“This is about saving capitalism,”
If so its not the capitalism that most contemporary capitalists recognise.
Sure there was the post WWII golden age but that had more to do with the class and social solidarity established within nations and between the Western allies in the face of a common enemy and the steadily rising wages for the working and middle class arising out of the economic boom created in America's centralised and socialised wartime economy.
The US quickly realised that this could not last without viable trading partners and set about rebuilding the two most effective economies it could find, those of the erstwhile enemy: Japan and Germany.
But in establishing the new world economic order at Bretton Woods the American delegation steamrolled the British and John Maynard Keynes in the name of anti-communism (with a liberal dose of unenlightened self-interest) and sowed the seeds of the current crisis by promoting the hidden hand of markets at the expense of globally agreed regulation to mediate human society.
Fast forward to the 1980s and the victory of the Neoliberals led by Milton Friedman and his fellow Mont Pellerin Society fanatics (who had worked so hard to assume the commanding heights) and the doomed future of capitalism was sealed.
Ever since Margaret Thatcher told us there was no such thing as society and Ronald Reagan told us that government was the problem not the solution to our problems, the Davos Emperors and the current perversion of capitalism was inevitable.
To 'fix' capitalism, the damage caused by the last 40 years of neoclassical and neoliberal economic thought must be reversed.
Thorlar1
[ed. Amazingly concise summary of post-war economics (from the comments section of): 'This is about saving capitalism': the Dutch historian who savaged Davos elite (The Guardian)]
If so its not the capitalism that most contemporary capitalists recognise.
Sure there was the post WWII golden age but that had more to do with the class and social solidarity established within nations and between the Western allies in the face of a common enemy and the steadily rising wages for the working and middle class arising out of the economic boom created in America's centralised and socialised wartime economy.
The US quickly realised that this could not last without viable trading partners and set about rebuilding the two most effective economies it could find, those of the erstwhile enemy: Japan and Germany.
But in establishing the new world economic order at Bretton Woods the American delegation steamrolled the British and John Maynard Keynes in the name of anti-communism (with a liberal dose of unenlightened self-interest) and sowed the seeds of the current crisis by promoting the hidden hand of markets at the expense of globally agreed regulation to mediate human society.
Fast forward to the 1980s and the victory of the Neoliberals led by Milton Friedman and his fellow Mont Pellerin Society fanatics (who had worked so hard to assume the commanding heights) and the doomed future of capitalism was sealed.
Ever since Margaret Thatcher told us there was no such thing as society and Ronald Reagan told us that government was the problem not the solution to our problems, the Davos Emperors and the current perversion of capitalism was inevitable.
To 'fix' capitalism, the damage caused by the last 40 years of neoclassical and neoliberal economic thought must be reversed.
Thorlar1
[ed. Amazingly concise summary of post-war economics (from the comments section of): 'This is about saving capitalism': the Dutch historian who savaged Davos elite (The Guardian)]
