Capitalism ....

[Dave2002]

This article is of some interest - https://www.bbc.com/future/article/2...lism-is-coming

Besides the text content, I think the "photo" included - the one with what looks like a tunnel boring machine - is somewhat artistic, and has some grim motifs - or am I imagining those?

Enlarge it, and look carefully. I wonder who did that.

[vinteuil]

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... I am not sure what I am supposed to be 'seeing' in that photograph

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[Serial_Apologist]

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... I am not sure what I am supposed to be 'seeing' in that photograph

.

Wheel meat again?

If my brain wasn't feeling so fogged up today, I'd be tackling some of the underlying assumptions of that article here.

[eighthobstruction]

Wheel meat again?

If my brain wasn't feeling so fogged up today, I'd be tackling some of the underlying assumptions of that article here.

....have a day off....

[Richard Barrett]

If my brain wasn't feeling so fogged up today, I'd be tackling some of the underlying assumptions of that article here.

Well, I'm against it.

[gradus]

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... I am not sure what I am supposed to be 'seeing' in that photograph

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'... all at once I'm a Wheel ...', Frank Sinatra 'Mr Success', closest I could get to Capitalism.

[LMcD]

This article is of some interest - https://www.bbc.com/future/article/2...lism-is-coming

Besides the text content, I think the "photo" included - the one with what looks like a tunnel boring machine - is somewhat artistic, and has some grim motifs - or am I imagining those?

Enlarge it, and look carefully. I wonder who did that.

Did what?

[Serial_Apologist]

Tariq Ali on G7:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzCW2bZlEFs

Tariq is especially good on spies here!

[Serial_Apologist]

Weds 7 February - Radio 4
4pm - Thinking Allowed
6/7 Capitalism
Do people across the world regard capitalism positively or negatively? Also, what's the story behind the word itself? Laurie Taylor talks to Michael Sonenscher, Fellow of Kings College, Cambridge, about the evolution of a word first coined in France in the early 19th century. How has its meaning changed over time and what's at stake in our understanding or misunderstanding of it? They're joined by the German sociologist and historian Rainer Zitelman whose latest study examines the largest survey of attitudes towards capitalism. He found that only in 12 countries are attitudes towards capitalism more critical than in Great Britain - even though Britain is the motherland of this economic system. Why might that be?

Why indeed!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001vzyf

[Serial_Apologist]

Well, apart obviously from insufficient time to merit a proper discussion of this so infrequently considered subject, for want of more in-depth examination with another listen with stops to make notes, several immediate shortcomings can be mentioned.

Firstly, using Sonescher's reduction of capitalism to division of labour as a frame allowed Zitelman's ad nauseam repeated platitudes regarding socialism unchallenged free rein. There was no mention of class, how it evolved from previous productive modes under capitalism, and how its exertion allowed those at the top's monopoly on information to create and perpetuate their own self-exonerating mythologies to justify their own power and dominance. The programme was itself a manifest example of the latter. There was no mention of unsustainability, apart from brief reference towards the end of the 2007 banking crisis, nor of the natural environmental cost of the colossal waste of capitalism in materials and unrealised human potential. All the pro-capitalism arguments from polls, whose reliability Taylor never questioned, could have been cited at any point in the past half century in virtually any country. Had the tired and clichéd definitions of socialism and communism, which intelligent hindlight subjected to in-depth critiques in the 1960s and 70s, been called out we might have had a useful programme. Instead it was the usual smug evasiveness one has come to expect of the BBC's general lack of seriousness in discussing problems with underlying causes, instead focussing on symptoms as if they were in the nature of things. So, another disappointingly missed opportunity - but was anyone expecting otherwise?