I remember my ex talking about Bertell Ollman in '87 - how he came into the office at New York University on the day of the huge stock market crash so excited. This was it. This was the end. The Revolution was here.
Obviously, since then the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall has been...shall we say "slow"?...to generate the crisis most Marxists have been expecting...well, for some time now. There have been close calls, but capitalism has survived and prospered.
I put it to you, that this time it really may be different.
Why?
Five trillion dollars notional of mortgages and guarantees taken away from the (semi-) private system and onto the government's books (Fannie/Freddie). The greatest rebuke of laissez-faire in three generations.
Hundrends of billions - maybe trillions - in asset-backed and other credit vanished.
Hundreds of billions notional in debt still to be picked up by the government - or sent to money heaven.
A once-in-a-lifetime deflation in real estate, traded commodities and world currencies - simultaneously.
America's biggest savings and loan (WaMu), one of Wall Street's oldest firms (Lehman), America's biggest insurance company (AIG) and America's third-biggest commercial bank (Citi) all on the brink of failure, again simultaneously.
The Republicans claiming victory abroad in the face of transparently obvious defeat.
Near-total meltdown in the ability of the mainstream media even to ask questions.
David Brooks writes a column on man as a social animal.
Final piece of evidence? Well, I hate to be a contrarian here, but when the socialists *aren't* talking about a collapse of capitalism in the face of all that, you know something is up.
So...I dunno...maybe to hell with them.
If the victims of Katrina in New Orleans represent the Republicans' unwillingness to save Americans, maybe the ignorers of Ike in Galveston represent Americans' unwillingness to save themselves.
What can you do with such people?
-- peace,
boddi
http://financialroadtosocialism.blogspot.com/