Future senarious about capitalist system.

[newsocialism]

What do think about the future of capitalist system? Can new innovations make it the ultimate dominant economic system of the future? or What disasters it will have to face with?
I think increasing machinery and technology use in industry will inevitably decrease the need for labor force. It might create insurmountable unemployment problems. Furthermore, if machines can do all the work, employment might shift to different areas such as education and entertainment sector and so forth.... All these events might create extremely unbalanced economic power between individuals which may lead this system to an ultimate collapse.

[cyu]

What do think about the future of capitalist system? Can new innovations make it the ultimate dominant economic system of the future? or What disasters it will have to face with?

Capitalism can only continue with oppression and mass murder in places like Latin America and the Middle East. Either we'll have a future with both capitalism and mass murder, or we'll have to choose a future without mass murder, in which case, capitalism cannot hope to survive.

[rebelmouse]

I am agreed with cyu, capitalism will continue to be more and more brutal, even peaceful demos will be forbidden and destroyed, any act or speech against authority will be marked as terrorism, etc. simply: dictatorship. europe will be poorer because production is moving to asia so maybe in some longer future riches from asia will attack europe. but I think climate is already so much damaged that climate will destroy capitalism before or later.

[Belisarius]

i think predcting the future is very difficult, and marxists don't have a good experience with it (practically all have been wrong about what is the last stage of capitalism, Marx, Lenin, Mao,...). Capitalism has a way of surviving and reinventing itself, which no previous mode of production has had. So my prediction is more of the same, only a little different.

[Axle]

i think predcting the future is very difficult, and marxists don't have a good experience with it (practically all have been wrong about what is the last stage of capitalism, Marx, Lenin, Mao,...). Capitalism has a way of surviving and reinventing itself, which no previous mode of production has had. So my prediction is more of the same, only a little different.

Since Imperialism stands as the hallmark of the highest stage of Capitalism, and since Capitalist powers are still Imperialistic, its incorrect to say anyone has been wrong about what the last stage of Capitalism would be, as we obviously haven't reached it.

Aside from Keynesian economics (which is now being degraded), Capitalism is still basically the same has its ever been. Private ownership of the means of production still exists, wage labor still exists, markets still exist, economic exploitation still exists. The only difference is that thanks to advances in transportation, Capitalists can move production from one place to another in search of cheaper labor and higher profits if workers unionize or the cost of living in a certain area has just become too high.

When Capitalism starts to fail, whenever that initially starts, it will undoubtedly use force to protect its investments and will try to drive down wages to continue making a profit after they've exhausted all markets.

[Belisarius]

indeed we still call it imperialistic, but actually a better name, i think, would be globalized. due to decolonization and the third industrial revolution of the fifties and sixties, we can't say that economy is still entirely the same. the base has stayed, but different tendencies have arisen. it is pretty much the same, but still, i think, it wasn't our contemporary imperialism (or glabalization) where Lenin was getting at.

[Psy]

When Capitalism starts to fail, whenever that initially starts, it will undoubtedly use force to protect its investments and will try to drive down wages to continue making a profit after they've exhausted all markets.
The problem is capitalists now realize they can't trust their own numbers let alone other capitalists numbers, thus no capitalists know what their investments are really worth. Capitalists are having a very scary realization that current accounting in the modern capitalist world is far more bullshit then anything that come out of GOSPLAN in the U.S.S.R and they might be really penniless rather then billionaires, that is why the ruling class really pushed for a no fault bailout that did not audit their investments.

Of course capitalists are already driving down wages but the current crisis goes far beyond simple rate of profit (and the rate of profit alone is a serious problem)

[newsocialism]

If we look at industrial history, we might see that with less labor force, more can be produced today. Although, labor force is the basic element that gives value to the production, competition might lead new innovation to reduce labor force in production. In other words, what will happen, if socially necessary labor time reduce? I think, even today, it's happening. But, capitalists keep selling their commodities with a fine profit. According to Marx, all values that are created by labor are equal to sum of all prices. If one capitalist sells a commodity more than what it is worth, he subtracts this extra value from the total value that is created by workers. I think this phenomenon might create extreme unbalanced economy in a country and impenetrable walls between the poor and the rich countries in a large scale.

