06-01-2021, 12:21 AM
(05-31-2021, 05:32 PM)Einzige Wrote: The idea that capitalism always assumes its rapacious Gilded Age form is not a Marxist stereotype. Marxists are well aware of all facets of capitalism, of all its myriad phases.
It's about character... the rapacious plutocrat is a person of bad character. The executive who operates like a member of the Soviet nomenklatura is a bad character.
I'm not going to say that the profit motive solves its own problems, which is exactly what the worst capitalists would tell us. I can excuse the plutocrats of the Gilded Age to the extent that they were genuine innovators introducing Americans to new objects and new (really better) ways of doing business.
Capitalists and executives are at their worst when they show neither caution, conscience, or compassion. Such corresponds with the narcissistic personality that surges and ebbs at different times in the generational cycle. I thought that GI executives were far more humane than Boomer executives. I have known of both in business., With GI's one had a chance. With Boomers, if one ever knew any hardship you were assumed to be incompetent and disloyal even if the real cause is having known poverty as a child.
The best thing for working people will be for Boomer executives to retire. X executives will be unable to get away with as much -- and their startups are beginning to refresh capitalism.
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.