Click here to access article by Pam Martens from Wall Street on Parade.
Although I am often critical of mainstream critics like Martens for their reformist oriented perspectives on current capitalist crimes and misdemeanors, I also credit her (and them) with pointing out the latter which mainstream media are so skilled at hiding. It seems to me that this new form of capitalism on steroids, better know as neoliberalism, has left in its wake many capitalist oriented critics who cry foul at the excesses of this global juggernaut. Many of them also realize that this new stage of capitalism and its agents are creating many disasters, the worst of all to these critics is the destruction of the system itself, the goose which has laid so many golden eggs for its owners, and for them in their careers.
You see, our current capitalist masters are now engaged in a kind of feeding frenzy. I think that they instinctively know that what they are doing is destroying the planet and wrecking havoc on the great majority of humans; but they are very much like the corrupt French aristocracy before the revolution, who lived according to the theme "apres moi deluge" (very loosely translated means "I will steal as much as I can and I don't care what happens later to my class").
(For a good info-graphic representing this new "turbo capitalism", see this.)
If you like your culture criticism in the form of sophisticated
liberal rants, then you can't do much better than those written by Henry
Giroux. Here is a recent article in which he argues that the problem is "authoritarianism" which is
merely a symptom, more honestly referred to as "fascism", of a capitalism
regime that feels threatened. He does mention capitalism, but it is only
a specific form that bothers him--"casino capitalism". Such critiques
divert attention (and actions) away from the primary agent, the private
ownership of a socially constructed economy, onto merely a particular
form of capitalism. Hence, only reforms to the system are needed.
