World markets fell yesterday and today, owing to weak indicators that economic recovery from the US made 2008 global recession is faltering. Capitalism weaknesses should come as no surprise: orthodoxy refrains from regulations and oversight. For capitalists, it's more than 'let a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend' moments, for there is but one flower and one school of thought: the free market and the anarchy it fosters. Such thinking favours a return to social Darwinism whereby the strongest and the most fit survive.
As the US mindless moneyed classes buy up the US government, they look more to protect privileges of theirs and damn the rest of society, who are there to serve them at starvation or near starvation wages and to should the heavy tax burdens the rich refuse to play.
And the best indication of that mindless mindset is the jockeying of the feckless Congress and courts and yes executive branch of governments who grovel at the feet of the plutocrats and coupon clippers, for the crumbs from their richly served table. The least worry is job creation for the millions of people out of work, who have less than an iceberg's chance in hell to reclaim the style of living pre 2008. There seems no urgency in ameliorating the conditions of the poor, the dispossessed, and the declasse. What counts is the spare the dumb ruling classes from forking over their fair share of money to run the country and ensure the good health of the commonweal, and who smile as they dismantle what's left of the Roosevelt's New Deal and Johnson's Great Society.
Little wonder, Charles Dickens is read again, as well as the works of Karl Marx!
Is the handwriting on the wall for the stupid ruling classes? The rise of popular movements like the Tea Party and the second wind of 'le front national' [National Front] in France or the resurrection of the prewar Fascist formations in Hungary are signs of where the times are tilting. Even in the bastion of Social Democracy in Scandinavia the ugly, nativist reflexes and ultra right parties have gained strength.
There, it seems, is a tendency today for nostalgia and longing for dictators. Consider the dusting off of the sorry coat of the assassinated South Korean dictator Park Chung Hee, among the chattering classes. Don't let the Arab spring fool you: in the Arab world there is an awakening which appears to buck the growing rightwards trend to autocracy and the leader on a white horse.
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