> Obviously, the capitalist economy (seen in abstraction from the 'interests'
> of any one capitalist or any specified group of capitalists) has _always_
> worked -- even during the Great Depression. For it to fail to work it (the
> capitalist economy) would have to disappear, melt away, evaporate, and be
> replaced by other social arrangements. There has _never_ been, so far, the
> remotest possibility of that happening.
>
> The economy is working fine right now. It may be incredibly miserable for
> several billion people, but the economy, as such, is just fine.
>
Sure, if you are thinking the capitalist economy means the continuation of the private accumulation of profit, then it's working. Seems like a pretty uninteresting and insufficient definition of capitalism to me, though. For one thing, that says nothing about the *rate* of exploitation, which is important to both individual capitalists and the "system" as a whole; for another, it says nothing about capital as a technique of social control; and there are other ways in which the economy is currently not working, or certainly not working ideally.
I think you might be putting too much effort into parsing the talking points of politicians and journalists.