Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
'Modern Capitalism Has Reached the End of Its Rope’
There is barely a corner of the globe that has not been touched by the current financial meltdown. But a senior sociology scholar at Yale University thinks the crisis is far wider than the economic crash - it is capitalism itself which is collapsing.
Immanuel Wallerstein explained his theory to RT.
“Modern capitalism has reached the end of its rope. It cannot survive as a system,” Wallerstein said. “And what we are seeing is the structural crisis of the system. The structural crisis goes on for a long time. It really started more or less in the 1970s and will go on for another 20, 30, 40 years. It is not a crisis of a year or of a short moment, it is the major structural unfolding of a system. And we are in transition to another system and, in fact, the real political struggle that is going on in the world that most people refuse to recognize is not about capitalism – should we have or should we not have it – but about what should replace it.”
35 Comments so far
Show AllThe rope that will be tied to a high tree branch
Let us hope! A good stout rope that can support the weight of an obese politician, fat from war profiteering and slave labor.
Wallerstin's discussion was interesting but too generalized to be of much value. It was almost like listening to a politician speak.
But I do appreciate RT's effort to interview prominent Professors, journalists and ex-officials that you just do not see on the MSM. The American people need more understanding of basic economics and politics and the MSM is not helping.
What can one expect from a 15 min interview? Read Wallersteins books to learn more about what this neo-Marxist has to say. :-)
http://scholar.google.ca/scholar?q=wallerstein+world+systems+theory&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart
20, 30, 40 years? Could he be off by one order of magnitude? If not, it is hard to imagine this 'machine' grinding up and killing everything 40 years out...
We're too impatient.In 2008, a lot of people were predicting the demise of capitalism.Not just predicting, but saying-"this is is it". Well, it wasn't. It was just a bad hiccup.People on the Left seem to be into instant gratification as much as any one else in this society. Not that capitalism couldn't come completely unglued next week,but, you know, it probably won't-or the week after that either.I like seeing an old man who talks of a slow motion crisis grinding on for years-long after he's gone.He does not belong to the "Apres moi le Deluge" school of thought, so typical of many old farts posting on CD.
You write:
"but saying-"this is is it". Well, it wasn't."
Who are you to say it wasn't? Just another ignorant young prick posting on CD, with not much experience?
Take it from an old fart who's watching these little sticky plasters being used repeatedly to patch over lacerated arteries, while the Mafia of Sociopaths in banks and governments just prescribe further transfusions to the patient.
So speculation, and insecurity of wars of aggression, or endless, border-less, nebulous and limitless wars of whatever provoke destabilization which then effectively directs ever larger quantities of the blood-money to flow to particular selected corporations and institutions that insure that mankind retrogress towards a more inhumane totalitarian form of exploitation, termed as "disaster capitalism", a 21st C type of slavery of the masses to the giant corporate overlords that call the shots and to hell with laws, justice, or even any human moral underpinning..... These corporations do not contribute to growth, employment, stability or progress. They are arms suppliers, mercenaries, security companies, on one side and speculative bubble makers, and con artists pushing debt paper on the other end..... etc. etc. They are means to concentrate capital and power to a very few.... And that is the death of capitalism as we know it.
So when the debts rose as a result of 2008, and the bubbles before, and they just kicked the can down the road, another sticky-plaster here and another transfusion there, and another kick... You didn't notice that the patient was not already dead?
I might be an old fart, but I know dead when I see it, and this economic and financial horse is not going to get up to pull a cart anywhere....
Hi Lucitanian, Kind of hard to communicate with someone when you start off calling them an ignorant young prick. There is to much invective here on CD. Your message is valid the name calling get's in it's way. Good Day! PS I get called nasty names on this site all the time.
Well, he is kind of an asshole.I suppose he can't help that.By the way, I was born in 1942. He's probably off his meds. Fortunately, I'm drug free.
No, I believe I am not the asshole here in fact, I just didn't appreciate your starting a thread with namecalling referring to "typical old farts on CD". By the way, I'm the young whipper snapper here being born in '51, and I also do not need drugs for anything and don't feel a day over 35.
