GOOD.
Then again who wants to bet they don't mean the end of capitalism just that we regress into techno peonage and serfdom?
GOOD.
Then again who wants to bet they don't mean the end of capitalism just that we regress into techno peonage and serfdom?
Been reading Charles Beard's An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States ( amazon | ARR! ) and frankly I can't help but think if it hadn't been for the existence of the USSR holding capitalism at bay, there's no way in hell the world would have lasted this long. The Framers were very open about their intentions of preventing the poor majority from rising up and taking control of the government from the rich minority. Now that the USSR is gone and capitalism is ripping the mask off more and more, it's been a real trip to read shit like:
And know that some assholes 200+ years ago have likely doomed humanity to extinction.
I don't think you can put James Madison on the line for all of humanity. There have been a few other people involved, both before and since.
He might be one of the bigger dominos that eventually burn out European peoples in North America, though.
Oh, it was far from just him. It was all those fuckers. But if the USSR hadn't been around , we'd likely never gotten the New Deal, the US would have probably gone full mask off colonial in the third world (rather than the already murderous, yet low-key, jakarta style), and who knows how much farther down the hole we'd be.
The USSR was the first major successful socialist uprising, but its success heavily polarized surrounding regions on nationalist grounds.
I don't think its fair to say Lenin grabbing control of Moscow in '17 dictated all of history to follow, because Lenin's success also produced an enormous Red Scare backlash that crushed Communist movements by leveraging fear of foreigners.
Certainly, Lenin didn't inhibit the rise of Calvin Coolidge and Henry Hoover in the States. Nor did he forestall German, French, Italian, Spanish, and British fascists from taking their own country's reins. He did little to stop Tojo's rampage through Korea and China. He didn't interrupt the century of humiliation Africa has endured.
What he, and later Stalin, did was execute a roadmap for a socialist uprising in a western(ish) nation that nobody else could emulate.
Its very possible that the deteriorating conditions of the early 20th century could have produced a better module than Lenin's. Maybe Huey Long or Rosa Luxemburg had the magic bullet and we just never got to see them fire it.
Respectfully, please stop putting words in my mouth?🤷♂️
:-/
Nothing personal, comrade, just the point I was originally trying to allude to is if this economist thinks we're gonna save capitalism and the world with price controls, good fucking luck, because in the US the system was pretty openly designed to prevent that and the force necessary to make them do it seems pretty far over the horizon.