‘Post-industrial capitalism’ is an unconscious euphemism for ‘bankrupt’.

            The collusion of economists and financiers in the active program of theft, which is now the largest American corporations, is only the most prominent signal.

            To speak the usual truism, it is ‘the system’ itself which is bankrupt. But what is not usual is the solution.

            If one said ‘capitalism’, one would automatically fall into the company of Ayn Rand and her readers, her clique of thieves-in-waiting. But what Ayn Rand advocates and her thieves-in-waiting regurgitate is the paean to frontier capitalism – the capitalism in which we are presently frozen.

            Like any other cultural function, capitalism evolves. But, at this point, capitalism is caught in its pre-medieval phase, the moment before the frontier begins to civilize, a developmental era requiring a maximized capital turnover to produce a coordinated development.

            Capitalism will never be able to divest itself from ‘industry’. But commercial production will never be able to divest itself of capitalism.

            The question is, whether capitalism can transition out of the ‘frontier’ mode and into the realms of economic equilibrium – an ongoing period without raw developmental force. We speak of a ‘self-sustaining’ environment – a balanced eco-system. But I do not hear people speaking about a balanced economic system, where capital can be raised for changing needs without the expectation of excessive profits.

            Presumably, the solution involves letting the system itself evolve.

            But the real problem, at the moment, is the wonderfully addictive nature of theft as a pastime, particularly when the results are spectacular – unconscionable sprees in bonus land. But the theft itself is addictive. Witness the politicians transforming themselves into fishhooks to serve the twisted process, with relatively minimal rewards.

            The question is whether the system will ‘evolve’ after a holocaustal collapse or collectively begin to enter a visionary understanding.

            Given the peculiar buried strength of the cultural or ‘spiritual’ hunger beneath the present post-everything ‘culture’, this possibility may not be so untenable or remote as it seems.

– Jeremy