[WS:] And he makes a valid point. I can only hope that this crisis will be the proverbial straw breaking the camel's back and the financial elite will move to dispose off the dysfunctional political system. This is not such a farfetched idea - revolutions from above were quite successful.
I also think we should put the old anarchist-leftist canard equating capitalism, the state and the business elite to a well deserved rest. The reality is that the concept of "capitalism" is akin to the concept of "primates" in evolutionary biology - it is a stage high on the evolutionary ladder that involves many different species , some of which quite apart from each other. Likewise, there is no such a thing as unified capitalist class. To think that the primary concern of a business executive, say, the CEO of failing Research in Motion, is class interest of his fellow executives of Google, Apple, Microsoft etc. is simply laughable.
In reality, their main concern is their business competitors not some fairly tales about "class struggle." Did not one of them say that he could hire half of the working class to kill the other half? This is even more true today. They can hire the entire working class and keep it on the leash of consumerism, circuses, and debt. Their relationship to the working class is not class war but rather pest control - to borrow a line from the sci-fi serial "Doctor Who."
If there is any "revolutionary" change today it will come from a contradiction between economic interests and the integument of political system that constrains them - just as the Old Man said. This is precisely where the situation seems to be heading now - the interests of the finance capital seem to be threatened by a bunch of Southern yahoos backed by segments of the fossil fuel industry. If that threat becomes too serious, the financial markets will scream and the whole integument of the antiquated US political system will crumble - and rightfully so, The Old Man was well aware of the revolutionary potential of capitalism, and that revolutionary potential is still there. OTOH, the revolutionary potential of the working class fizzled out - if it ever was there in the first place.
The state and its political structure is like a bus - it is used by by many people, rich, poor, and everyone in between - and for different purposes - travel, commuting, income earning, protection, entertainment, entrapment or escape from it and so on. But it serves its multiple functions only if it is able to move. If it stalls, it is junked and replaced with a functioning model. And in all likelihood, that replacement will be done by those who drive it rather those who sit on the back of it.
-- Wojtek
"An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."