In light of the Oxfam report, I felt a need to rewatch this. If we could skip a head a half century into the future, people will look back on how we lived today and behold the monstrousness of culture-capitalism. Theyll probably talk about neoliberal economic theory the way we feel about Soviet era communism. They will ask why billions of people were left in abject poverty while hundreds of robber barons had so much wealth they couldnt even find ways to invest it. Theyll ask why people who preached the teachings of Jesus were so complacent while shopping at stores that sold merchandise crafted by slave children. They will wonder about the overfished oceans, millions of capped fracking wells, the hundreds of thousands of extinct species, billions of tons of depleted nuclear waste left with no solution, and the willful ignorance that valued short-term profits more than the environment and the lives of our grandchildren. Cornel West: I think one was, there was an idolizing of unfettered markets. And much if not most of the intelligentsia were duped. I recall traveling with my dear brother Michael Harrington and talking with brother Stanley Aronowitz years ago. And you know, here were engaged in critiques of unfettered markets, and it looked as if we were medieval thinkers. Everybody was saying, were followers of Milton Friedman. Everybody was saying Frederick Hayak got it right. Everybody was saying marketize, commercialize, commodify, and we were still reading Lukasch. And Lukasch was saying commodification is not simply an asymmetric relation of power, of bosses vis-à-vis workers, so workers are being more and more marginalized. Profits are being produced, wealth is being produced, hemorrhaged at the top, no fair distribution of that wealth or profit for workers. Poor are being demonized because they are viewed as those persons who are irresponsible, who will not work, who are always looking for welfare; i.e., failures in the society of success. And we reached a brink, and the chickens came home to roost. And a few years ago the unfettered markets led us off and over the brink. youtu.be/-rcQZxawdWk
Posted on: Tue, 20 Jan 2015 05:36:25 +0000
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