-With capitalism, people have choice, plain and simple. Choice = freedom.

-The outsourcing of jobs is due to the success of the US, not its failure. The rise of the value of the dollar, due to the increased productivity of the nation, (had) made it cheaper for companies to outsource labor jobs for a lower cost to other countries. The US labor force had thus been in a period of transition to more highly educated and higher paid white collar service work, which should be seen as a positive. Those who are not able to make that transition are the ones we should be concerned about (we need education reform). But now, look around. With the huge decrease in the dollar value (a bad thing, due to the near-sighted philosophy of short-term debt) is causing other companies like VW to bring manufacturing back here.

-People need resources (heat, food, water, paper). Companies find resources to provide to people. Competition for these resources makes the distribution more efficient. If people didn’t need resources, companies would not find them. How many buggy whip companies are out there now ruthlessly destroying the earth for better buggy whips?

-Why are Americans the only ones allowed to be capitalists? Someone should tell Japan that we didn’t vote for their companies like Sony, Toyota, and Honda to sell their products here.

-Yes, we have voted for a lot of what you say we have not voted for. All the people who vote for ‘Drill Baby Drill’ are directly voting to pillage the earth. But the only reason it’s an option is because people/employees want to heat their homes and drive their cars. That’s a different problem than capitalism.

-Capitalism does create. Enreprenuers want to create personal wealth, and to do so, need some way to do that. In many cases, that means creating jobs that people want. Employees that are not entreprenuers want those jobs.

-You can’t look at a few-year slice of time and make these huge end-game assumptions. All markets are cyclical to some extent. While large companies may have immediate economies of scale over small companies, small businesses are still the largest employers in the US.

-Finding nothing new, capitalists tend to seek new opportunities, new ventures, and new technology. See how many patents IBM files each year. Look at the chips that Intel keeps releasing. Innovation is the life blood of capitalism, and while there may be stagnation and immediate profit seeking in the short term, that’s not a sustainable condition for any business over the long run.

Or as Raul Julia explained to Robert Redford in the movie “Havana” regarding the need to revolt against Batista’s fascist regime: “But they will not leave by asking NICELY”.

The latest mass protests in Boston against the Bush/Paulson “corporate financial Empire’s” demands on the people are lighting a fire that this empire will live to regret.

The news of mass protests from Boston is not a second Boston T(reasury) Party, but a continuation of the “outrage” against Empire that started the original Boston Tea Party!

This “outrage” in Boston is a new ‘shot heard round the world’ against the complete political economic empire (like the political AND economic British Empire) that allows ruling-elite ‘corporate/financial Empire’ to metastasize from the economic realm and take-over the political realm.

We patriots need to now continue and culminate the American Revolution, that allows America’s world-changing concept of ‘democracy’ to freely spread from the political realm to the whole of our indivisible political economy.

‘Free market democracy’ is a myth — a lie that never existed and was made up by the ruling-elite’s ‘corporatist Empire’ to make their economic take-over of our waning political democracy sound more friendly than the truthful term; ‘fascism’.

What we’re facing is a far bigger battle than just the fleecing of this supposed ‘bailout’.

What we are facing is the final showdown between the economic empire of ruling-elite financial royalists against the very concept of America’s most innovative contribution to the world: democracy — vs. the chance, with our courage, to finally complete the American Revolution against the rule of empire in all aspects of our lives and liberty.

Today we have the opportunity of finally achieving the successful completion of the American Revolution; where the triumph of real democracy, rather than empire, in how men govern themselves, addresses the inexorably combined power of our indivisible political economy.

The good news of this epic crisis is that the real American innovation of democracy will finally (after 232 years) be applied to both the realms of political and economic self-governance, rather than only to the political sphere — because empire, left alone in the economic sphere, has been perverting and trying to overthrow democracy since 1776.

This is not a choice between ‘free market democracy’ (which is only a PR lie told by the ‘corporatist Empire’ behind the facade of their two-party ‘Vichy’ government) and the scare term of ‘socialism’ — but rather the long-delayed, final battle of the American Revolution, between democratic self-governance in the unified political economy of our country, or an economic empire of their corporatist/fascist elite metastasizing from the economic realm to the political realm and the whole of our society.

Our theories about the anti-social and perhaps terminal character of capitalism borne out, we leftists smile, rubbing our hands, eager for social and political consequences of crises.

Should we? Or perhaps should we ask ourselves how prepared we are to confront this new crisis with left-wing alternatives? Not just with theories, but with the social, political, and ideological force to contest hegemony in crisis. Are we ready to ask ourselves if the measures taken by governments wouldn’t mean more suffering for the poor, more desperation, abandonment, unemployment, and precarious labor, without people being able to see alternatives?

If we are to merely play an intellectual role of being critics of capitalism, the new crisis is a great feast. We can rejoice and churn out, day after day, week after week, new articles that foresee — “as we have written already” — the end of capitalism in short order.

But every catastrophism is self-deceiving. In the 30s, the Communist International subscribed to the theory of economist Eugen Varga, who revisited Lenin’s theory to diagnose that the crisis of 1929 brought capitalism, finally, to its final stage. As the New Deal rescued capitalism from itself, the category of the “second phase of the final stage of capitalism” was introduced. By now we must be in the fifth or sixth phase.

Giovanni Arrighi recalls that, in the 70s, the debate was not about the end of capitalism but about when, where, and how capitalism would end — the subject that was apparently accepted by even theoreticians in favor of capitalism.