[robbo203]

If we look at industrial history, we might see that with less labor force, more can be produced today. Although, labor force is the basic element that gives value to the production, competition might lead new innovation to reduce labor force in production. In other words, what will happen, if socially necessary labor time reduce? I think, even today, it's happening. But, capitalists keep selling their commodities with a fine profit. According to Marx, all values that are created by labor are equal to sum of all prices. If one capitalist sells a commodity more than what it is worth, he subtracts this extra value from the total value that is created by workers. I think this phenomenon might create extreme unbalanced economy in a country and impenetrable walls between the poor and the rich countries in a large scale.

Not quite sure what you have in mind here. If a capitalist sells his or her wares above the going market rate then tendency will be for buyers to seek cheaper suppliers unless such factors as monopolies and trade barriers intervene. If anything the tendency has been towards greater economic "liberalisation" in recent decades not less and the impenetrable walls between rich and pooor countries has become somewhat less impenetrable. Witness the growth of India and China

[LeninistKing]

Damn man, all i know is that i hope that i see a socialist-system in USA in my lifetime. I know that things change real slow, but this capitalist society, of cars, pollution, of junk food, of wars, scaremongering by the cops, of scams is really, really bad. I also capitalism as a block to scientific and technological development in this world, along with all the problems that it causes like deaths hunger etc.

.



What do think about the future of capitalist system? Can new innovations make it the ultimate dominant economic system of the future? or What disasters it will have to face with?
I think increasing machinery and technology use in industry will inevitably decrease the need for labor force. It might create insurmountable unemployment problems. Furthermore, if machines can do all the work, employment might shift to different areas such as education and entertainment sector and so forth.... All these events might create extremely unbalanced economic power between individuals which may lead this system to an ultimate collapse.

[newsocialism]

Not quite sure what you have in mind here. If a capitalist sells his or her wares above the going market rate then tendency will be for buyers to seek cheaper suppliers unless such factors as monopolies and trade barriers intervene. If anything the tendency has been towards greater economic "liberalisation" in recent decades not less and the impenetrable walls between rich and pooor countries has become somewhat less impenetrable. Witness the growth of India and China
I know, but it doesn't work always like this. If it did, nike, adidas and other nothing but brands and labels would go bankrupt many years ago. Let's give more complicated example: Intel produce a new processor. In the production, there is almost no human labor. Owner of intel sells it on a good profit. Normally, no capitalist will sell this product which requires highly complicated production stage, with the cost of only its raw materials. You might think that, AMD can produce the same processor and reduce the price by competing. But, we are not talking about simple materials like tomato, corn...etc. Intel will be the keeper of all the technology and innovation behind the product. In this case, AMD will try to use another technology to produce better processors. If it produce a better one, the owner will sell it for a good profit. Then, intel will improve the model and technology of its processor, and it will go on like this. As I said, competition goes on with innovation of new technologies rather than reducing the prices of the same commodities in some products. The result will be like dearer new models with chipper previous ones. So, where is the labor theory of value? Where is competition? It's well clear that there are different things count something in the prices of the commodities.
Secondly, newly industrialized countries are not poor ones, such as India, Mexico, China...etc. And I am not talking about today but the future. The future, where machines can do all the work with no or little human labor. Countries that cannot have the technology will be way behind of the advanced ones. This is why I mentioned impenetrable walls between the poor and the rich countries.

[Tzadikim]

I think there are a few definite scenarios possible:

A.) The capitalist system as it exists right now remains unchanged for all of history. For obvious reasons this is massively improbable.

B.) Humanity self-destructs before it can develop any further. This possibility is pointless to talk about, as it renders any further discussion moot.

