[lbo-talk] Why Capitalism Cannot be Tamed

Somebody Somebody philos_case at yahoo.com
Wed Nov 3 12:35:19 PDT 2010


Alan: To my mind, arguing otherwise when it comes to the cultures of different corporations, government bureaucracies, consumer identities (broadly defined to include most all politicized consumption) and local communities in the advanced industrial west all-but completely rejects Marxist analysis of the homogenizing tendencies of capitalism

Somebody: It troubles me that the major issue you have with Wojtek's argument is the extent it indicates a rejection of Marxist orthodoxy. This sounds like a theological argument to me. Trotsky had the courage to say that he'd change his mind if the revolution didn't come with the end of the Second World War. I wonder how many socialists today are that open-minded.

I agree that capitalism is homogenizing, as indeed is socialism for that matter, but this is only a grand secular trend, and the fact remains that *today* there are still significant differences between capitalist societies. Moreover, I think the left should consider the possibility, even the probability, that even if the neo-liberal onslaught were to continue for generations, it might *never* take us back to the Gilded Age of unregulated capitalism. It's been quite some time now since the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, since Thatcher and Reagan, and the safety net in the Western World has been diminished, but is still with us, in some countries much more than others - despite a massive decline in working class resistance. You keep saying capitalism isn't sustainable, but the fact of the matter is, social democracy has lasted much longer that Stalinist-style state socialism.

Not only that, but there are indications that the newly industrializing East Asian countries are in the early stages of instituting the building blocks of the welfare state in their own countries. As I've noted before, Taiwan and South Korea created universal health care in the last generation right under the nose of the Washington Consensus, and Thailand has recently done the same. China's government has set a timeline for developing a safety net as the country develops as well.



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