01.25.2012 04:54 PM

Canada Live, Jan. 25: capitalism is dead, long live capitalism


Warren reacts with amusement to the suggestion that capitalism is robust and healthy.

10 Comments

  1. Just Call Me Rick says:

    Luntz says not to use dirty words like “Capitalism”. Don’t take the bait. Its a trap. He wants progressives to use words like this to sound like extremists/socialists. See George Lakoff (an MIT cognitive linguist):

    http://georgelakoff.com/2011/12/11/words-that-dont-work/

    • David Markin says:

      That shit is 1.5 months old and occupy was as dead as disco before that…unless Zack de la Rocha finally released his solo album in the meantime.

  2. allegra fortissima says:

    “anti corporate, anti investment banker, anti capitalist message” – if Karl Marx was alive, he would say: “I told you so!”

    “Capital” is an amazing work (one chapter a night would make a lovely good night reading for our Capitalist Boy). Interesting fact is that Marx wasn’t much of a communist. Marx said precious little about what communism would or should entail. Actually, the Communist Manifesto only represents a small fraction of his works. He was more dedicated to dissect and critique capitalism. And the amazing thing about his critique is that that it’s still relevant. There must be a reason why in a 1999 BBC poll Karl Marx was voted the “Thinker of the Millenium” by people from around the world…

    • dave says:

      Yeah, I also find Marx in various of his works wrote analysis that seems to me to make sense of a lot of things today. I find, too, that his way of analyzing is useful.
      Capitalism, to me, is a system the main aim of which is accumulation of wealth by privatizing the commons and funneling larger and larger amounts of wealth into fewer hands. Its efficiency is that it does this well. It has been especially efficient in co opting governments (of any kind) and having those governments tax every one else to pay for protecting and extending the capitalist accumulation of wealth.

      Sometimes I think that we used to have the divine right of priests, then divine right of warriors and nobles, divine right of kings,…and now, we have divine right of capital, in transferring our common wealth into private wealth.

      Good to know that there are two of us!

  3. james Smith says:

    To change the subject, may I tell you about my friend you died a week ago? A Liberal, who made the cause a big part of his life. He is missed in Burlie a great deal:

    http://bpla.ca/node/145

  4. VC says:

    Even the most ardent capitalists are admitting that capitalism is broken — read some of the proceedings from yesterday at the World Economic Forum, particularly by the founder and chairman himself, Klaus Schwab.

  5. smelter rat says:

    Uh huh, the economy of that beacon of Capitalism south of us is certainly something to strive for.

  6. W.B. says:

    Jonathan Kay has great column in today’s National Post.
    You should get him on there to help you out; a little conservative backup!

  7. dave says:

    One aspect of Marx’s writing and analysis is that he tends to describe things as he sees them. He made some predictions based on that analysis. I do not remember him advocating one change or another; I mostly remember him suggesting that there is an inevitability to the way that history is evolving.

    I agree with your 1st paragraph; capitalism is thriving. The only resistance seem to be faith based communities – which must make Marx in heaven slap his forehead that the opiate of the masses is acting as a bulwark against the materialism of capitalism. But capitalism is thriving. It is accumulating wealth into private hands to make some obscenely wealthy (I think of Dostoevski’s character, in BROS. K., saying something like: ‘If belief in your god demands the unnecessary death of one innocent child, then I reject your god.’) It has the rest of us paying all kinds of taxes to support the force capital needs to carry on its wars. Its politicians, parties and leaders are bought and paid for.

    In your 2nd paragraph, by ‘freer,’ I take that to mean that capital moves where it can make a buck, without obstacles – such as locals whining about crap from fracking in their ground water, or indigenous South American communities whinging about their way of life.

    In your 3rd paragraph, the welfare state, as you call it( not nanny state? – much more effective term) or common wealth is indeed being looted by capital. We will have our descendents working extra to pay for these bank/financials bail outs for decades.

    4th paragraph, the washing over Africa (and Mid East – a term that hangs on in our post colonial world)of capitalism includes the recent taking down of a regime that was going to market its oil in other than USA dollars, and the taking down of a regime that was leading the rest of Africa in trying to to get control of Africa’s finances – capitalism’s tax payer funded armies spreading ‘freedom and democracy.’

    A problem for capitalism is to pretend that there are just a few bad apples, just a bit of corruption, and that capitalism can deal with it. It is quite possible that instances of corruption are simply slip ups in the regular routine of capitalism where the rest of us see what is happening most of the time.A way to look at the 1930’s and on is that regulations and public programmes were hurried into place to save capitalism.

    Your Big Government example, obamacare, is a system for guaranteeing profits to capitalist organizations which contribute nothing but a rake off to the health care transaction; your Big Unions are at as low a membership as they have ever been, and have very little power; Big Business works like any business – it exists to make money, and the bigger it is, the more likely all its efforts are to maximize wealth accumulation – and that includes lobbying, advocacy advertising, buying politicians and parties, funding business friendly think tanks and research.

    People who believe in the divine right of capital tend to see acceleration of accumulation of wealth by the few as having divine sanction, and that interference with this is artificial redistribution of wealth; these are right wing people.
    People who also believe in the divinity of capital, but who figure that artificial redistribution of wealth can achieve a more just society, are middle of the road.
    People who believe that capitalism is itself an artificial redistribution of wealth, will try to keep more of produced wealth in the commons are left of centre.

    Finally, the point has been made recently that capitalism and democracy might be inimical to each other. It is tough to find a democratic catialist organization – including shareholder meetings. I would add that a success of capital has been in language control, including the pretence that ‘free enterprise’ and ‘capitalism’ are synonyms. If a person or group is enterprising, and the enterprise is successful, it is quickly gobbled up by capital, and the enterprisers eased out.

  8. Lew says:

    A most excellent post Mr. Tulk. Capitalism will be in even better shape once the problems of overbearing government and unions (mainly public sector) are dealt with.

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