We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

"Safe Passage..., with a Big If: A Review of Paul Craig Roberts' The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism"

Click here to access a review by Gary Coseri of a new book by Roberts posted on Uncommon Thought Journal.

I hesitated posting this article because Roberts already gets too much exposure on the web. His rants can be accessed everywhere: rants about the abuses of capitalism and abuses of power. But his criticisms of capitalism are always carefully limited and that is precisely why he is everywhere on the web: he functions as an ideological gatekeeper to confine criticisms to superficial issues in relation to capitalism while carefully avoiding core issues about the system and completely preventing discussion of alternative systems. Hence, Corseri is dead wrong when he states:
You can't tie Roberts to one ideology. What's clear is his commitment to understanding the mess we've made of our world, and re-visioning, rebuilding it.
Robert's view are strictly of a liberal sort in that in his numerous rants he always comes back to the need for capitalism to be regulated. He wants to "re-vision" and "rebuild" capitalism. He never questions the basic concept of private ownership of an economy. Hence, the title of his book which makes clear his ideological position. This leads people down a political dead end simply because today's capitalists are much too powerful to accept any substantial regulation of their activities. And leading people down a dead end is very useful for the ruling class whether it is done consciously or not.