Thursday, July 4, 2013

Revolution for One, Please!

From the ever irreverent Baffler comes this gem:
It does often seem that, whenever there is a choice between one option that makes capitalism seem the only possible economic system, and another that would actually make capitalism a more viable economic system, neoliberalism means always choosing the former. The combined result is a relentless campaign against the human imagination. Or, to be more precise: imagination, desire, individual creativity, all those things that were to be liberated in the last great world revolution, were to be contained strictly in the domain of consumerism, or perhaps in the virtual realities of the Internet. In all other realms they were to be strictly banished. We are talking about the murdering of dreams, the imposition of an apparatus of hopelessness, designed to squelch any sense of an alternative future. Yet as a result of putting virtually all their efforts in one political basket, we are left in the bizarre situation of watching the capitalist system crumbling before our very eyes, at just the moment everyone had finally concluded no other system would be possible.
We live in an age when there do not seem to be any viable economic alternatives.  Perhaps this is a good sign?  Like the Battle of the Bulge, a last gasp effort by a morally and economically bankrupt neoliberal order is in process and we just need to hang on while it blows itself up.

I can only hope that we figure out an alternative in time...

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