C.) The present crisis either continues to intensify, or it leads to a similar one not much further down the historical road. If lending capital continues to dry up, it will be increasingly difficult for capitalists to take risks, which could have several implications.

1.) The increasing role of the State in productive industry. This is very unlikely, at least in the Anglosphere - there is far too much public political opposition against it for this to be very viable.

2.) The faux-internationalism of recent years fades as first-world nations turn inwards. This might actually have a beneficial effect for the Left: if America re-industrializes because of protectionist measures, then it would re-create our working class and revitalize the industrial Left (as opposed to bourgeois liberals/reformers), which could have positive political implications for the rest of the world.

D.) As various nations find themselves increasingly incapable of assuming their public debt, they will begin to amalgamate gradually over time; we might find Canada and the United States forming much closer ties, or the Eurozone coming together - gradually, over a period of decades - into a genuine nation-state.

E.) Alternatively, as centralized States can no longer pay down their debt, they may begin to decentralize, in an effort to spread their debt around and shift responsibility over to their various sub-strata (States, counties, principalities, what have you). This instance could also be favorable to the Left in the long-run, if the easy life guaranteed by the flow of credit in the first world is cut off and the State is no longer in the business of breaking up communes or ferreting out anarchist influence.

F.) Right-wing groups prey upon a lack of public confidence in liberal democracy and it's 1939 all over again. This might lead directly to scenario B.

[Psy]

C.) The present crisis either continues to intensify, or it leads to a similar one not much further down the historical road. If lending capital continues to dry up, it will be increasingly difficult for capitalists to take risks, which could have several implications.

1.) The increasing role of the State in productive industry. This is very unlikely, at least in the Anglosphere - there is far too much public political opposition against it for this to be very viable.

Since when did bourgeois states care about public opposition? That is what the police is for, to remind the proletariat and petit-bourgeoisie their place in society. As for the bourgeoisie they can always be bought off if the state needs to nationalize their industry since capitalists are not above bribery and if profits dry up being bought off by the state would be a god sent to capitalists.

[Belisarius]

Since when did bourgeois states care about public opposition? That is what the police is for, to remind the proletariat and petit-bourgeoisie their place in society.
bourgeois do care about public opposition, since the public votes for them. capitalism as a whole thinks in the long run. it's not about immediate profit, but about keeping the capitalist structure intact for as long as possible. to achieve this, they need to give in sometimes to the public. for example: of course a factory can give minimum wages, but if the workers strike or everybody resigns, then the company will be broke in no time.

to gie a more general example of the state as giving in to opposition: all over the world everybody has been criticizing pollution, so the state will do something against it, but they only threat the symptoms, not the disease itself. they find solutions for acid rain, but not an alternative for capitalism and consumer society (the causes of acid rain). if the state would "assassinate" everyone who opposes a non-environmentalist approach, they would soon be overthrown.

[Psy]

bourgeois do care about public opposition, since the public votes for them. capitalism as a whole thinks in the long run. it's not about immediate profit, but about keeping the capitalist structure intact for as long as possible. to achieve this, they need to give in sometimes to the public. for example: of course a factory can give minimum wages, but if the workers strike or everybody resigns, then the company will be broke in no time.

to gie a more general example of the state as giving in to opposition: all over the world everybody has been criticizing pollution, so the state will do something against it, but they only threat the symptoms, not the disease itself. they find solutions for acid rain, but not an alternative for capitalism and consumer society (the causes of acid rain). if the state would "assassinate" everyone who opposes a non-environmentalist approach, they would soon be overthrown.
But with the bourgeoisie on board (with the whole being bribed by the state) the state can simply buy support from the opposition party and make sure the media either ignores it or spins it. I really don't see a massive proletariat uprising forming around nationalization of industry and the petit-bourgeoisie are mostly of no concern to bourgeois governments unless the bourgeoisie is divided.

