Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
Editorials & Other Articles
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
The Decade the World Went Backwards
Why Were the 2010s Such a Troubled Decade? Because the Global Economy Began to Fail Catastrophically — Just Like During the 1930s... The 2010s were the decade that savegly regressive movements erupted around the globe — and rocketed to power in the most improbable places. Not just in war-torn poor states, or in failed and broken ones, which had never become wealthy democracies at all — but in the world’s richest and most powerful countries. A wave of hysterical, bellowing, fist-pumping hard-right fanaticism swept the globe — shattering the status quo. Of a centrism defined by American neoliberal ideals. This decade was the end of an age — and the beginning of another one. But the end of what — and the beginning of what?
...The world was going backwards. To when? To the 1930s, of course. The last time that capitalism blew a hole in the heart of the global economy, and created a wave of depressions. Only this time, many of the depressions were invisible ones. 50% of Americans struggled to pay the bills? 50% of Americans who got cancer would go bankrupt in a year or two? British living standards hadn’t risen in two decades? Good! Only the strong should survive! The weak deserve to perish. Let them. The logic — the illogic — the brutality, contempt, heartlessness, greed, and selfishness of capital had come to permeate the world’s thinking classes, too. Largely, most of the world’s intellectuals saw these invisible depressions as good things. And that was the final nail in the coffin. Wham! Revolution
Only — ironically, incredibly, stupidly, perfectly — it wasn’t the forward-moving revolution of Marx’s dreams, of Engel’s hopes, of Keynes’s quiet thoughts. It was the opposite of the global revolution of progress. It was a global revolution of regress. People had chosen to blame their problems on…hated others…but everyone was someone else’s hated other, too. Just as Brits blamed Europeans, who blamed Muslims, who blamed Americans, who blamed Mexicans. LOL — a global food chain of hate had arisen, in a colossal act of stupidity, hubris, and blindness. And yet nobody saw the irony. If everybody was blaming somebody else…who was also blaming somebody…how could anybody at all be the problem?
Nobody was the problem. The system was the problem. Capitalism was failing catastrophically and spectacularly as a global economy — unable to deliver higher living standards for something like 90% of the globe by now. In just the way greater minds had predicted it did and would cyclically, like Marx and Keynes. Never mind. Nobody remembered them. There were animals and vermin to hate, after all.
So the working class had its backwards revolution. Not towards progress, but towards regress. Hating others, of course, only costs a society things like expansive healthcare, retirement, education, transport, childcare, elderly care — because those are things had through unity and concern. But they are the very things the working class needs the most, to prosper. It’s in that sense these were regressive revolutions: they hurt the people who were part of them the most. It was the Trumpist and Brexiter who lost their jobs, whose life expectancy fell fastest, whose community was never rebuilt. Never mind — at least they had someone to hate. And what a delicious thrill that was. How it gave them the sense of worth and goodness they had been missing for too long.
The world had chosen a new destiny. Not forwards, but backwards. It had turn away from progress itself. It had rejected the idea of more for all, more rights, more public goods — for example, an education, income, or retirement for every life on planet earth. People increasingly didn’t want those things for everyone in their own societies — so how could the planet make progress towards a higher standard of living?
More at https://link.medium.com/BdKWqojaL2
...The world was going backwards. To when? To the 1930s, of course. The last time that capitalism blew a hole in the heart of the global economy, and created a wave of depressions. Only this time, many of the depressions were invisible ones. 50% of Americans struggled to pay the bills? 50% of Americans who got cancer would go bankrupt in a year or two? British living standards hadn’t risen in two decades? Good! Only the strong should survive! The weak deserve to perish. Let them. The logic — the illogic — the brutality, contempt, heartlessness, greed, and selfishness of capital had come to permeate the world’s thinking classes, too. Largely, most of the world’s intellectuals saw these invisible depressions as good things. And that was the final nail in the coffin. Wham! Revolution
Only — ironically, incredibly, stupidly, perfectly — it wasn’t the forward-moving revolution of Marx’s dreams, of Engel’s hopes, of Keynes’s quiet thoughts. It was the opposite of the global revolution of progress. It was a global revolution of regress. People had chosen to blame their problems on…hated others…but everyone was someone else’s hated other, too. Just as Brits blamed Europeans, who blamed Muslims, who blamed Americans, who blamed Mexicans. LOL — a global food chain of hate had arisen, in a colossal act of stupidity, hubris, and blindness. And yet nobody saw the irony. If everybody was blaming somebody else…who was also blaming somebody…how could anybody at all be the problem?
Nobody was the problem. The system was the problem. Capitalism was failing catastrophically and spectacularly as a global economy — unable to deliver higher living standards for something like 90% of the globe by now. In just the way greater minds had predicted it did and would cyclically, like Marx and Keynes. Never mind. Nobody remembered them. There were animals and vermin to hate, after all.
So the working class had its backwards revolution. Not towards progress, but towards regress. Hating others, of course, only costs a society things like expansive healthcare, retirement, education, transport, childcare, elderly care — because those are things had through unity and concern. But they are the very things the working class needs the most, to prosper. It’s in that sense these were regressive revolutions: they hurt the people who were part of them the most. It was the Trumpist and Brexiter who lost their jobs, whose life expectancy fell fastest, whose community was never rebuilt. Never mind — at least they had someone to hate. And what a delicious thrill that was. How it gave them the sense of worth and goodness they had been missing for too long.
The world had chosen a new destiny. Not forwards, but backwards. It had turn away from progress itself. It had rejected the idea of more for all, more rights, more public goods — for example, an education, income, or retirement for every life on planet earth. People increasingly didn’t want those things for everyone in their own societies — so how could the planet make progress towards a higher standard of living?
More at https://link.medium.com/BdKWqojaL2
15 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
