[lbo-talk] Capitalism and the Metaphor of "Decay"

[Carrol Cox]

"Gone seems to be the classically bourgeois executive ego, a relatively
stable, if sometimes anal-retentive structure to guide the subject through
life. In its place is a much more fragmented thing, adaptable to a world of
unstable employment and volatile financial markets-but unable to think
seriously about long-term things like social cohesion or, god save us,
climate change."

In his  Preface to the NY edition of The American, James suggests that he
had been wrong about the French family: actual French aristocrats of the
period would have simply glommed on to Newman's money, not worrying at all
about the origins of that money. In writing The American James had assumed
the existence of an aristocracy that probably never existed (though Jonson,
Milton & Pope all presented images of such "responsible" aristocrats. (See
To Penshurst, Comus, & Pope's Ethic Epistles).  The "responsible" aristocrat
in non-capitalist societies was at least a theoretical possibility:
capitalist competition liquidated such possibility. I simply don't see  the
evidence for the existence outside fiction of the "the classically bourgeois
executive" Doug hypothesizes. Standard Oil got its start by that classical
bourgeois executive, JDR, sr, having the oil  wells of rivals blown up.
Capitalists have been even minimally "responsible" only when forced to be so
by working-class militancy. I take it that the label, "Neoliberal" refers to
bringing back the "liberalism" of The Robber Barons.

Carrdol