-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- cb: "The bourgeois democratic republican form is unstable like everything else under capitalism. Capitalism is a gaseous state.All that is solid melts into the air."
socialismorbarbarism : Yes, but, but... whether the historical successor to the "bourgeois democratic republican form" is socialist democracy or fascism (to name two possibilities) is itself of some import, don'tcha think?
^^^^^^^ CB: Yeah, socialism or barbarism, Rosa. What did I say that made u think I don't think that's of some import ?
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BTW, the instability of capitalism is all but universally accepted in contemporary ruling class ideology, and is in fact trumpeted by its propagandists in government, academia, and the media--it's all part of the system's wonderful dynamism, or so it's blathered forth from the White House to "right-leaning" economists* to the WSJ to "Wired" to the lowliest motivational speaker.
^^^^ CB: Well, today's bourgeois economists trumpet a lot about equilibrium , by which they don't mean instability, and in fact they mean stability. The orthodoxy of 2010 is that capitalism tends toward equilibrium, not crisis; growth, yes, and increasing productivity and equilibrium, honkey dorey, Candide. ^^^^^^^
There has never really been a place, in reality, for an actual conservatism under capitalism, and over 160 years on, Chuck and Fred's description of its social reality has not been much improved upon. But the figure of the "solid bourgeois" (a historically specific form, resulting mainly from the social development of capitalism in Europe, that has had no particular relevance to capitalism for some time) and its somewhat different American analogues (for example, the figure captured by Lewis's Babbitt [not simply a caricature of a petty bourgeois], and the "traditional"--"tradition" such as it is--role of the Chamber of Commerce and the NAM) were there to provide the *idea* of a capitalist form of conservatism.
^^^^^ CB: I don't know. A lot of the ruling class earn their wealth the old fashion way: they inherit it. I should have said that capitalism is a noxious gaseous state for the working class. It's like an intoxicating liqueur or smoke for the bourgeoisie.
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And it wasn't total bullshit, in that capitalists could still (wrongly, but rationally) look for the day when the System Worked--when technology had developed to the proper level, or "government" was put in its proper place, or the damn Communists were finally defeated, or something. But capitalism *has* reached a stage where the wildest dreams of its latter-day ideologists have been, to any practical extent, satisfied; savvy capitalists and the system's well-rewarded proponents now gleefully push a world of self-perpetuating anarchic instability, and propaganda lines that blame the Other for the problems of capitalism are more and more self-evidently atavistic delusions targeted at losers. Not that capitalists aren't playing with fire here--but then, really, playing with fire is what they've always done...
^^^^^^^ CB: Yes, capitalists are fireeaters....with animal spirits.
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*Yes, nowadays "left-leaning" mainstream economists are clearly more in favor of stable and non-disruptive, that is conservative, social and political forms of capitalism.
^^^ CB: Which we argree is phony capitalism. Social democracy, stability for the working masses , is a utopian dream, Kautskyism. Especially, with no Soviet Union, the world ruling class is like ____ the working class. No more Golden Ages like the fifties and sixties.