By John Ballard
(Innocence is one of the blessings of ignorance. A few readers will know what Nouriel Roubini is talking about but I am forced to look sruff up. At times like this I can relate to Forrest Gump or Chauncey Gardner.)
The austerians' Austrian austerity will not
lead to Schumpeterian "creative
destruction" but rather " deadly destructive
depression"
[Joseph] Schumpeter's most popular book in English is probably Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. This book opens with a treatment of Karl Marx. While he is sympathetic to Marx's theory that capitalism will collapse and will be replaced by socialism, Schumpeter concludes that this will not come about in the way Marx predicted. To describe it he borrowed the phrase "creative destruction", and made it famous by using it to describe a process in which the old ways of doing things are endogenously destroyed and replaced by new ways.
Schumpeter's theory is that the success of capitalism will lead to a form of corporatism and a fostering of values hostile to capitalism, especially among intellectuals. The intellectual and social climate needed to allow entrepreneurship to thrive will not exist in advanced capitalism; it will be replaced by socialism in some form. There will not be a revolution, but merely a trend in parliaments to elect social democratic parties of one stripe or another. He argued that capitalism's collapse from within will come about as democratic majorities vote for restrictions upon entrepreneurship that will burden and destroy the capitalist structure, but also emphasizes non-political, evolutionary processes in society where "liberal capitalism" was evolving into democratic socialism because of the growth of workers' self-management, industrial democracy and regulatory institutions. Schumpeter emphasizes throughout this book that he is analyzing trends, not engaging in political advocacy. In his vision, the intellectual class will play an important role in capitalism's demise. The term "intellectuals" denotes a class of persons in a position to develop critiques of societal matters for which they are not directly responsible and able to stand up for the interests of strata to which they themselves do not belong. One of the great advantages of capitalism, he argues, is that as compared with pre-capitalist periods, when education was a privilege of the few, more and more people acquire (higher) education. The availability of fulfilling work is, however, limited, and this lack, coupled with the experience of unemployment, produces discontent. The intellectual class is then able to organize protest and develop critical ideas.
Sounds like a man for these times.
Is this what Nouriel Roubini thinks about if he studies closely the #OccupyWallStreet phenomenon?
Speaking of which, here are a couple of links that caught my imagination...
?Wall Street Protest Starting to Look Like Egypt
?Five Things That #OccupyWallStreet Has Done Right Perhaps the smartest observations I have found of what promises to be a really important social, political and economic shift.
It's too soon to predict success, but even in the aftermath of failure it cannot be said that these five mistakes were made. Wael Ghonim gets credit for crowdsourcing a critical mass resulting in the Arab Spring. Thus far whatever individual or group is behind Occupy Wall Street remains in the shadows.The main problem with anonymity is the paranoia it feeds which afflicts those invested in the status quo. The Red Scare of the McCarthy era and cries of "outside agitators" in the Sixties are recent examples.
When added together the birthers, truthers, climate zombies, homophobes, isolationists, anti-choice advocates and immigrant haters that have the power to whip a stage full of GOP hopefuls into line is already fairly influential. The main challenge facing these young people is much bigger than Wall Street oligarchs. It is the vast population of ignorant citizens whom they manipulate.
The challenge of Occupy Wall Street is educational as much as political or social.
That is a challenge that makes NCLB look like an exercise in earning a merit badge.
?Occupy Wall Street "official" site
?Occupy Together coordinating hub
Welcome to OCCUPY TOGETHER, an unofficial hub for all of the events springing up across the country in solidarity with Occupy Wall St. As we have followed the news on facebook, twitter, and the various live feeds across the internet, we felt compelled to build a site that would help spread the word as more protests organize across the country. We hope to provide people with information about events that are organizing, ongoing, and building across the U.S. as we, the 99%, take action against the greed and corruption of the 1%.
We will try our best to provide you with the most accurate information possible. However, we are just a few volunteers and errors are bound to occur. Please be patient as we get this site off the ground and populated and please contact us if you have any info on new events, corrections, or suggestions for this site. You can contact us at info[at]occupytogether[dot]org.
We will only grow stronger in our solidarity and we will be heard, not just in New York, but in echoes across this nation.
Sigh. It makes me want to be young again. I feel like I'm reliving my civil rights days. I realized at the time that the heavy lifting would have to be done by students and others just outside the mainstream. I went places and did things a hundred miles away I would never have done had I remained at home. Family and community influences plus provincial thinking tend to produce more pawns than knights.
I imagine millions of Fox viewers gazing at the Wall Street demonstrators on their television screens with the same bovine indifference that socially respectable white Southerners watched civil rights demonstrations in the Sixties.
When I see the same pictures they give me hope for the future. I have no idea what will happen next, but if these kids are able to take part in it the results will be better for more people than what we now have. Whether or not they realize it, they are taking a stand against what Roubini calls "Austrian austerity." and a deadly destructive depression.
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