"Capitalist cycles recur. Each economic cycle imposes huge, painful social costs. In a parallel ideological cycle, most politicians, mass media and academics swing ridiculously between hyped celebrations of deregulation and (re)regulation as "the solution to our economic problems.."
"Capitalism's instability is systemic. To address it without considering systemic change is to continue the history of failure to "solve" that instability. Capitalism's core class conflict between workers and boards of directors was never fundamentally changed by state bailouts, (re)regulations, or monetary and fiscal policies. Capitalism's class structure is likewise not systemically changed, even if we replace boards of directors privately elected by shareholders with boards of state officials instead. State capitalism (U.S.S.R.), too — and not only private capitalism (U.S.A.) — displayed instabilities driven by class conflicts between surplus producers and appropriators. Notwithstanding differences between the instabilities of state and private capitalism, both still yielded inefficiencies and wastes that each so assiduously documented in the other.."
More articles by Richard Wolfe are available at www.socialistproject.ca.
to read the entire article "Actually, it's the system, President Obama," published April 23, 2009, click on
http://canadiandimension.com/articles/2249/