Click here to access article by Robert W. McChesney from Salon.
It seems that after the publication of the book entitled Capital in the Twenty-First Century by the French sociologist, Thomas Piketty, all of a sudden it has become fashionable among North America's academics and leftists to make references to capitalism in a more critical fashion but without really examining the deadly dynamics that drives the system.
One such person is McChesney who has recently authored the book Blowing the Roof off the Twenty-First Century: Media, Politics, and the Struggle for Post-Capitalist Democracy. Others on my list include such people as the economic historian Richard Smith (from New York, not to be confused with Richard A. Smith of the Institute for Policy Research & Development, London), Naomi Klein, and "Cassiodorus" (a pen-name). I think that their critiques of capitalist society are muted because of their long experience in academia and their more immediate interests of protecting their careers from the threats of their capitalist overseers. They tend to hang-out online in websites such as the following: Climate&Capitalism, Daily Kos, TruthOut, MR Online, FireDogLake, and Salon.
Although I haven't read McChesney's new book, I offer this piece as a sample of this sort of critical thinking, and which might suggest a preview of what he offers in his book. Such a "radical" view, I argue, examines closely the trees while ignoring most of the dynamics of the forest.
My critique of these critics is not intended to put them down, rather my intention is to see the weaknesses of their views and to strive for something better. I offer this criticism as a plea to especially young Americans that we must get serious about changing the system, if we are to survive. Either we get serious about overthrowing the system and establishing a socially just and sustainable system, or else we should prepare ourselves to descend into a living nightmare of fascism, wars, and catastrophic climate destabilization. Time is rapidly running out on humanity.
In this piece McChesney looks at our "dark imperial legacy" as originating with Charles E. (General Electric) Wilson who later became Sec. of Defense under Eisenhower. He throws in concepts like "military Keynesianism" to dress up his essay in academic jargon, references some radical authors, offers two quotes from other observers making reference to a ruling class to give his essay some radical cachet, but otherwise ignores an overview of the inherent and compulsive drive to power that the system of capitalism inculcates in those who practice capitalism. Thus, the reader is left to imagine that individuals such as Charles Wilson and George Bush are to blame for aberrations in a system that is basically sound. Hence, it only needs to be reformed to make it function right.
