> the
> differences revolve around those "social" issues that simply lie outside
> the substantial interests of the ruling class. (I find "ruling class"
> and every other term I or others have used unsatisfactory, but i"ll leae
> it here.)
How can this idea of "capitalists" as the embodiment of demonic genius be made consistent with the irrationality at work in the development of financial derivative markets over the last 40 years, the irrationality "responsible" for the most recent financial crisis?
I've started reading Scott Patterson's just published "The Quants" which, even in the opening chapters I've managed to read, provides lots of additional evidence of that irrationality.
It's a problem when financial journalists like Patterson (a reporter for the Wall Street Journal) are sources of much greater insight into the functioning of financial markets than "Marxists" embracing the EMH and imagining that lending back a significant part of the surplus generated by a successful attack on wages and job security to those successfully attacked (i.e. to those incapable of ever repaying the loans) is the work of genius.
Accumulating worthless financial assets isn't a good substitute for accumulating capital.
Ted