From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@TISCALI.NL)
Date: Sat Jul 28 2007 - 13:08:45 EDT
Profit Without End. Capitalism is Just Getting Started by Michael Heinrich Debates concerning the "Socialism of the 21st Century" are experiencing an upswing at the moment. However, this century will initially be rather one of capitalism than socialism. Not because there is once more an economic recovery. Prosperity and crisis alternate constantly in capitalism, but behind this up-and-down process are tendencies towards an extension and further development of capitalism, which is nowhere near its end. http://negativepotential.blogsport.de/2007/07/27/profit-without-end/ We see in this article clearly the Marxist penchant for prophesy about "the march of history", going beyond what the facts allow us to say (in reality, we have hardly any reliable basis for usefully predicting social developments beyond perhaps 5 or at the very most 10 years; even forecasts for population growth turn out to be inaccurate). In one way, it is a neat simple summary of current Marxist perspectives. But in fact there is no searching historical analysis behind it, and you might say it borders on platitudinous impressionism. Any intelligent reader of newspapers and magazines could conclude the same, without needing any specifically Marxist or radical analysis at all. Suppose Heinrich is correct, what then is the conclusion? That we should not "get our hopes up"? What does it tell us, about what we can or cannot achieve in our lifetimes? This is not Heinrich at his best, I think. Jurriaan
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