tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32389011.post7178212688431090796..comments2023-08-16T11:57:49.872+01:00Comments on A World to Win: Debt crisis behind Grangemouth strikeA World to WInhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11015076489878725264noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32389011.post-69419919625049075552008-04-28T12:47:00.000+01:002008-04-28T12:47:00.000+01:00Robin,You say ‘we need to have a real think about ...Robin,<BR/><BR/>You say ‘we need to have a real think about asset bubbles, black swans, deregulation and privatisation, perverse incentives, externalities, asymmetrical compensation and the worship of "talent".’<BR/><BR/><BR/>We’ve examined many of these features of 21st capitalist society, and more, in our books A World to Win and A House of Cards. There, and in the continuing analysis in our blogs, we show how the logic of profit-driven growth together with the underlying employment contract that provides for the generation and extraction of profit for distribution to shareholders – which together define capitalist production - necessarily and directly lead to what you describe s ‘excesses’, or at least most of them. <BR/><BR/>What we show confirms what Marx discovered, that the capitalist system of social relations operates according to its own laws, and that attempts to reform or regulate it – to apply ‘rationality’ – so as to lessen its necessary consequences are doomed to failure. As is now being seen, attempts at control like inflationary supplies of liquidity, are making a bad situation worse. <BR/><BR/>That’s why our approach to rationality is to identify those results of the development of capitalist society that can provide the basis for a new start, and to consciously develop them in the context of a new system of social relations based on the identification and satisfaction of need. <BR/><BR/>Either you accept the fundamental drive for profit-led growth, or you work to end it.<BR/><BR/> <BR/>GerryAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32389011.post-34585903132833731232008-04-26T12:03:00.000+01:002008-04-26T12:03:00.000+01:00Good piece. Not enough is being said in the media ...Good piece. Not enough is being said in the media about the massive debts that INEOS have. There are similar issues with a number of smaller energy suppliers in the UK. Unless shielded from their debt by a serious uptick in inflation, these companies are going to start hitting difficulties, and their customers and employees with them. <BR/><BR/>I don't agree that capitalism per se is the problem, but there have been excesses in recent years that must not be allowed to repeat. It would be nice if people like me, who believe in capitalism, could work with those that have more radical beliefs to reach somewhere that both camps agree is better than where we are now. <BR/><BR/>I believe we need to have a real think about asset bubbles, black swans, deregulation and privatisation, perverse incentives, externalities, asymmetrical compensation and the worship of "talent".<BR/><BR/>Can't the socialist community and the "rational" capitalists work together to change things in the short term?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com