Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
Economics The end of capitalism has begun - great read
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/17/postcapitalism-end-of-capitalism-begun<snip>
Without us noticing, we are entering the postcapitalist era. At the heart of further change to come is information technology, new ways of working and the sharing economy. The old ways will take a long while to disappear, but it’s time to be utopian
The red flags and marching songs of Syriza during the Greek crisis, plus the expectation that the banks would be nationalised, revived briefly a 20th-century dream: the forced destruction of the market from above. For much of the 20th century this was how the left conceived the first stage of an economy beyond capitalism. The force would be applied by the working class, either at the ballot box or on the barricades. The lever would be the state. The opportunity would come through frequent episodes of economic collapse.
Instead over the past 25 years it has been the left’s project that has collapsed. The market destroyed the plan; individualism replaced collectivism and solidarity; the hugely expanded workforce of the world looks like a “proletariat”, but no longer thinks or behaves as it once did.
If you lived through all this, and disliked capitalism, it was traumatic. But in the process technology has created a new route out, which the remnants of the old left – and all other forces influenced by it – have either to embrace or die. Capitalism, it turns out, will not be abolished by forced-march techniques. It will be abolished by creating something more dynamic that exists, at first, almost unseen within the old system, but which will break through, reshaping the economy around new values and behaviours. I call this postcapitalism.
As with the end of feudalism 500 years ago, capitalism’s replacement by postcapitalism will be accelerated by external shocks and shaped by the emergence of a new kind of human being. And it has started.
Lots more at link
11 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
thanks for posting this.
I probably won't be around either but we both know this too will pass 
I'm still reading Piketty 
They earned their money, apart from the inheritance, and they plan to keep it.
Ask if they care who gets killed in the process.
I, too, hope the book proves prophetic, malaise. I'd like to see the world Jacques Fresco envisions, where technology is used to transform the world, rather than enslave it.
A few years back, Jacques Fresco described what could be. The 90 year old talked standing up for 60 minutes. From something I posted on DU (can't find the OP, for some reason):
On March 5, 2009, futurist Jacques Fresco addressed a group of people at U-M in Ann Arbor. The former NASA engineer described how his current company had been commissioned by the then-flush Saudis to design the city of the future.
Fresco showed us an animated film of their work. The projected communities were organized in a circular shape, with city services in the center, the next ring being housing, then parks and recreation, then the outermost rings were for farming. Robots could be built to do all the dangerous, dirty jobs and heavy lifting. Robots even could do the assembly of buildings and the city itself. People were freed to do the work they wanted, each contributing.
The guy's 91-plus and he stood and talked for an hour. He indicated that our current model is one where corporations hold sway. And that, at their core, corporations are fascistic. "Who votes? Nobody. The CEO decides." He said, governments, whether commie or fascistic, similarly, are all the same. At heart, these organizations are faulty and corrupt with land stolen from the original people and a society geared toward war -- a process that makes some rich and the rest conscripted in their service.
True democracy, he said, results when We the People can decide. The people hear one leader speak. Another gives her or his side of the issue. A neutral nation debates and opines and decides. That's what democracy is all about -- people deciding. And people never decide for war. And we must stand up to those who would move us to war -- except when, as in World War II -- evil forces wanted to dominate and enslave the world and destroy all who opposed them.
[font color="blue"]Fresco said he sees no hope for the nation and planet unless people decide to stop today's fascists. [/font color]He said, to end war and survive, we must share resources. We must sustain and treat each life with dignity: food, water, education, political rights, etc. We have the resources to do it. And the resources we have can create an abundance -- not the shortages that we see all around under the current system.
http://www.thevenusproject.com/about/resume
