The Big Bubble Is Bursting: Is There Life After Capitalism?

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

Here Paul Jay of the Real News talks in November 2008 at The Krahl Academy about foreign policies, wars, the crises of capitalism, media, economies, and about the shit hitting the fan.

Jay’s talk is about 40 minutes. Watch the video. It’s worth your time.



Real News Network – October 4, 2009

The crisis will deepen, we need real news

Paul Jay of The Real News speaks at the Von Krahl Academy, Estonia in November 2008

If I’m not doing the thing I feel is most significant, then I feel empty inside.

–Paul Jay

Is There Life After Capitalism?

The Von Krahl Academy started in the year 2003 in collaboration with Radio Night University – a radio programme broadcasting lectures on various topics. The Academy opened a series of scientific-artistic events with the aim of learning more about the world we live in. The result of the first session was a musical production called “To Define Happiness”, based on S. Hawkings texts and original music written by Gavin Bryars. (The result can be seen here: http://youtube.com/vonkrahl )

Von Krahl Academy asks questions to which mankind has seeked answers through all times, but does it in a more playful form. The topic for the season 2008/2009 will be the future society. Post-postmodern, post-industrial, post-oil, post-capitalist – however we would like to call it. Can we see and describe it already today? What and where will be the superpower of the XXI century? Will there be a new narrative, new common story or ideology for the mankind? What about love, death and loneliness? As always, Von Krahl Academy is not accusing the past, but hopes to find ideas and solutions for the future. Estonia as one of the smallest countries in Europe is – because being so small – in a unique situation that is unimaginable for bigger states. Be it getting attention to new ideas or to convince yourself and your fellow citizens that one can fly.

To discuss the topics of interest Von Krahl Academy holds series of open lectures and forums. To illustrate the topics under discussion we produce concerts, spectacles and exhibitions.  On the 5th of October the Academy will be opened by Jakob von Uexkull. The Academy will be attended by Rob Hopkins (giving a videoconference), Mark Lynas, Andrew Cohen. In November you will hear Catherine Austin Fitts, Jonathan Dawson,  Paul Jay. From Russia there will come Andrey Illarionov and Vissarion.

The themes stretch from global warming to creating ecovillages, from independent media to describing transition culture.

The ideas of the Academy are supported by Tallinn2011 and through their webpage you can also ask questions from the lecturers.

22 comments

Skip to comment form

    • Edger on October 4, 2009 at 16:56
      Author

    I hope so, because the world doesn’t need profit driven journalism anymore.

    The world needs you.

  1. First reading:

    Is There Life After Cannibalism?

               Capitalism  ==  Cannibalism

  2. Democracies throughout history, operating under conditions of hierarchy, are under pressure to push away the pressure to grant equal rights to the people, so as to maintain elite rule.

    Precapitalist societies used a number of different schemes to maintain hierarchy.  The Athenians used “citizenship” as an exclusion; medieval societies used “lordship” and various titles.  Our society uses “property” and “money” and so on.

    Given that “property” and “money” are at this point markers of elite status (if, of course, you have enough of them), Jay’s suggestion that the Obama group wants “a more rational capitalism” needs to be looked at in light of said group’s craven attempts to re-create the conditions of 2006 (without, of course, any serious attempt outside of the petty “stimulus” to re-create the consumer economy extant at that time).  

    What Geithner, especially, wants is to maintain the elite status of those currently implicated in “property” and “money” without there necessarily have to be any sort of “capitalist business” in which they have to risk anything.  Thus Geithner and co. bail out the banks, who bail out the stock market, while pursuing petty “restrictions” upon the financial sector.  

    I think it all will lead to a sort of zombie capitalism, in which the most subsidized actors will pretend to play the roles assigned to them without there really being any systemic coherence to the whole, and while shutting out, to the greatest extent possible, the realities of the unprofitability of an increasing number of sectors of the economy as well as the growing angry mob which will be assembling outside of the gated communities.

    One recalls that some of the most stereotyped and lifeless works of Roman literature were written at the disastrous end of the history of the Roman Empire in the west.  So, for instance, Macrobius‘ Saturnalia, an entirely derivative work, hoped to preserve the glories of the polytheistic past of Roman literature in the era of St. Augustine, and probably in Augustine’s geographic locale as well.  The US economy is, in Macrobius’ spirit, to be preserved as some kind of glorious Wall Street “Saturnalia,” in celebration of the glories of the capitalist system of eras past, while reality moves on.  We, for our part, are to become static objects in some sort of diorama of human action which will make the elite nostalgists of capitalism happy, though as mere diorama object we will not have to eat and that should make at least a few people unhappy.  Oh but the stock market has rebounded!

    The “Marx-is-always-right” crowd (you know who I’m talking about) like to cite vague passages in vol. 3 of Capital to show that Marx could see even then the financialization of capital at work.  Give Marx credit where credit is due; but remember that there is no way Marx could have foreseen the overwhelming nature of the triumph of finance capital after the economic crises of the 1970s.  Thus the ultimate convulsion which ends the system is not likely to be the tendential decline in the rate of profit, but rather the elite’s attempts to use “bailout” to free its elite status from the risks of business.  One imagines a sort of global version of the Japanese “economy on ice,” multiplied thousand-fold.

  3. Because even if there is some value to realnews I can still detect hints of gatekeeping and that is only from a very brief summary and analysis of latest news topics covered and not covered.

    Want total honesty here?  What simple title sent me into a rage?  Obama,racist,health care.  The association of these three items in and of itself says social engineering to me.  It is an echo of the marketing think tanks of mainstream Pravda press.

    http://therealnews.com/t/index

    I don’t hate Obama cause he is black but because he is a sell out to the most evil of global interests.

Comments have been disabled.