Many historians believe that FDR saved capitalism from itself

[Jackpine Radical]

by taming the short-sighted greed of the owner class and providing the commoners with enough to live on, thus averting desperate acts by desperate people. One consequence of this was that American labor got "domesticated" in a way that never happened in other parts of the world. The old labor-socialist connection was broken, and organizations like the once-powerful IWW were marginalized. One mark of American labor's separation from international labor is our September Labor Day instead of the international May 1 Labor Day, which was just too "socialist" for the corporations to handle.

The difference between then and now is that there is nobody stopping the greedheads from pursuing their chosen course to its logical end of grinding the commoners into the dirt. This means that things are going to get very tough in the coming years. And don't take any momentary fluctuations in Christmas sales as indicants of a coming recovery. It's like mistaking weather for climate. The structural problems, such as our dependence on oil, our refusal to build an adequate 21st century infrastructure, the busting of the unions, the imminent destruction of SS, the gutting of our educational system, the out-migration of jobs, etc. are continuing apace and it is these processes that will ultimately seal our fate.

The question is whether, out of the ashes of this ruined society, there might arise a long-deferred collectivist transformation of American culture--or whether it might go the other way, into a Lord of the Flies world in which life is, as Hobbes said, "nasty, brutish and short."

[H2O Man]

1. Recommended.

Our current economic system, which is known as capitalism, is the vehicle upon which an unconscious and greedy culture drives straight into ruin.

[harun]

2. The humane parts of Capitalism were fostered due to an actual argument

from Communism as to its superiority. Once gone, the rich didn't need to play nice anymore. Now we are being slaughtered like cattle. Politically they know there is nothing we can do about it because the people never had control of the system to begin with.

[Drale]

3. He took a pure capitalist system and sprinkled in a little socialism

What we need to do now is add some more of that socialism in the form of a health care system for all. Now this will not only greatly help the people of the country, but it will also piss off almost every right winger, and I am always for that.