[Belisarius]

But with the bourgeoisie on board (with the whole being bribed by the state) the state can simply buy support from the opposition party and make sure the media either ignores it or spins it. I really don't see a massive proletariat uprising forming around nationalization of industry and the petit-bourgeoisie are mostly of no concern to bourgeois governments unless the bourgeoisie is divided.
i don't think the media is that easily corrupted (at least in belgium, i don't know where you live), since big scandals give big ratings and that's the only thing they care about. maybe state television will ignore it, but commercial television (out for sensation) just love big scandals. opposition parties aren't that easily bribed either, since they get votes for criticizing the government (LDD, a belgian party, does almost nothing but looking for corruption and scandals in the government)

we shouldn't think off capitalist oppression as organised by a clique. it is a natural process in which every individual is imbedded in an ideology which makes him keep capitalism alive as a structure. so they cure the symptoms of capitalism, but keep the disease. in this way everybody is happy, but still ill.

[Psy]

i don't think the media is that easily corrupted (at least in belgium, i don't know where you live), since big scandals give big ratings and that's the only thing they care about. maybe state television will ignore it, but commercial television (out for sensation) just love big scandals. opposition parties aren't that easily bribed either, since they get votes for criticizing the government (LDD, a belgian party, does almost nothing but looking for corruption and scandals in the government)

we shouldn't think off capitalist oppression as organised by a clique. it is a natural process in which every individual is imbedded in an ideology which makes him keep capitalism alive as a structure. so they cure the symptoms of capitalism, but keep the disease. in this way everybody is happy, but still ill.
Mainstream media is either owned by states or capitalists so a backroom deal between a state and capitalists to nationalize industry would probably stay out of the media spotlight as long as both parties (the state and capitalists) are content about the deal.

As opposition parties, like all bourgeois parties they are paid by the capitalist class thus they can't really challenge the capitalists class. For example if their campaign contributors tell them they don't want them say anything about a backroom deal in public then bourgeois parties tend to honor such wishes from their contributors.

[cyu]

i don't think the media is that easily corrupted (at least in belgium, i don't know where you live), since big scandals give big ratings and that's the only thing they care about.


Actually, that's probably not the only thing they care about. Primarily, they care about increasing shareholder value (assuming your media is as corporate as the rest of the capitalist world), or at least doing what the major shareholders want them to do. Ratings sometimes go hand in hand with shareholder value, but that's not always the case... nor does shareholder value go hand in hand with service to the community.

Excerpt from We are intellectual prostitutes (http://www.everything2.com/title/We+are+intellectual+prostitutes):

Sometimes, some people wonder why there is so much inane news about various random celebrities being constantly reported on the air. Some would argue that is what the viewing audience wants to see - that the media is only giving The People what they want. If the viewing audience didn't like this kind of gossip, then there wouldn't be enough ratings to sustain shows like these.

I wonder what I would do if I worked for the news department and three stories came across my desk:
1) A boring story about a celebrity.
2) An exciting story about a celebrity.
3) An exciting, but dangerous story that could cost me my job.

Which would I choose? If I considered myself a person of integrity, would I choose to focus on #3? Obviously if I were just worried about my career or mortgage payments, #2 would be the one audiences see that night.

What if I had kids in college? Would the right thing to do be to ensure they get the education they need and bury story #3? What if running story #3 would cost me my job now, which would mean I wouldn't be around to ensure even more important things get reported on? If that were my rationale, then I may choose #2 over #3 after all, and bide my time until I'm truly needed.

Of course, with rationalizations like that, I may just spend my entire career reporting only on "exciting celebrity news" - never once daring to venture into uncharted territory.

[cop an Attitude]

I feel that things right now can only get worse or more worse. Currently we have a myriad of social, economical and environmental issues that will directly impact our lives in the near future, although current capitalistic practices only have the short sight to make a profit off of the here and now. I have a feeling that the economic bubbles we have been popping are dwarfed in comparison to what lies ahead. The long term damage created by modern day society will eventually come full circle, and only increase with a swelling population.

