Yoshie is trying to shove a few of those hard lessons down our gullets.



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