Nevertheless, as Lenin himself reminds us, capitalism doesn’t collapse, nor will it ever collapse, unless it gets defeated — as shown by the revolutionary processes that ended up with capitalism, temporarily or definitively. It doesn’t collapse on its own, and it even demonstrates capacity for recovery. Who knew that the homeland of Lenin, of the first worker-peasant revolution in the history of humanity, would see restoration of capitalism, in a gangster version?

Who knew that the United States, “mortally wounded” by the crisis of 1929, would preside over the longest and deepest cycle of expansion of capitalism in its history — its “golden era” according to Hobsbawm — after WW2, pressuring the USSR and defeating it technologically and economically, before facilitating its political implosion?

I’m not saying this to be characterized as a propagandist of apologetic visions of capitalism or to encourage demoralization, but to perform a salutary affirmation of Brecht, who said that “we must attack the strongest flank of the enemy,” so as not to deceive ourselves about the real conditions of the battle against it, so as not to underestimate its forces, and, above all, so as not to overestimate our forces.

Every crisis that the Left faces with hand-rubbing glee leaves it even more defeated than before, for such a Left is one content with contemplating the last days of a capitalist Pompeii, which however persists and survives thanks to the lack of alternatives — theoretical and political — on the Left, the very Left that appears to believe that finally one day, in the not too distant future, peoples of the world will be persuaded of its apocalyptic theory, without it having made its theory real as an economic, social, political, and ideological force.

For the time being — as Marx said of the petit bourgeoisie — it seems that the people are not yet mature enough to understand the theory of a Left that is satisfied with itself, with our marvelous theory that tells us that, whether in the long, medium, or short term, inevitably history will reveal that it’s advancing toward socialism.

The turns — both revolutionary and counter-revolutionary — of the 20th century have taught us nothing if we are still waiting for the corpse of our enemy to turn up, rather than meticulously preparing to make our dreams and utopias a reality, as recommended by Lenin’s revolutionary realism.

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The original article “A crise do capitalismo e a esquerda” was published in the Blog do Emir section of the Carta Maior Web site on 18 September 2008. Click here for a Spanish translation by Insurrectas y Punto. English translation by Yoshie Furuhashi.
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URL: mrzine.monthlyreview.org/sader200908.html
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here in USA we gotta do the same thing that Chavez did, teach the US poor for some months or years what is capitalism and what is socialism before trying to do form any political party. Almost nobody in USA have taught the masses the evils of neoliberalism, not even Kucinich, Ron Paul or any other candidate. Ron Paul was the only one who talked about the US constitution and nobody listened to him, because he didn’t teach the masses about the evils of capitalism, because of the fact that Ron Paul was a capitalist, not a real alternative for poor people. Only socialist and marxists parties do that in USA and they don’t get much coverage in TV. So before starting a third party, i suggest to spend some months or years trying to teach the poor people of America about the evils of capitalism and the wonders of a participative democratic socialist system, a people’s system

In order to create a third united socialist party we would first of all need an educational campaign in order to spread knowledge to the masses about the evils of capitalism, fascism and imperialism and the only alternative to it is participative democratic socialism. The American masses are real confused about how the world works. Trying to wake up the masses from their delirium would pose us as a threat. I read the biography of Hugo Chavez by Alleyda Guevara (Che Guevara’s daughter) and I learned how he tried to wake up the venezuelan poor masses, because you can’t stirr up a revolution in a society that is not awake, a society that doesnt know that capitalism is the cause of poverty and all society’s problemse. Hugo Chavez first tried to wake up Venezuelan poors about the evils of neoliberalism, he talked about the importance of teaching the masses about capitalism vs. socialism. And then when Venezuelan’s poors were mentally awake and physically and emotionally ready to revolt against the older right-wing government, Chavez started to do his thing (To overthrow the fascist capitalist venezuela system)
And here in USA we gotta do the same thing that Chavez did, teach the US poor for some months or years what is capitalism and what is socialism before trying to do form any political party. Almost nobody in USA have taught the masses the evils of neoliberalism, not even Kucinich, Ron Paul or any other candidate. Ron Paul was the only one who talked about the US constitution and nobody listened to him, because he didn’t teach the masses about the evils of capitalism, because of the fact that Ron Paul was a capitalist, not a real alternative for poor people. Only socialist and marxists parties do that in USA and they don’t get much coverage in TV. So before starting a third party, i suggest to spend some months or years trying to teach the poor people of America about the evils of capitalism and the wonders of a participative democratic socialist system, a people’s system

“if we only have wisdom” . why this? the nature gave us all it cld. there is at this time no more; thus, it is best we conclude we are sufficiently wise.
we may say that we do not have wisdom only because we are vastly mistaught and not that we do not have at least potentially.
however, we are sufficiently disinformed, mistaught by ucle sam et al that we will kill/maim/destroy in order to maintain our own serfdom to clergy, ‘teachers’. media/politicos, et al.
this, that we are stupid, unwashed, uncultured, uneducated, unmotivated, lazy, etc., had been propagated by clergy/rulers for ages.
i’m dismayed every time a dv writer or poster posit such ideas either explicitly or by implication.
we need to tell people, Hey, there is nothing wrong with u whatsoever.
u have been duped. don’t feel bad about it, bns upon bns have been duped just like u r now. thnk u

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/07/reverse-shock-doctrine/

As well as an essay that gives some back story to my thinking:

http://www.exterminatingangel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=203&Itemid=118

Here is an author who has developed the idea further:

http://webofdebt.wordpress.com/monetary-proposal/