“It is clear that capitalism, with its ceaseless boom and bust cycles, is itself, fundamentally and irreducibly, bi-polar” Ewan Morrison has just written an in memorium of Mark Fisher: Thanks for reading Lost Tempo! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
Capitalism with its ceaseless boom and bust - I like to juxtapose it next to socialism and communism which seem to be ceaseless bust and bust cycles. I love to poke capitalism bashers on what life would be like under their ideal form of government, first they don’t actually know what capitalism is, then they like to imagine socialism (or their preferred form) as the one in which life is basically the same as today but in which all of the hard problems they had have been magically dealt with by someone else and they don’t have to think about them anymore. They remind me of the lovely Jehovah’s Witness lady who used to hang around in Cronulla plaza when I was very young, she used to tell me that when the kingdom of heaven came I would have lions and tigers to play with - to which I (demonstrating my 9 year old savvy) replied “what about a Nintendo?” Apparently that wasn’t part of her gods plan but I experienced heaven on earth the following Christmas anyway.
I am less dismissive of socialists than you because I think many pro-capitalists don't actually know what capitalism is either. And the persistence of religious ideas in political thought on both left and right has been written about at length by the likes of John Gray (the Black Sabbath of Political Thought).
Capitalism with its ceaseless boom and bust - I like to juxtapose it next to socialism and communism which seem to be ceaseless bust and bust cycles. I love to poke capitalism bashers on what life would be like under their ideal form of government, first they don’t actually know what capitalism is, then they like to imagine socialism (or their preferred form) as the one in which life is basically the same as today but in which all of the hard problems they had have been magically dealt with by someone else and they don’t have to think about them anymore. They remind me of the lovely Jehovah’s Witness lady who used to hang around in Cronulla plaza when I was very young, she used to tell me that when the kingdom of heaven came I would have lions and tigers to play with - to which I (demonstrating my 9 year old savvy) replied “what about a Nintendo?” Apparently that wasn’t part of her gods plan but I experienced heaven on earth the following Christmas anyway.
I am less dismissive of socialists than you because I think many pro-capitalists don't actually know what capitalism is either. And the persistence of religious ideas in political thought on both left and right has been written about at length by the likes of John Gray (the Black Sabbath of Political Thought).