02-23-2021, 12:25 PM
(02-23-2021, 12:10 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(02-22-2021, 09:15 PM)Einzige Wrote:(02-22-2021, 09:10 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Discussing capitalism with Einzige on the partisan divide page. Does that mean Marxism is one side of the divide now? (I know the Republicans and Classic Xer say so.....)
Communism is - slowly - becoming a power unto itself again, against both capitalist liberalism and conservatism.
The division of wealth is rising to the top of flaws in the culture that must be addressed. Not yet, but soon, as the turnings turn. The problem that Marx foresaw will eventually be acted on. But by that time violent revolution will not be the dominant way that democracies change the culture. That is so Industrial Age. When Marx's great problem is finally addressed, it will not be by the method that Marx predicted.
Capitalism saved itself by creating a consumer society. It all depends upon people having an incentive to buy the goodies that keep the system going. The Right sought to restore early-capitalist supply side economics, succeeding at their objective from Reagan to Trump through the political system. Clinton and Obama tried to move away, and the plutocrats and executive Nomenklatura got a hold on the political process by buying the political process. That is the neoliberal era... and that is most likely over.
At some point, creating the material basis for prosperity is completed. There's only so much stuff that people need.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.