In depth coverage of The Future of Capitalism from the Financial Times
the financial times has started a series on the future of capitalism, which they seem to want happen as a staging space for debates about quite fundamental issues that have emerged over the past months (for many folk--for others these are basic problems that are not suddenly surfacing--though the way in which this is happening and the speed of it is surprising)..you would think that in a situation such as this, in which very basic problems have come to the fore, in which older procedures are not applicable because to geography of capitalism has fundamentally changed away from the nation-state based forms that were dominant through the 1970s, in which basic political questions--on the order of who are we and what do we do and what does it mean to live a good life and what is a good society and how do we get there--are on the table as they've not been for a long time---you'd think that in such a context there'd be a debate--you know, a serious debate, in which descriptions were elaborated and pulled apart, alternatives outlined and discussed, the kind of thing democracy is supposed to be about.
not surprisingly, in the top-down pseudo-democracy of the united states with it's rigidly short-term press and reactionary lingua franca, nothing like that has really happened.
so it's interesting that the financial times has decided to set this into motion and to do so on the basis of a quite good sequence of pieces that outline the situation we're in.
i think this is separate from the main paper in that it's open access.
i think it'd be interesting to have a discussion here about the discussion there, maybe use this as a way of posing questions and talking in a maybe non-adversarial way about what is happening, what should be done, what goals are important and so forth.
if you look at the lead piece, the critique it outlines of american-style "free market" ideology is far more comprehensive than anything you see in the states--and this from a relatively conservative paper--but a sane conservative paper. a sane conservative position would see accurate information as important and would be flexible in the kinds of arguments about that data developed and open-minded about the conclusions reached--because the idea is to maintain something like the existing order, but modified, made more inclusive and functional. it is good to have sane conservative viewpoints because in there can be and should be disagreements about how to interpret information about the world--but on the basis of good information.
so the paper is talking about opening the space up to a wide range of viewpoints.
i think this is a most interesting development, and something that people in the states should read and think about not only for what's presented, but also as an indication of the degenerate state of the american press, it's narrowness.
anyway, read around and post stuff concerning what you find interesting.
point out things to others in the community that might be of interest to them.