Currently we have no substantial alternates to oil, and judging by how fast the Arabian reservoirs are drying and how the North Sea is shrinking, how long do we really have? We may be near or have peaked, who knows? When that happens then anything possible, but one things for sure, capitalism and globalization will eventually crash due to the loss of fuel unless action is take soon, yet denial is their remedy. Hydrogen is too costly and inefficient, biofuels need mass farming, synthetics need diesel and converters, nuclear can’t power a car, electricity can’t power a big rig, and everything else takes mass production of turbines or panels. Climate Change is also a major issue, along with the Middle Eastern Powder Keg, (or should I say Oil Drum). Nations may flood, glacier runoff will dry up thus eliminating drinking water for millions. Business is enormous, but when enough blocks are taken out, the whole jenga tower can fall. With a collapse that encompassing and complex, all of the things we know will simply stop operating.

This semi-dystopia brought on by the indulgence of the last century, may spark some novel ideas, and possible bring about the local and democratic lifestyles so many of us wish. It may shake the disillusions of the past and spur community development, self determination, freedom and a natural lifestyle.

Although, this may be the future of the more enlightened communities, I can see people falling back into the same habits as before. Looking for the easy answer, scapegoats, racism, Social Darwinism, religious fanaticism, lost enducation, and even regional and resource warfare. It’s all a distant and maybe darkly skewed outlook on the future, but all the signs point to some sort of breakdown. But who knows, revolution is the shining light in times of bleak hardship.

[ckaihatsu]

CAPITALISM: U.S. Economy: Six Months To Live?
grok <[email protected]> Wed, Jan 13, 2010 at 11:15 PM

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This well-known petit-bourgeois commentator doesn't have a socialist
bone in his body, and enjoys the reputation of being somewhat of a
Cassandra, in the "mainstream" -- but the point is: this is mainly
because he calls `em like he sees `em. And he and the bourgeois
experts he analyzes have been seeing this slow-motion Mother Of All
Trainwrecks coming for the longest time... As have any real marxists.

The ability of the bourgeois strategists to continue rolling over
their crisis into 'new debt' is swiftly reaching the point where they
will simply be overwhelmed by their own long-term perfidy against us.
Of course -- we're all along for the ride too.
Enjoy it.


- -- grok.





- ----- Six Months To Live?


Clusterfuck Nation

by James Howard Kunstler

Comment on current events by the author of
The Long Emergency (2005)

www.kunstler.com (January 11 2010)

The economy that is. Especially the part that consists of swapping
paper certificates. That's the buzz I've gotten the first two weeks
of 2010, and forgive me for not presenting a sheaf of charts and
graphs to make the case. Just about everybody else yakking about
these thing on the Web provides plenty of statistical analysis:
Mish {1}, The Automatic Earth {2}, Chris Martenson {3}, Zero Hedge
{4}, The Baseline Scenario {5} ... They're all well worth visiting.

Bank bonus numbers are due out any day now. The revolt that I
expected around the release of these numbers may come from a
different place than I had imagined earlier - not from whatever
remains of "normal" working people, but from the thought leaders
and middling agents in administration (including the prosecutors)
who, for one reason or another, have been diverting their
attention, or watching and waiting, or making excuses for a couple
of years now. When Frank Rich of The New York Times starts calling
for Robert Rubin's head {6}, then maybe the great groaning tramp
steamer of media opinion is turning in the water and charting a new
course for the port of reality.

