Humanity can take almost any degree of misery without rebelling against it in any fundamental way.
^^^^ CB: There is some truth to your line of argument here, but you take it so far that it starts to approach the "silly", to use your term. It almost seems like you are completely ditching the fundamental principle of Marxist revolutionary "explanation" - that the history of all hitherto existing society is a history of class struggles. There have been fundamental changes in the mode of production down through history, and rare as these may be, they were begot by rebellion against oppression and exploitation ...or maybe Charlie and Fred are all wet.
As to the current US situation, I've been thinking about some potential for a negation of Mao's principle that if no one pushes it, it won't fall. The capitalists claimed that the Wall Street bankruptcy posed a _systemic_ threat. "Too big to fail" meant that if you let them fail the whole financial system would fail. I'm not so sure they were bullshitting us. If another series of "too big to fail" bankruptcies occur, the US may not bail them out this time without radical reforms. I don't think it is certain, as you have been maintaining, that such radical reforms will be "good for capitalism", or have no potential for going beyond reforms.
We may be entering a phase where money is to WallStreet as heroin is to a heroin addict. Can the bailout be enough rope for them to hang themselves with ?
James Baldwin wrote _The Fire Next Time_. Lets write _The Bailout Next Time_.
"The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” Frederick Douglass
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former _Systems_ (emphasis added -CB) of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.
-Declaration of Independence