Re: Re: Tautology: To Doug

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

>I don't think capitalism will collapse, though anything is possible.
>The more likely end to capitalism, if there ever is one, is through
>political organization and expropriation of the expropriators. I
>think there are a lot of people who are now using ecological crisis
>as a substitute for underconsumption/overinvestment/realization
>crisis theories of collapse.

You must be referring to James O'Connor. Right? Did you ever tell him this
on LBO-Talk? I'd be curious to see his reaction.

>It's not only communists who theorize collapse or something like it -
>so did/do some classical economists, goldbugs, survivalists, and
>evangelical Christians.
>
>Doug

Collapse is not exactly the term I'd use myself. I tend to think of
capitalism's trajectory in terms of the ecology/economy of Haiti today. It
is an example of what capitalism will do globally if it is not stopped in
its path. Deforestation, AIDS, unemployment, hunger, illiteracy surrounding
the walled and air-conditioned compounds of the bourgeoisie. Capitalism is
in no danger of collapse in Haiti--the US intervention saw to that.

The political fight that keeps cropping up on these lists is whether Haiti
is the future of the world or something like the Asian Tigers as depicted
in those advertising supplements in the NY Times: "Invest in Taiwan. Invest
in the future." With pictures of smiling people in business suits talking
on cell phones.

You get Brad DeLong on one pole and Mark and I on the other. And the same
arguments and statistics keep getting deployed. Like how the average person
has higher caloric input today than in 1900. When Brad DeLong points to
these successes, he attributes them to the free market system, while others
regard them as proof of humanity's unquenchable march toward a better
future, citing Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto as though it was co-written
by Ayn Rand.

Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/