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In the interests of precision, it might be called 'The Global Aristocracy', for the reasons you've given.
I wanna add something about another reason of why many people still today still vote either for right-wing parties or social-democrat centrist parties. As a solution for the economic crisis and problems that they face in their personal lives in most elections in most countries. And that reason is fearmongering by their governments against marxism, anarchism and leftist ideology. Take a look at this news of the FBI raiding the house of a leftist activist, of FBI officers looking for leftist and anarchist books in their house. It seems to me that marxism, anarchism and leftist ideology is still banned in the USA today like in the cold war. And news like these one here will feed the already anti-marxism hate ingrained in the minds of most americans
FBI AGENTS RAID HOMES IN SEARCH OF ANARCHIST BOOKS AND EVEN FOR BLACK CLOTHES. SO NOW DRESSING LIKE A PUNK ROCKER, METALER WITH BLACK T-SHIRTS IS A CRIME IN AMERICA. NO WONDER MOST AMERICAN YOUNG PEOPLE TODAY DRESS LIKE CONSERVATIVE GEEKS
Source of this news: http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog...-seattle/6267/
by WILL POTTER on JULY 30, 2012
in TERRORISM COURT CASES
When FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Force agents raided multiple activist homes in the Northwest last week, they were in search of “anti-government or anarchist literature.” The raids were part of a multi-state operation that targeted activists in Portland, Olympia, and Seattle. At least three people were served subpoenas to appear before a federal grand jury on August 2nd in Seattle. In addition to anarchist literature, the warrants also authorize agents to seize flags, flag-making material, cell phones, hard drives, address books, and black clothing.
The listing of black clothing and flags, along with comments made by police, indicates that the FBI may ostensibly be investigating “black bloc” tactics used during May Day protests in Seattle, which destroyed corporate property.
If that is true, how are books and literature evidence of criminal activity? To answer that, we need to look at the increasing harassment, surveillance, and prosecution of anarchists and political activists associated with the Occupy Movement.
In some cases, such as the May Day arrests in Cleveland, the FBI has been so desperate to arrests “anarchist terrorists” that it supplied them with bomb-making materials and used an informant to entrap them. The same thing happened in Chicago. The motivation for these operations, and the instruction that “anarchist” means “terrorist,” is coming straight from the top levels of the federal government. As I recently wrote, new documents show that the FBI is conducting “domestic terrorism” training presentations about anarchists. The FBI presentation described anarchists as “criminals seeking an ideology to justify their activities.”
This is the guilt-by-association mentality that is guiding FBI and JTTF assaults on political activists; if agents find “anarchist literature” in a raid, it is evidence of criminal activity because anarchism, in and of itself, is criminal activity. The Seattle grand jury may or may not be investigating May Day protests. What’s clear, though, is that the grand jury is being used as a tool in this criminalization of those suspected as “anarchists.” Grand juries are secretive processes that are frequently used against political activists in order to acquire information. They are fishing expeditions. If activists refuse to testify about their personal beliefs and political associations, they can be imprisoned.
Jordan Halliday, for example, was recently released after serving more than six months in prison (and being imprisoned once already for four months) for asserting his First Amendment and Fifth Amendment rights and refusing to provide information about the animal rights movement. As one organizer with Occupy Seattle said after the raid: “…we are not being raided for connection to any crime, but to some political ideology that the police think we have. “I was just doing research on the old Pinkerton strikebreaking paramilitaries, so it’s kind of funny, you know, to have that old Red Scare history burst through my front door at six AM.”
It will last until workers wisen up about the circumstances of their lives. And then decide that they want a change.
The capitalist system can always be tweaked if it is not going as expected as they have done since early last century.
The question of when capitalism collapses is entirely contingent on what you mean by capitalism. If you equate it with our present globalized, postfordist multinational neo-feudalism, clearly it can only sustain its component distribution chains for as long as petroleum remains widely available at price not much above the present one. That state of affairs will not long endure. No plausible alternative to oil presents itself, so we can safely expect production to be reorganized on a more regional basis in the not too distant future. This will naturally be accompanied by considerable economic shocks, as vast amounts of our fixed investments in infrastructure over the past 30 years are rendered close to useless. Clearly, we can find political opportunity here.
If capitalism is understood as a system of social relations which promote an ethic of constant accumulation to moral preeminence, then I don't think we can pin point its demise with anything like precision. After an economic cataclysm like an ultimate oil shock, nothing but the organized demand for a socialist alternative prevents the market economy from reconstituting itself at a less attenuated, more regional level. Indeed, we can already detect a shift in this direction with the current trend towards local and 'green' consumption.
Jesus, do your Internet Service Providers restrict you from accessing any kind of *news* whatsoever -- ?
I can't figure out why otherwise solid comrades would suddenly, consistently get so mealy-mouthed and mumbling about the prospects and timetable for capitalism's demise.
