Another the End of Article with Some Trivial Omissions
July 19, 2015
Far be it from me to find fault with an economics essay published by the British open source, online hip newspaper The Guardian. I want to point you at “The End of Capitalism Has Begun.” Like Francis Fukuyama’s end of book, the end seems to be unwilling to arrive. Note: if you find that the article has disappeared online, you may have to sign up to access the nuggets generated by The Guardian. Another alternative, which is pretty tough in rural Kentucky, is to visit your local convenience store and purchase a dead tree edition. Do not complain to me about a dead link, which in this blog are little tombstones marking online failures.
There is some rugby and polo club references in the article. The one that I circled was the reference to Karl Marx’s “The Fragment on Machines” from his thriller The Grundrisse, which connoted to me “floor plans.” But, my German like my math skills are not what they used to be. Anyway, who am I kidding. I know you have read that document. If not, you can get a sniff at this link.
According to the Guardian, the point of the fragment is:
he [Marx] had imagined something close to the information economy in which we live. And, he wrote, its existence would “blow capitalism sky high.
The end of capitalism?
Another interesting item in the essay is the vision of the future. At my age, I do not worry too much about the future beyond waking each morning and recognizing my surroundings. The Guardian worries about 20175. Here’s the passage I highlighted:
I don’t mean this as a way to avoid the question: the general economic parameters of a post capitalist society by, for example, the year 2075, can be outlined. But if such a society is structured around human liberation, not economics, unpredictable things will begin to shape it.
Why raise the issue?
Now to the omission. I know this is almost as irrelevant as the emergence of a monitored environment. What about the growing IS/ISIS/Daesh movement? The Greek matter is interesting to me because if the state keeps on trucking down the interstate highway its has been following, the trucks will be loaded with folks eager to take advantage of the beach front property and nice views Greece affords.
I noted a number of other points away from which the essay steered its speeding Russian Zil. How does one find information in the end of world?
I think about information access more than I ponder the differences between Horatio in Hamlet and Daniel Doyce in Little Dorrit. To get up to speed on Daniel Doyce, check out this link.
Like Fukuyama’s social analysis, this end of may point to speaking engagements and consulting work. The hope is that the author may want these to be never-ending. Forget the information access and the implications and impacts of IS/ISIS/Daesh.
Let’s hope online search works unless it is now the end of that too.
Stephen E Arnold, July 19, 2015
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