Our Very Own Transition Question
How to Get from Capitalism to Socialism--Without a Revolution?
Here (link below) is a distillation of what I was reading, thinking, and getting ready to write about for the past month, when south of the border. The review itself, for Project Syndicate, got written in haste upon my return from Mexico. These books, particularly Martin Wolf’s, convince me that ruling class intellectuals are casting about—not desperately, but methodically, hopefully—for ways of thinking through our very own transition question, which is pretty simple: How do we get from capitalism to socialism without a revolution?
They know that the transition from feudalism to capitalism was animated and punctuated by great revolutions, from the English "Civil War" of the 17th century, to the American and French renditions of the 18th, on toward the Second American Revolution of the late-19th (not to mention the concurrent Risorgimentos in Italy and Germany, the end of serfdom in Russia, and the stirrings of rebellion in India, China, Mexico).
So they ask: Can we effect the same scale of transition without spilling all that blood? If the question really has come down to socialism or barbarism—I think so, but it’s more important that Martin Wolf does as well—can we make it through without resort to dictatorship, by relying instead on democratic means to our social-democratic ends?
You might ask, well, isn't the charnel house we call the 20th century enough barbarism to last another millennium? I have no doubt that in retrospect, historians will compare that moment to the "crisis of the 17th century" which inaugurated modernity. But for now what matters is the end game, the political part of the bargain, which has to begin with the intellectual groundwork—our work, that is. Or theirs, that of these ruling class intellectuals, “thought leaders” as we call them nowadays.
The link below to Project Syndicate is a passthrough (no pay wall) provided by Jonathan Stein, the genius who is managing editor there. Thanks to him, Laura Kipnis, John McClure, and Bruce Robbins for strong readings of the draft.
Also linked below is the interview I did with Martin Wolf from Puerto Vallarta, edited by co-podcaster David Barfield. It’s 57 minutes of interesting conversation—and please hold out for the last 10 minutes, where we get into the con game, as he calls it, of our banking system (we get there by way of Mervyn King, former governor of the Bank of England, an old friend of Wolf’s). My thanks to Rachel Danna at Project Syndicate for arranging the interview and to Sarah Hutson of Penguin Press for the immediate logistics of the Zoom session.
By all accounts, Wolf is the preeminent financial journalist of our time. I think his work is at the same level of significance as that of Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman, so I won’t be surprised if he, too, is someday awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Science.
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Link to Project Syndicate:
https://prosyn.org/pwucL91?h=kLCiboqwvMsvtTxJYGZ7Q4ov7rmVEm8yCxSKpepO7vw%3d
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Link to Interview with Martin Wolf:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Fi3IAcMjVMFzLhp4B0Ffeq9SbRqVedhH/view
Oh, how I would've like to have studied with you. If you ever put together a MOOC, let me know!
Having read the piece, I have a question for you Jim: Is the near extinction of global capitalism really as a result of majoritarian means? I guess in a sense you could argue that majorities of individuals keep voting for this type of political capitalism, while at the same time, the majority of capitalists' aren't really a majority by themselves. It is really a minority of capitalists that have gained control of the forces of democracy at the expense of democracy. (rights of persons v. rights of property.)