Surely it is pointless to enthuse about 'change' in the abstract. The invasion of Iraq was change. Pinochet was change. Katrina was change. Repossession is change. No child left behind was change. This small sample of capitalism's celerity is probably more representative of the general state of things than any more positive example you could cite. Most of what passes for 'change' under capitalism is seriously damaging, sometimes devastating, to the majority of human beings on the planet.
> I wish the revolutionary energy of capitalism could be harness toward
> improving human life rather than making money. I'm disturbed by the
> conservative tenor of a lot of "left" opposition over the last few
> decades - the anti-globo movement, for example, and its fondness for
> rootedness in place. Yuck. Not for me. This conservative tenor is
> closely related to the ebbing of Marxism's role on the left.
I really doubt that this is the explanation. The truth is that the Left has been forced by its weakness into a conservative position of protecting things worth conserving - ecology, the welfare state, civil liberties - from the revolutionary energy of capitalism. The declining influence of Marxism is an epiphenomenon of the collapse of the big battalions of socialism, as classically constituted, and thence of its 'grand narratives'. Were the Left socially and institutionally stronger, were there a revolutionary subject comparable to the proletariat of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it would be able to embrace change with less ambiguity and hesitation. As it is, it would seem that a certain kind of conservatism is a valid strategic orientation.
-- *Richard Seymour*
Writer and blogger
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