Western Capitalism’s Decline

Amy writes from Canada about conditions in Canada and she complains, if that’s the fair word for it, that a whole generation is being economically squeezed, priced out of housing, for example, because the combination of incomes they can likely get and the price of rent or buying a home is simply out of reach. And that clearly from the way her question is phrased. she was led to believe as millions were. that these things would be within reach. And they aren’t.

And she looks around her, her surroundings in Canada, looks at the recent history and concludes that the economic conditions faced by her and the people around her are really bad and she wonders what can be done. What should be done? Where do we go from all of this now? I chose among the many questions that come in to respond to this one, partly, because I want to speak with our Canadian audience which is gratifyingly large and growing, but also because the problems of Canada are in this case very similar to the problems here in the United States.

And my answer to Amy’s question as to that similar question that comes from so many of you is that you have to face, because there’s no, you know, fakery that I can indulge myself in to deny it. I leave that to the mainstream media, to the reassuring politicians and all the rest of it, but the truth is that the economic difficulties of western capitalism, that is Canada, the United States, but also much of Western Europe is in very, very bad shape. That’s why you keep hearing about this. I mean in the European countries they’re talking about cutting back on the number of seconds you spend in the shower. That Britain will freeze this winter because they can’t afford to pay for energy. That there’s now a mass movement in England, like there was in France with the yellow vests to refuse to pay heating bills and so on. It is a declining western capitalist empire led by the United States let up when it was going well and led down as it is now in its declining phase. What do you do about that? Of course, is the question I could, as some still do, come up with this or that proposal, this or that reform, do this here, change the taxes over there, maybe elect this one. But we’re beyond that. We have been trying as a nation, as a region, there have been efforts to reform capitalism over and over again. The best they’ve achieved is to postpone the critical problems of this system, and as always happens, eventually you can’t postpone them again.

I don’t know if we’re at that point, I can’t predict the future. But I can tell you that we have arrived at a place where if you look at the situation you must conclude it is dire indeed. First of all the climate crisis which we can’t talk about because it’s so alarming and so little is being done. What could have been done in the United States has been whittled down and watered down to this latest bill passed by the Biden administration which will certainly be too little and too late as have been all the earlier efforts to deal with the climate crisis. Which are now decades old and the same is true of the instability we’ve had three crashes of capitalism in the first 30 years of this century the first 22 excuse me and no end in sight of that and the inequality is greater than ever.

So, what is it? I think, we have to bite the bullet as we like to say here, in gun happy U.S.and recognize that reform is not the solution and that’s not out of some abstract principle. We’ve tried reforms many of them one after another. Take for example minimum wage it was designed to create a floor so that if you work for a living you put in your 30 to 40 to 50 hours you get an income that won’t be so low that you can’t live even as you work that was done back in the 30s. It was a reform. Well, the minimum wage is in this country the federal minimum wage has been 7.25 since the year 2009. In other words, when you realize what prices have done while minimum wage went nowhere, it is worth less today in terms of what it can buy than it was back in the 1930s when it was first instituted this is beyond words of failure of a system we have to change it from the bottom up, there is no alternative, we’ve tried reforms we’ve been there we’ve done that, it didn’t solve the problem.

We’re as stable as we ever were, the crash of 2020 is the second worst after the crash of the 1930s what a statement of all the century in between, we haven’t figured out how to stop these crashes from happening. We’re now going through a devastating inflation and the government is saying they’re going to impose a recession to stop the inflation you want to put your hands over your ears. That’s why Amy Mccurdy’s question is so appropriate. And when I say we have to go beyond reform what do I mean?

Here’s what I mean. And I know you’ve heard it before, but it has to be said. We cannot have an economy run by a tiny minority of people, the owners, the boards of directors of corporations, a group which if you put them all together isn’t one percent of our people, we can’t have them in charge of the factories, offices, and stores, that do the business of our system and expect them to do it for the benefit of all of us. They run those things for the benefit of them! That’s why they are the powerful, that’s why they’re the richest people, that’s why they’re the one percent. We’ve got to democratize enterprises. Not only because we like democracy, but by putting the people in charge one person one vote we have a much better chance of having an economy that works for us.