They don’t want to understand. What they understand is highly controlled, through a strict vetting process. This won’t make the cut.

Regular people are too dangerous nowadays. The position of the elite is too precarious. They can’t afford to give concessions like understanding what you’ve written.

If they understand this, what’s next? Understanding income redistribution? Understanding socialism?

It’s better to take a hard-line stance. Socialism is what Barack Obama represents. Income redistribution is tax cuts. A revision to Bretton Woods will save the West.

*Our* truths will not go down without a fight. “Our” truths fight against “their” truths, and we’d better make sure ours win.

In the end, everyone who matters will say “Barack Obama is a socialist” and “income redistribution is tax cuts” and maybe even “George Monbiot is a liar”.

Or so they desire. Are we able to make sure they fail?

If I, as a (extremely fit!!) human, go for a walk from Spain to Siberia I am aware of many changes in nature. The landscape and climate will change many times before I complete my journey – from the mountains of the Pyrenees to the snow of Siberia, and everything in between – and the type of animals that I observe will also change. What I’m unaware of is exactly when Spain finishes and when France begins, unless I have man-made items like a political map, GPS, road sign welcoming me to France or a checkpoint on the road. I’m unaware of the political boundaries, but I also don’t care about their existence. It doesn’t add or take away from the enjoyment of the walk. Nature doesn’t care where the boundary is either – it’s only an imaginary line on a map. It’s not as if I’m gonna start WWII over some petty political boundary. Or am I?

Similar with money. I can plant a seed and produce some food. This process has got nothing to do with money. Why should it? Money is just a series of zero’s and one’s inside a computer, whereas my seed and stalk of corn is real – I can taste it and it’s good. The sweat on my brow as I finish the planting is real. The beer that I enjoy at the end of the day’s work is real. The house that I built with my real hands is real – what does the bank have to do with any of this?

Until we start thinking outside the square we will continue to be stuck inside it, scratching around for ‘better’ or ‘worse’ solutions that are really just modifications to previous attempts, but nonetheless are solutions that are still inside the box.

http://www.watchtower.org

The sheer enormity of what it took to end the Depression for the U.S. should give some indication of just how terminal the long-term crisis tendencies are. The crises of overaccumulation and overproduction were “solved” for the U.S. by, in effect, blowing up all the capital in the world outside the U.S., and then creating a permanent war economy to buy up the surplus output that the economy *still* couldn’t aborb. And when that wasn’t enough, the highway-automobile complex and mass suburbanization served as another of what Marx called the “counteracting tendencies” of the falling direct rate of profit. And there was also the creation of the tech industry, largely at DoD expense. Then neoliberal globalization as an outlet for surplus capital. Then the tech bubble. Then the housing bubble and derivatives–and you can see the outcome of that.

Corporate capitalism seems to be running out of safety valves.