So why not just stick to discussing the economics and politics of the situation, and skip the senseless attacks with needless and tactlessness sarcasm.
We're not going to make a much of better world by working together if we cannot start respecting each other and that means also treating each other with a degree of respect. So don't put out your insults calling people old farts unless you want to waste your energy dealing with the ones you receive in response.
Maybe you should read what I actually said, and think about it.Or maybe what you need is an enema. But that probably wouldn't cure you of your delusion about the eminent demise of capitalism.It's going out,as they say, with a whimper, not with a bang.It's gonna take a while, just as the transition from fuedalism to capitalism took several hundred years.Neither one of us will be around to witness the transition to the new system, whatever it turns out to be. Sorry.
I did read what you actually wrote [said], but you and Wallerstein are wrong about the 20, 30 or 40 years, because capitalism depends on the amassing of wealth, not paper or digital transfers of debt to wealth. Building capital on the back of fabricated debt and not on the back of productive assets as has been the case is usury and is only as "real" as the ability of the creditor to collect or the debtor to pay. As the expansion of money supply has been exponential to supplement the collapse of the ability of the economies to repay debt, so the collapse is catastrophic.
In my opinion it will be catastrophic in the sense that it will create the implosion of the fiat money system and will cause the end of fractional banking, usury. The ability of governments to impose general regulation will be seriously impinged for many years as barter and community micro-economies arise to replace the collapsed state based monetary systems. At least that is how I see the future from here. You can read what happened in Argentina in the 90s and then extrapolate around the world.
The other essential aspect curtailing in the short term any future of the capitalist system is its dependence on growth. Growth requires constantly expanding demand, which requires the lateral re-distribution of wealth, where as wealth is presently being concentrated to its source and being devalued because it cannot even cancel the underlying debt that allowed it to be created arbitrarily in the first place, like a black hole created by collapsing stars being sucked into an ever massive core. Money goes to money, and becomes meaningless. The peripheral economies are starved of capital because of the failing debts in the centre. Negative growth, capital colapse.....
Finally the demise is also imminent if not immediate (10 to 15 years) because of the catastrophic nature of our limitations of resources, namely clean water and clean energy. A pair of jeans takes about 10000 liters of water to make, along with 3000 liters for a cotton t-shirt. Rather than starve the people in Tashkent or Urals will use the water for subsistence agriculture and food production and so there will be no jeans to market. Wasteful consumption of consumer capitalism is literally killing our planet, (just look at the Aral Sea) meaning it must stop one way or another..... probably the other. I will not go into the effects of climate change but that is even more catastrophic.
So we don't have a while and in fact we are probably transitioning "back to feudalism" not from capitalism to a better or high-bred state.
Could you agree just give up the childish invectives, they contribute nothing to dialogue or understanding.
One thing that should tip one off to the emptiness of the current system is the increasingly shabby appearance of the presentations on the teevee, the wormeaten facade of it all, and the computer-generated graphics that pathetically attempt to impress. The problem is that only children, or those who have never grown up, fall for this stuff, underlining once again how important it is to educate them in critical thinking . . . and very early on. Each generation must be reeducated.
Education has become a commodity, comprising indoctrination to conformity and graduated by multiple choice and where the rare whole sentence is needed grammar and spelling take second place to canned phraseology.
Critical thinking is the last thing the present doyens of fake industry and government need on their daisy chains of power management. And now that their system is collapsing around their ears there are few people left who have that long forgotten capacity, or the energy left to use it to help find a better way for the future of all. There's no one left even to ask the questions!
when asked about the west teaching the a lesson to the uncivilized for the last couple decades "....The civilized cause more trouble than the non civilized........We've been seeing that for 500 years" .
chickens coming home to roost anyone? Settler nations, an experiment in insanity and brutality?
The other systems have already failed, over and over so lets try them again, lol. No sense of history will insure similar results
Well he did point out that all systems fail, because they eventually undo themselves. Systems arise in response to circumstances to solve problems, but in so doing the circumstances change. The new circumstances come with new problems which the "previously new" current system can not solve. And so on and on it goes. The only thing that is constant is change itself.
