The specter that haunts capitalism is our dreams, our hopes, our ability to conceive justice. How few perceive that the current crisis is the bursting boil of a long disease, the rot that capitalism has created in our souls. It is the symptom of a fatal disease that has reached its turning point. We cannot be cured until we rid our souls of the fever of capitalism, of private ownership which excludes all care for the common good, that eats the heart out of the solidarity that makes us human.
Instead of goods and services that weave human bonds into our daily struggles, capitalism is the pledge of destruction to the production of goods and services, the instigation of class conflict. Indeed, we are locked into conflicts at many levels by the burden and imposition of the owner class, yet justice lives within our hearts and we give worship to the king of justice.
To conclude, "...if workers in each enterprise (Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, AIG, Washington Mutual) became their own collective boards of directors, the old capitalist conflicts between employers and employees would be overcome. If state agencies coordinated enterprises' interdependent production decisions, the remaining enterprise competition could be limited to focus on rewards for improved performance. The US government might not just bail out huge financial institutions but also require them to change into enterprises where employers and employees were the same people and where coordination and competition became the major and minor aspects of enterprise interactions. The US government took over Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and AIG, it changed neither the organization of these enterprises nor the destructive competition among them. That was a tragically lost opportunity. If the political winds continue to change far enough and fast enough, solutions responding to the current crisis by moving beyond capitalism might yet be tried." - Rick Wolff, "Capitalist Crisis, Marx's Shadow", MRZine, 9/26/2008
No comments:
Post a Comment