Just saw this interesting debate on Al Jazeera on the gravity and nature of the current capitalist crisis. Loretta Napoleoni, author of Maonomics on China, makes very important historical points about the way capitalist development at a certain point leads to a migration of capital from production to finance. This happened a century ago before World War One, and later led to the 1929 crash. In recent years it led to the housing bubble and deindustrialisation.
By contrast, the Chinese state keeps a firm hand on the financial sector to stop in getting out of control. This is how it has avoided disastrous financial crises of the kind that hit Japan and East Asia in the 1990s. Al Jazeera is not afraid to air these kinds of discussions of big issues and, unlike the BBC, it welcomes non-orthodox voices on to its discussions. Guests with cogent critiques of capitalism are rare creatures on the BBC. When they are allowed on, like Ann Pettifor, they are generally outgunned. Our mainstream media generally sticks to an orthodox discussion of the problems, mainly dealing with its technocratic aspects and also the response of the politicians to the crisis. For example, how often is the Greek austerity drive imposed by the EU questioned or described as it should be - as a form of madness - on the BBC?
At the moment, the main focus of anger in society and the media is bankers and the financial system, rather than capitalism itself. That could change if the crisis is not resolved. What is probably most troubling for conservative politicians and big business, is they don't actually have a way of turning back the clock to before 2008. That means they have to come up with new answers to satisfy a population suffering from long-term economic stagnation and unemployment.
State intervention and redistribution are the traditional responses to capitalist slump, but the orthodoxy of the last few decades rules this out and offers only austerity (now that borrowing more is not possible), which seems to be making things worse.
Will this lead to a revival of socialism? Not so far - although a Pew poll in the US in December showed a striking generational divide with a surprise majority of young Americans now favouring socialism over capitalism. This could mean that as the Cold War generation is eclipsed by a new Global Crash generation, the negative view of socialism created by the old Soviet bloc is gradually being replaced by a new one more sympathetic to socialism and antipathetic to 21st century capitalism. Even a 31% positive view of socialism among all Americans is surprisingly high given the amount of anti-communist propaganda they have digested over many decades.
Americans tend to think of countries where the state plays more than an adminstrative and military role as socialist. Hence they used to describe not just China and Russia but also Europe as 'socialist' because of the welfare state and state control of some industries. 'Emerging' countries like China, leftist Latin America and even the Gulf states are broadly state capitalist, and do not adhere to the 'free market'. Their rulers tend not to not simply do the bidding of corporations but look out for the interests of wider society. While they also have grave social problems, including vast inequality, their economies are growing and they at least appear to be tackling poverty, rather than creating more of it.
By contrast, the Chinese state keeps a firm hand on the financial sector to stop in getting out of control. This is how it has avoided disastrous financial crises of the kind that hit Japan and East Asia in the 1990s. Al Jazeera is not afraid to air these kinds of discussions of big issues and, unlike the BBC, it welcomes non-orthodox voices on to its discussions. Guests with cogent critiques of capitalism are rare creatures on the BBC. When they are allowed on, like Ann Pettifor, they are generally outgunned. Our mainstream media generally sticks to an orthodox discussion of the problems, mainly dealing with its technocratic aspects and also the response of the politicians to the crisis. For example, how often is the Greek austerity drive imposed by the EU questioned or described as it should be - as a form of madness - on the BBC?
At the moment, the main focus of anger in society and the media is bankers and the financial system, rather than capitalism itself. That could change if the crisis is not resolved. What is probably most troubling for conservative politicians and big business, is they don't actually have a way of turning back the clock to before 2008. That means they have to come up with new answers to satisfy a population suffering from long-term economic stagnation and unemployment.
State intervention and redistribution are the traditional responses to capitalist slump, but the orthodoxy of the last few decades rules this out and offers only austerity (now that borrowing more is not possible), which seems to be making things worse.
Will this lead to a revival of socialism? Not so far - although a Pew poll in the US in December showed a striking generational divide with a surprise majority of young Americans now favouring socialism over capitalism. This could mean that as the Cold War generation is eclipsed by a new Global Crash generation, the negative view of socialism created by the old Soviet bloc is gradually being replaced by a new one more sympathetic to socialism and antipathetic to 21st century capitalism. Even a 31% positive view of socialism among all Americans is surprisingly high given the amount of anti-communist propaganda they have digested over many decades.
As Huffington Post reported
The poll found that while Americans overall tend to oppose socialism by a strong margin -- 60 percent say they have a negative view of it, versus just 31 percent who say they have a positive view -- socialism has more fans than opponents among the 18-29 crowd. Forty-nine percent of people in that age bracket say they have a positive view of socialism; only 43 percent say they have a negative view.
And while those numbers aren't very far apart, it's noteworthy that they were reversed just 20 months ago, when Pew conducted a similar poll. In that survey, published May 2010, 43 percent of people age 18-29 said they had a positive view of socialism, and 49 percent said their opinion was negative.
....Indeed, the Pew poll also found that just 46 percent of people age 18-29 have positive views of capitalism, and 47 percent have negative views -- making this the only age group where support for socialism outweighs support for capitalism.
Americans tend to think of countries where the state plays more than an adminstrative and military role as socialist. Hence they used to describe not just China and Russia but also Europe as 'socialist' because of the welfare state and state control of some industries. 'Emerging' countries like China, leftist Latin America and even the Gulf states are broadly state capitalist, and do not adhere to the 'free market'. Their rulers tend not to not simply do the bidding of corporations but look out for the interests of wider society. While they also have grave social problems, including vast inequality, their economies are growing and they at least appear to be tackling poverty, rather than creating more of it.
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