|
this question of the value of knowing that there is an oligarchy, that it is centered in particular sectors, involves particular institutions and folk within them, who make particular choices in particular contexts based on particular calculations is not small, if only insofar as it helps make sense of much broader phenomena. that this information is coming from a former chief economist of the imf is not without it's own interest, first to the extent that he wrote the piece at all, and second as an indicator that this situation--the american financial oligarchy---is transparent. that is, you are not reading a piece by some trotskyite written on the basis of a collaging together of economic data and elements taken from marx---this is a view of the united states from the belly of the beast as it were. none of this seems to me futile or trivial.
it also gives a partial basis at least for perspectives on other phenomena--the magnitude of political powerlessness in america for example, the degree to which we live largely in some narcotized state, accepting as if inevitable and unstoppable the consequences of particular choices made by particular actors in particular contexts.
so it provides a way into thinking what contemporary forms of ideology are, what they look like, what they do.
it also provides a good indication of the extent to which what the obama administration has been doing addresses little in the way of fundamental problems.
too often in the reactionary media context we operate inside of, it is easy to find oneself drifting into a near-acceptance of the right's idiotic way of framing obama as some leftist. he's nothing of the kind. think about the outcomes to this point of the triage operations performed at the end of the bush period, which boxed in obama early on in the context of a quite deep crisis. the outcomes have been an increased concentration of financial power and no discernible change in the business as usual. there are indicators that consequences of the ongoing reality of the--um---transition in american capitalism away from a logic of empire and into something less coherent (such that the irrationalities of the present models of social, economic and political activity are being manifest through, say, massive sustained unemployment, which is already generating a second wave of mortgage problems, which is going to hit the same sector again, but in a more serious manner)...
so i don't think this a useless article, nor do i see reading it an exercise in futility.
it's better to know than not to know, even if all that knowing lets you do is make a more accurate map of collapse or transformation (depending on how things are played).
__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
|