Comments on: The “Card Check” Hullabaloo

By: Brian Koontz

Brian Koontz — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 22:13:40 +0000

If hierarchical capitalism is still in force when water becomes expensive there will likely be severe social strife, even if global warming is somehow checked in the meantime.

Once capitalism is reduced to exploiting the bare basics of life, like water and air, it’s destruction is imminent.

By: Don Hawkins

Don Hawkins — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 14:18:48 +0000

the dominate players who have concentrated the wealth are still calling the shots and we have a US administration that clearly in their pocket and Max what can one think. What’s clear and on the way doesn’t look to good so these people what is there master plan. They don’t have one and is it just stupidity yes and the grip that greed has on there mind. Of course as we all know most of us live in trailers and shop at Wal mart so for the World and the rest of us so be it right. That is the thinking is it not.

By: Max Shields

Max Shields — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 23:28:39 +0000

“Mad Max” is about energy depletion. What happens when the world’s major source of energy, peaks and is reduced to a trickle, is the scenario set up by MM.

It is not about socialism. It is about the fundamentals that all living creatures require, some extended energy sources to provide life. In the case of humans the “lottery” was the find and exploitation of fossile. This source like none other created the industrialized world and all that composes it.

So, when that is depleted you have crazies going after one another for a drop of gas. It is a nightmare vision that merges with the spiraling implosion of the global economy and climate change and the overall limits to growth (including population).

Mad Max is a view of what could become a kind of feudal fascism when the bottom falls out without intentional transformation. So far, while there are some fringe efforts to transform our economics, the dominate players who have concentrated the wealth are still calling the shots and we have a US administration that clearly in their pocket.

O is the wrong guy for the job in front of us. He’s built to please not shake it up.

By: Don Hawkins

Don Hawkins — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 22:55:51 +0000

What was that line the three stooges would say? I can’t see, I can’t see”, “open your eye’s”.

By: Tennessee-Chavizta

Tennessee-Chavizta — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 22:50:41 +0000

ACCORDING TO IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN, IF THE WORLD DOESN’T BECOME SOCIALIST, WE MIGHT SEE A MAD MAX FEUDALISM SCENARIO LIKE MEL GIBSON’S MAD MAX MOVIE !!

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090323/wallerstein

I have not studied Wallerstein, so I’m curious about his “socialism or barbarism” view — what does he mean by a worse system?

I understand worst-case scenarios, like an inter-imperialist war going nuclear or biological leading to a kind of “Mad Max” feudalism, but worst-cases are rare and not much to base your theory on. In the last 100 years we’ve seen some major crises and world wars that lead to new rounds of accumulation. How are things significantly different today?

As I see it, there are two new factors in play here: resource and environmental exhaustion, which can only be overcome by large-scale planning, and the widespread IT infrastructure, which makes possible economic planning beyond the dreams of the 1930s. Both of those tend toward socialist solutions.

I don’t really understand how a large-scale break down of accumulation leads to something which is exploitative and hierarchical and not capitalist and not socialist, unless he’s talking about the “Mad Max” scenario. Even that would seem to lead back to capitalism.

By: HR

HR — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 19:10:00 +0000

Great article.