Anyway, the grotesque carnival of rackets and lies that the US
economy has become - held together with the duct tape of stimulus
cash, gamed accounting, mortgage subsidies, carry trades, TBTF
bailouts, TARPS, TALFS, shell-game BLS reports, and MSNBC "green
shoots" cheerleading - gives every sign of tipping into collapse at
a moment's notice. There are just too many obvious things that can
go wrong, and that means there are many less obvious, hidden things
that can go wrong, and isn't it tragically foolish to tempt
Murphy's Law {7}, since it operates so well without any help from
us? The call is even going out lately for criminal prosecution of
the current Treasury Secretary, Mr Geithner, for engineering AIG's
$14 billion credit default swap payoff to Goldman Sachs {8} as part
of the AIG bailout. Okay then, why not Paulson, Bernanke,
Blankfein ...?

But the other rings of the circus are fully occupied by clowns and
dancing bears, too. Even with sketchy-looking stock market
prospects for 2010, it's hard to explain why the world would run
into US treasury bonds, especially a few months from now, after the
initial rush-to-safety - that is, when you could just as easily buy
Canadian or Swiss franc denominated short-term bills. And then what
happens when the Federal Reserve has to eat all the uneaten
treasuries, while it's already choking to death on collateralized
debt obligations and related worthless toxic trash securities?
After all, the greenbacks we swap around are called Federal Reserve
Notes.

Why would anybody think that the housing market is going to keep
levitating? A big fat "pig" of adjustable rate mortgages (that is,
mortgages that will never be "serviced") is about to move through
the "python" of the housing scene, shoving millions more households
into default and foreclosure. Meanwhile, local and regional banks
are choking on real estate already in default that they are afraid
to foreclose on and have been keeping off the market through 2009
in order to not send the price of houses down further and put even
more households "under water" for houses worth much less than the
face value of their mortgage. I doubt that the banks are doing this
out of the goodness of their hearts, but whatever the motive, this
racket of just sucking up bad loans can't go on forever. At some
point, a banking system has to be based on credibility, on loans
actually being paid back, or it will break, and we are close to the
breaking point.

The pathetic truth at the center of the housing fiasco is that
prices have to come down further if any normal wage-earner will
ever afford to buy a house again in America on anything like normal
terms. Anyway, sooner or later the banking system is going to have
to upchuck the "phantom inventory" of un-foreclosed-on houses, and
sell them off for whatever they can get, or else a lot of banks are
going to go out of business.

They may go down anyway, because the catastrophe of commercial real
estate is following right on the heels of the fiasco in residential
real estate. The vast oversupply of malls, strip malls, office
parks, and other furnishings of the expiring "consumer" economy is
about to become the biggest liability that any economy in world
history has ever seen. Who will even want to buy these absurd
properties cheaply, when they will never find any retail tenants
for the badly-built structures, nor be able to keep up with the
maintenance (think: leaking flat roofs), or retrofit them for
anything? In a really sane world, a lot of these buildings would go
straight to demolition-and-salvage - except that it costs money to
do that, and who exactly right now will make a market for used
cinder blocks and aluminum window sashes? I expect these places to
become squats for the desperate homeless.

Then there are the bankrupt states, led by the biggest, of course -
California and New York - but with plenty more right behind,
whirling around the same drain (probably forty-nine of them with
the exception of that fiscal Nirvana, North Dakota!). Even if they
manage to con bailouts from the bailout-weary federal government,
the states are still going to have to winnow down the ranks of
their public employees (throwing more middle-class households into
foreclosure and penury), while they hugely reduce public services,
especially to the poor, the unwell, and the unable. That alone will
redound into very visible realms of daily life from public safety
(rising crime) to the decay of roads and bridges.

Perhaps the most troubling buzz in the air this first month of 2010
are rumors of coming food shortages due to widespread crop failures
around the world in the harvest seasons of 2009 - for example
Emergency Food Supply {9}, Food Crisis For Dummies {10}, 2010 Wall
Street Predictions {11}. If the US Department of Agriculture hasn't
flat-out lied about crop numbers in 2009, the signs are that their
statistical reports are at least inconsistent with real grain
storage numbers and commodities prices. And why would the USDA tell
the truth if every other federal agency is reporting gamed numbers?
Given the crisis in capital and lending, one also has to wonder how
farmers will be able to borrow money to get their crops in this
year.

