Immanuel Wallerstein: Modern capitalism has reached the end of its rope

[Laughing Mirror]

Run time: 11:44 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cDZpRv5gb8   Posted on YouTube: October 04, 2011 By YouTube Member: newsupload2010 Views on YouTube: 62   Posted on DU: October 06, 2011 By DU Member: Laughing Mirror Views on DU: 1910

 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cDZpRv5gb8

“Modern capitalism has reached the end of its rope. It cannot survive as a system. And what we are seeing is the structural crisis of the system. The structural crisis goes on for a long time. It really started more or less in the 1970s and will go on for another 20, 30, 40 years. It is not a crisis of a year or of a short moment, it is the major structural unfolding of a system. And we are in transition to another system and, in fact, the real political struggle that is going on in the world that most people refuse to recognize is not about capitalism – should we have or should we not have it – but about what should replace it.

...

“I would like a more relatively democratic, more relatively egalitarian world – that is one view We never had that in the history of the world, but it is possible. The other view is that you have a very unequal, polarizing, exploitative system. It does not have to be capitalism. Capitalism is that. But you can do that in many other ways, some of which may be far worse than capitalism.

...

“I sometimes say this is the historicization of the old Greek philosophical distinction between determinism and free will. When the system is relatively stable, it is relatively determined as a system in which we have relatively limited free play. But when it is unstable, when it is going into structural crisis, free will comes into the picture. That is to say, our actions really matter in a way that they did not for 500 years.

...

“And it is extremely dangerous. It is a system in which everything is relatively unpredictable in the short-term. People cannot live with unpredictability in the short run. We can live with unpredictability in the long run – we can adjust to that. But if you don’t know what is going to happen the next day or the next year, then you don’t know what to do. And you get paralyzed. And this is basically what we are seeing in the world economy right now – it’s a paralysis. Nobody is investing because they are not sure that three years from now, they are going to get their money back. And if you don’t invest – you make the situation even worse. But people don’t feel they have much choice. The options are few.”

[leveymg]

1. Wallerstein: In an unstable paradigm, individual actions count for more. Seize the moment,

and make revolutionary change. Now's your chance.

[Jack Rabbit]

2. Capitalism is dead

I do not consent to allow financial fascism to replace it.

[DeSwiss]

3. rEvolution, because this shit can't be fixed. - K&R n/t

[Davis_X_Machina]

4. Capitalism...

...has been dying since it was born. And that was in the fourteenth century.

Its collapse has been inevitable since the publication of Kapital -- in the middle of the nineteenth century.

Its collapse has been imminent since the beginning of the Great Depression -- eighty years ago.

Don't worry -- capitalism will bury us all.

[silverweb]

5. K&R

Very interesting -- and hopeful.

[provis99]

6. Wallerstein's academic work is brilliant.

He should be known in every social science class.