capitalism :: the great re-read

If you couldn't care less about politics or political theory, this isn't the blog you're looking for: move along . . .

. . . however, since the business of politics is almost as much my vocation as avocation, it's right up my alley.

I posted this photo and the following caption on my Flickr page a few days back and got my first reply to it yesterday, which I answered this afternoon :

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After much online discussion of the failure of the banking, real estate and insurance sectors and the insinuation of the failure of capitalism and democracy, I decided it was time to re-read some classics that I really haven't visited since my undergraduate days.

I've re-learned much that I had forgotten.

Not included in this photo are other books I'm currently digesting: John Bogle's 'Battle for the Soul of Capitalism' and Jon Meacham's 'American Lion' (about Andrew Jackson and his fight with the banking sector).

Comments

stached says:

i grew up in a communistic country and live for more than two decades in capitalism - the common experience of both of them - if you don't belong to the upper class (however defined) you're nothing

reading Marx can still be interesting but my Prophets are Orwell and Huxley ("the Island" !!!)
btw. in Europe it 's quite usual in the menatime to talk about the "postdemocratical age"
Posted 23 hours ago

chuck says:

Speaking of 'post-democratic . . . '

I think a great many people who say that actually mean post-capitalistic . . .

One thing I'm finding increasingly difficult to leave unchallenged is the constant conflation of capitalism with democracy. There's an inherent notion, particularly in the minds of less-educated Americans, that the two are inextricably joined at the hip, which is a completely specious notion.

Also, the experiment with so-called communism that exploded across the landscape in the early 20th century was nothing like what Marx, Engels or most political theorists ever envisioned; indeed it was quite the opposite. They were mere totalaritarian states calling themselves communist while the ideal involves less central control and more Israeli-kibbutz-like communalism . . . which is the point of the term, after all.

True communism of the Marxist variety is still as untried and untested as Ayn Rand suggested was the case for capitalism in ': the unknown ideal.' Unfortunately for Rand, we've seen a glimpse of what unbridled capitalism can look like the past few years and the carnage that 'ideal' can wreak isn't pretty.

Her ideas look more dated and irrelevant now than ever.

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One thing I really miss about not enrolled in advanced education classes for the past few years is that lively and challenging exchange between thinking people whose concern is truth, ideas and concepts.

Mostly, now, I just hear shouting matches between unthinking people more concerned with ratings numbers or noisy agenda grinding than really thinking about big things.

*sigh*

At the risk of sounding old :
I miss the good old days.
LOL

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