Grendel's Capitalism: The Americas (Documentary)

[Abishai100]

Will capitalism change the way we brood about the history of propaganda?



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SHIVA: Capitalism requires much evaluation...
GRENDEL: It's a complex system of competitive-thinking.
SHIVA: Capitalism creates much gambling...
GRENDEL: Wall Street is a system of constant change!
SHIVA: We might start brooding about 'lost opportunities.
GRENDEL: The American Dream is all about opportunism.
SHIVA: We need a council to evaluate risk consequence.
GRENDEL: Yes, the great crashes in Wall Street are historically-intriguing.
SHIVA: Without risk-consequence evaluation, there can't be objective historianship.
GRENDEL: There should be a documentary about capitalism in the Americas.
SHIVA: Yes, the New World was the fertile-ground on which continental commerce grew.
GRENDEL: The commerce-engaged political aesthetic was a modern invention.
SHIVA: I agree; Wall Street and the European Union represent this novelty!
GRENDEL: The New World changed the way we conceived of mature competition.
SHIVA: That's why the War of 1812 was so important/symbolic.
GRENDEL: Yes, the interplay between the Americas and Europe had to be crystallized.
SHIVA: Is capitalism a way to 'federalize' business contracts?
GRENDEL: Capitalism certainly creates network etiquette...
SHIVA: Isn't that what the World Bank and G7 Summits are all about?
GRENDEL: There is a 'black hole' for capitalism brooding.
SHIVA: Yes, meditating on the 'mistakes' of capitalism is important...
GRENDEL: Someone has to write The Great Gatsby I suppose!
SHIVA: Gatsby is the opposite of Machiavelli's Prince.
GRENDEL: Yes, The Prince symbolizes power control.
SHIVA: Right; while Gatsby is all about power romance.
GRENDEL: Capitalism creates much 'folklore.'
SHIVA: I'm a big fan of Scorsese's Casino and Woody Allen's Celebrity.
GRENDEL: Those two American films symbolize American fineries.

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[midcan5]

Interesting. I recently collected quotes on capitalism. see below.

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"Capitalism is the ownership and use of the concrete but dynamic elements in a society - what is commonly known as the means of production. A capitalist is someone who produces more capital through the production of the means he owns. This necessitates the periodic reinvestment of part of the capital earned into the repair, modernization and expansion of the means. Capitalism is therefore the ownership of an abstraction called capital, rendered concrete by its ownership of the means of production, which through actual production creates new capital.... However, capitalism as conceived today tends to revolve around something called the profit motive, even though profit is neither a cause of capitalism nor at the heart of the capitalist action. Profit is a useful result of the process, nothing more. As for the ownership of the means of production, this has been superseded by their management. And yet, to manage is to administer, which is a bureaucratic function. Alternately, there is a growing reliance upon the use of capital itself to produce new capital. But that is speculation, not production. Much of the development of the means of production is now rejected as unprofitable and, frankly, beneath the dignity of the modern manager, who would rather leave such labour and factory-intensive "dirty" work to Third World societies. Finally , the contemporary idea of capitalism grandly presents "service" as its new sophisticated manifestation. But the selling of one's own skills is not a capitalist art. And most of the jobs being created by the service industries are with the exception of the high-technology sector descendants of the pre-eighteenth-century commerce in trade and services." p360 'Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West' John Ralston Saul

"Historian Phillips-Fein traces the hidden history of the Reagan revolution to a coterie of business executives, including General Electric official and Reagan mentor Lemuel Boulware, who saw labor unions, government regulation, high taxes and welfare spending as dire threats to their profits and power. From the 1930s onward, the author argues, they provided the money, organization and fervor for a decades-long war against New Deal liberalism—funding campaigns, think tanks, magazines and lobbying groups, and indoctrinating employees in the virtues of unfettered capitalism." Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan by Kim Phillips-Fein

See also Dark Money: Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right by Jane Mayer

"...In his classic study of mid 19th century American labor, Norman Ware observes that the imposition of industrial capitalism and its values 'was repugnant to an astonishingly large section of the earlier American community'. The primary reason was 'the decline of the industrial worker as a person', the 'degradation' and 'psychological change' that followed from the 'loss of dignity and independence' and of democratic rights and freedoms. These reactions were vividly expressed in the working class literature, often by women, who played a prominent role despite their subordination in the general society." Introduction Alex Carey 'Taking The Risk Out Of Democracy'

"As an Anglo European white guy from a very long line of white guys, I want to thank all the brown, black, yellow and red people for a marvelous three-century joy ride. During the past 300 years of the industrial age, as Europeans, and later as Americans, we have managed to consume infinitely more than we ever produced, thanks to colonialism, crooked deals with despotic potentates and good old gunboats and grapeshot. Yes, we have lived, and still live, extravagant lifestyles far above the rest of you. And so, my sincere thanks to all of you folks around the world working in sweatshops, or living on two bucks a day, even though you sit on vast oil deposits. And to those outside my window here in Mexico this morning, the two guys pruning the retired gringoes hedges with what look like pocket knives, I say, keep up the good work. It's the world's cheap labor guys like you - the black, brown and yellow folks who take it up the shorts - who make capitalism look like it actually works. So keep on humping. Remember: We've got predator drones." Joe Bageant http://coldtype.net/Assets.10/Pdfs/0710.Joe.Doomsday.pdf

 

[sparky]

Our capitalist model is great for the 'biggest dog'

~S~