|
right. ok so you aren't thinking in terms of the social world at all, dogzilla---you're just repeating reagan era metaphysics, the sort of thing that the republican-dominated state told working people when their jobs started to disappear--
for example in steel into the magic of holding companies run by bankruptcy specialists who moved in to take advantage of the space created by a decision taken during world war 2 to export continuous casting as part of the marshall plan and take short-term profits knowing that in the longer run it would put them out of business---which it did----for you no problem, the manly forward march of the Captains of Industry requires it and besides this is a utilitarian good because it's better for everyone that workers from the steel industry become workers in the walmart industry.
economic activity is a social activity. the closest capitalism got to actual functionality as a system and not one predicated entirely upon exploitation and held together by violence (the american way) was during the fordist period---strong unions, collective bargaining were fundamental to the revolution in consumer credit, the extension of the suburban model---it was also a period of intensive innovation---but it followed from the arrangements put into place under the new deal and the right couldn't countenance it. it is a mystery to me why that is, why the hooverites whose history is of nothing but failure were rehabbed in the post-vietnam era---what made jingoism, simple-mindedness and brutality so appealing.
the changes started under nixon---by the clinton period, it was pretty clear that operationally the only americans were shareholder americans because theirs were the only interests that were being served. it maybe woulda been different if republican blah blah blah about the linkage between tax cuts and business investments turned out to yield the new sectors that were talked about. but it didn't. it didn't because it's not about that. republican blah blah blah is about creating a circular situation which creates increasingly polarized class relations which justifies endlessly expanding repressive state. weapons manufacturers win. defense contractors win. police and prison industries win.
shareholders don't during those period when the political and economic incoherence of conservative rule become evident. we're in one of those periods now. but that's an obvious story and i'm tired of telling it.
__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
|