Does everyone realize that all of Europe is seizing up over the question of whether to eject Greece from the EU or not -- ? It's a true dilemma for them because the markets can't be pleased either way. There are speculative financial attacks on the sovereign debt of *several* European countries now, yet this is *allowed* and *not* considered chaotic according to bourgeois law.
Cutting off an appendage of the EU entity wouldn't exactly be progressive, either, either economically or otherwise.
I was just speculating that the wealthy must have been aware that this situation could / would arise and must have made some sort of plan on how to navigate through this. For the reasons you stated i dont believe they have much influence over the current trajectory of the economic system but i do think there is a chance that they will have some sort of plan in place to try to ensure they can retain their positions of power as it unfolds. Maybe not. Its just me speculating.
The term debt jubilee seems to have become popular lately with many sources mentioning it as some sort of magic wand to the problems. I couldnt see any sort of jubilee working without also a cancellation of savings to counter balance. I really dont see this happening because even if it did the problem will just resurface again. Its a structural problem in the economy and such a measure wouldnt solve that.
But surely it is temporarily stopping a collapse and the subsequent chaos which would ensue. I agree this can only be a temporary measure as its actually worsening the overall situation. Its just how long can it continue before it reaches a breaking point. I dont have a clue tbh. Do you have any ideas?
Then what happens next?
No prob. The thing is, everything's been so fully financialized now, on a world scale, that the wealthy *do* constitute a feudal-like global aristocracy -- especially since so many workers now do service-type jobs instead of the labor-empowering blue-collar hands-on point-of-production manufacturing of the last period. So, now, with the Internet being ubiquitous, everyone has a guaranteed low-pay on-ramp to peonage to financial capital.
But since everything's so concentrated on the financial system and financial valuations, that's also the wealthy's point of dependence. Note how over the past decade-plus there's been every effort made to uphold the financial system through practically *knee-jerk* bailouts on the part of governments. The reason is that there's really *no other yardstick* by which to see who's who and what's what -- allowing those "too big to fail" to fail would leave everyone standing around looking at each other, unsure where and how to begin anew.
Interestingly, even catastrophic warfare can't be relied on anymore (to destroy value) because of globalized communications and the rapid congealing of mass opinion against war wherever it may happen to pop up. I think things are different today than even the same point ten years ago because the net is now fully socialized and socially acceptable.
Yes, agreed. (Though your contention about the "cancellation of savings to counter balance [the cancellation of debt]" is not clear since much debt does *not*, as intuition might suggest, have a corresponding 'positive-side' bank entry.)
Well, everything depends on how people view society's organization, and what they / we consider to be 'order' and 'chaos' -- if you, or anyone, considers the indefinite creation of sovereign debt to be "stopping a collapse and the subsequent chaos which would ensue", then you'll probably think and act that way in terms of politics and society.
For those who despise the capitalist order the prospect of a collapse could be seen as a *positive* thing since it would immediately create opportunities for a different, socialist-type politics to take hold on a mass scale.
life in the U.S. seems very dehumanizing and i feel like i will never see major change here in my lifetime, while other places like Venezuela or Argentina look more promising. i don't just mean the governments there but the people's consciousness seems more advanced and politically progressive if not radical. anyone besides me have a strong urge to get up and leave the U.S. and live it up somewhere else?
Yup. The world and how in interacts come down to finances in this capitalist system and the bourgeoisie will do anything to keep this system going and keep power.
From cradle to grave people are indoctrinated into capitalism to the stage where they cant really see or understand any other system. However, i do think that the current financial turmoil including many mainstream news stories about 'greedy' bankers is at least raising awareness slightly amongst the populace.
Ok, thanks for that.
Dont misunderstand my position. I certainly do not support QE or any other govt intervention which 'props up' bourgeois institutes. And i agree that such a collapse would present an opportunity to bring in a socialist system.
Yeah, it's always a sliding scale for these things, because, of course, I'd rather see such exposés than not, but at the same time they're taking up the time and attention that would be better filled with a full-blast *anti-capitalist* treatment.
Okay.
Capitalism have already crashed because it is today restraining the new dominating immaterial productive forces, now we just need to replace it with communism.
Capitalism collapses whenever capitalist social relations are broken. This happens at thousands of moments every day to varying degrees and for varying lengths of time; everything from lending somebody a pen to opening a new squatted social centre, from bunking off work to rioting in the streets. The key is to build on these moments/situations/communes/cracks and to expand them.
"It is slaves, struggling to throw off their chains, who unleash the movement whereby history abolishes masters." - Raoul Vaneigem
"Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality will have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things." - Karl Marx
"What distinguishes reform from revolution is not that revolution is violent, but that it links insurrection and communisation." - Gilles Dauvé
