Friends,

This talk of steroids leads us into the third prong of this particular cycle of analysis. At the end of it we are going to consider the abstract universal human quality of nationalism, and ask if all of the socioeconomic classes feel equally bound by nationalism. We also want to put this into context of something called the New World Order idea. This, I think, is usually ignored by most of the left as "conspiracy theory." But let us see if we can establish a hypothetical basis for it.

In his article in the monthly review, John Bellamy Foster summarized the findings of Paul Sweezy and another scholar called Harry Magdoff on the matter of credit: "Among the forces countering the tendency to stagnation, none has been more important or less understood by economic analysts than the growth, beginning in the 1960s and rapidly gaining momentum after the severe recession of the mid-1970s, of the country's debt structure (government, corporate, and individual) at a pace far exceeding the sluggish expansion of the underlying 'real' economy. The result has been the emergence of an unprecedentedly huge and fragile financial superstructure subject to the stresses and strains that increasingly threaten the stability of the economy as a whole."

Now, we have already talked about credit as the great enabling mechanism of class mimicry. Let's take our friend, the six-foot, three hundred pound man. We have him in the room, with no food but water, and we're making him do exercises. Suppose now we ease up on him a little. Every fourth day we give him a bucket of fried chicken. Every third day after that we give him a three liter bottle of grape soda and a jumbo bag of cheeseburger-flavored Doritos (Yes, they make cheeseburger-flavored Doritos, now!). And suppose we let him have some amphetamines or other chemical stimulants to keep our guy going, to take his mind off the fact that he is still being very, very poorly nourished, and rested for that matter.

Again, in the article, Foster wrote: "Economic stagnation, in this sense, should not be confused with technological or consumer-product stagnation. Indeed, the constant development of the technology of production that characterizes capitalism in general (including its monopoly stage) only increases the productive potential of the system, intensifying its overaccumulation tendencies. The system could concievably be rescued from its economic doldrums under these circumstances by the appearance of an epoch-making innovation on the scale of the steam engine, the railroad, and the automobile, in terms of total economic-geographical effects - generating a vast demand for new investment, independent of existing income constraints. Yet no such epoch-making innovation, Baran and Sweezy argued, was on the horizon.

Very good. Now let's turn to our third metaphorical analogy in this analysis. We should think of the elite finance sector as a whole (non-financial industrial firms also engage in financial speculation as well) like a sentient, slug-like, human body possessing, well, slug. This self-aware organism, that usually looks like a head of brocoli, enables the human body, it possesses, to perform superhuman feats of strength and speed, by making its metabolism and nervous system work very differently than it normally would.

As a result, the symbiot literally takes many decades off the life of the human being, as the creature uses up the body at a vastly accelerated rate. When the body is all burned up, the symbiot must move on and possess another body.

"... in terms of total economic geographical effects - generating a vast demand for new investment, independent of existing income constraints. Yet no such epoch-making innovation, Baran and Sweezy argued, was on the horizon."

The financial sector, as a whole, is like such a sentient, body possessing, slug-like creature, enabling the U.S. economy to perform remarkable feats of external dynamism, vigor, and power, all while inexorably undermining its health.

To be continued.

wingedcentaur