Finally there's the global energy scene. The price of oil starts
this week over $83 a barrel. That puts it about $1.50 from the
price "danger zone" where it begins to kill economic activity in
the USA. Things and procedures just start to cost too much.
Gasoline. Deisel fuel (and, by the way, that means another problem
for food production going into the 2010 planting season). One
especially eerie situation the past few weeks has been the
de-coupling of moves upward in oil from moves in the value of the
dollar. Lately, oil has been going up whether or not the dollar has
gone up or down. Two weeks ago the dollar went below 1.42 against
the Euro and today it's above 1.45, and oil has been rising
steadily from the mid $70 range all the while. 2010 may be the year
that we conclusively realize that world oil demand exceeds world
oil supply - and that global oil production cannot hold above 85
million barrels-a-day no matter what we do.

These are the things that trouble my mind at three o'clock in the
morning when the wind rises and things bang around spookily. Gird
your loins out there for a savage season or two.

Links:

{1} http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/

{2} http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/

{3} http://www.chrismartenson.com/blog

{4} http://www.zerohedge.com/

{5} http://baselinescenario.com/

{6} http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/opinion/10rich.html?em

{7} http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy%27s_law

{8}
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=awMKjsrS8zYk&pos=3

{9}
http://theemergencyfoodsupply.com/archives/the-coming-world-famine-will-2010-be-the-year-the-world-runs-out-of-food

{10}
http://www.marketskeptics.com/2009/12/2010-food-crisis-for-dummies.html

{11}
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/economy/2010-wall-street-predictions-major-food-shortages-oil-to-rise-above-100-a-barrel-among-forecasts

http://kunstler.com/blog/2010/01/six-months-to-live.html


http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com
http://www.ashisuto.co.jp





- ----- End forwarded message -----

- --
The Financiers & Banksters have looted untold trillions of our future earnings.
Their bureaucratic police & military goons are here to make us all pay for it.
Forever.
Well FORGET THAT. Let's get it *ALL* back from them -- and more.

**Socialist revolution NOW!!**

Build the North America-wide General Strike.
TODO el poder a los consejos y las comunas.
TOUT le pouvoir aux conseils et communes.
ALL power to the councils and communes.

And beware the 'bait & switch' fraud: "Social Justice" is NOT *Socialism*...
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[cyu]

I can see people falling back into the same habits as before. Looking for the easy answer, scapegoats, racism, Social Darwinism, religious fanaticism, lost enducation, and even regional and resource warfare. It’s all a distant and maybe darkly skewed outlook on the future, but all the signs point to some sort of breakdown.

The good thing about politics is that human beings can affect it - I wasn't going to post this to revleft before since I didn't think it really fit here, but you might find this interesting: Excerpts from http://ipsnorthamerica.net/news.php?idnews=2780

This consumerist culture is the elephant in the room when it comes to solving the big environmental issues of today

we are acting under the heavy influence of cultural conventions that influence our behaviour by making things like fast food, air conditioning and suburban living feel increasingly "natural" and more difficult to imagine living without

policy alone will not be enough. A dramatic shift in the very design of human societies will be essential

cultural assumptions, even well-established ones, can be overturned... The book goes well beyond standard prescriptions for clean technologies and enlightened policies. It advocates rethinking the foundations of modern consumerism.

The report also points to the roles different societal institutions can play in spurring cultural shifts. Among these, religion, government, the media, businesses and education all have key roles to play. Taken separately, their efforts might seem small, admits Assadourian, but taken together they can effect real change.

With deliberate effort we can replace consumerism with sustainability just as quickly as we traded home-cooked meals for Happy Meals and neighbourhood parks for shopping malls," he says, alluding to the tenuousness of what appear to be deep and solid cultural roots.

Culture, after all, is for making it easy for people to unleash their potential, not for standing there as a wall to stop them from moving forward. Culture that does not let people grow is a dead culture