I want to be like Greece,, and the crowd chants I WANT TO BE LIKE GREECE!
Intelligent life on Earth? I see little evidence of it.
Hi hero-4-PEACE In your post you wrote, life on earth, not is it Intelligent. Did you mean "nor"? I guess you were trying to disagree with me. So where is your "evidence"? Good Day!
20 30 40 years?
The population of the planet increases at three additional people per second.
You are witnessing the end of an economic system that is based on a heterosexist system.
And there aren't many people really discussing the options. Marxism? You're kidding right?
lol
Three additional people per second, all because some people feel compelled to have children in an overpopulated and depleted world. Who decides what is need and what is luxury?
karl marx?
We're so screwed.
Population explosion is a direct result of the institutional maintenance of imbalances in global economy and social welfare. Once health and welfare ensures child survival and old age does not depend on the income of surviving offspring, populations level off and decline and quality of life can improve.
So yes, as Marx said, "it is a class thing".
But what Wallerstein said is that we are at a bifurcation which could produce an exploitive system far worse than capitalism and this is what Naomi Klein called "disaster capitalism". I think that is where we are heading unless we take the control away from the sociopaths now at the head of corporations and states. The system envisaged is a type of fascist slave labour on a global basis to serve the very few who, like war-lords, are protected by their ability to purchase security and mercenary labour.
A more inclusive, sharing, self-sustaining and mutually respectful society will obviously require education and tolerance, something the "civilised" find so difficult.
The one -- ONE -- intelligent thing Thom Hartmann has ever said is that population growth in a society is inversely proportionate to the degree to which women are afforded an education. :-)
Of course, "there are lies, damn lies, and then there are statistics." according to the long decease British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. Never the less, the following short TED presentation by Hans Rosling is very informative on the subject of the relationship of economy, health care, welfare, and population. Of course women's education is one of many factors.
http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html
Capitalism has only failed because the corporate right-wing that owns the government has been preventing responsible progressive controls that would have kept capitalism healthy. Lions are really really wonderful animals when you're protected from their less desirable qualities, but you really don't want to come across one out hiking on your own. The same is true for corporations. Capitalism, corporations, and the free market system are excellent engines of an economy PROVIDED they are kept under progressive controls.
And communism never really existed because it was hi-jacked by political dictatorship and the monopoly of power. Socialism and cooperative-ism succeeded here and there because they were given enough time for people to educate themselves to the benefits of the "cooperative" good outweighing the competitive individual reward.
But capitalism is more about the use of money to exploit people, through usury and debt. Socialism is about applying resources to benefit people.
In Europe we have what are referred to as "mixed economies" or what you imply as a kind of "controlled" capitalism. But your problem is who keeps the controls and for who's benefit.... At the end of the day capitalism is the amassing of capital for the benefit of the owners of capital. To expect the capitalist to have a social conscience is to expect him to be a socialist..... Why not just amass the capital in common and build on cooperation rather than competition?
SOCIALISM !!
It's not just for corporations.
Let us start by killing the idea of corporate 'personhood'
THE HUMAN UNION---HU ARE YOU.
Membership---Everybody is already in it. Call your Chamber of Commerce to opt out.
Rejoin at any time.
Dues---Pay it forward with solidarity, common sense and good will.
Leadership---Apache nantan, talk it up, see what happens.
Tactics---Peaceful, Speaking Truth to Power, Resist, Occupy, Produce.
Goals---Fair pay, Fair play, Justice under the Law, Benefits to the Seventh Generation. No War.
One Planet, One People.
IF NOT NOW---WHEN?
CORP IS BORG.
We don't have time to waite for someone to give us a fully developed syatem. We need to State our goals, then set up a Social Net, so if we fail in our experiment we will survive. I think we can Create a Democatic Socialist System, Which will require people come before Profits. The build your Social Safety.We need to Understand that Socialism is our Goal, and Democracy is the way we will achieve our Goal. We need to look at life itself differently than we are used to looking at it. Life is a Learning process.
Like rats in a panic...we are starting to devour each other. Bon appetit!