Good Morning Friends,

I want to make a brief interruption of our present mode of analysis to mention Barbara Ehrenreich's book, Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America (Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt & Company, New York, 2009). This book, particularly the chapter called "The Dark Roots of American Optimism," will be very helpful to our understanding.

I have been laying out the highly counterintuitive thesis that the capitalist ruling class actually does not like capitalism very much; and they view it, in fact, as a lower form of existence, like the "agents" in The Matrix. They desperately seek to escape this form of existence, after all the kings and aristocracy of old did not have to toil in order to be wealthy, to own practically all the wealth of the land, in fact. They were wealthy simply by virtue of their position.

I have been saying that capitalism is a system reluctantly constructed by the western ruling classes, though I admit I am not yet clear as to the precise political history. It would seem from the outside that capitalism has enriched them marvelously; but I don't think they necessarily see it that way. It's nothing like the serious wealth to be gained from a return, as much as possible, to the conditions that allowed the monarchs and aristocracy to have their staggering wealth. Remember that list I cited from the Wall Street Journal (1999) from Kevin Phillips book, Wealth and Democracy, of the fifty riches people of the previous thousand years? Most were kings, popes, bankers to kings and popes, traders under official license, conqueror-rulers. Only one, Bill Gates, was an actual capitalist, barely, but will come back to that.

Their visible dislike of capitalism is manifest in the traditional, worldwide sociological New Money-Old Money tension. I have said that New Money always wants to become Old Money, just as quickly as possible - which is why they practice capitalism as viciously as they do. They want to grow really rich as soon as possible so that they may expand into the realm of Old Money, free at last, as soon as possible. Financialization, I said, is one way of achieving this as quickly as possible, of "aging" their wealth as soon as possible. I said that when capitalism hits its natural limits to expansion, one of two modalities are triggered, so it seems to me: virtual and disaster capitalisms. Financialization is virtual capitalism.

Anyway, we'll talk a little about what Ehrenreich has to say about Calvinism next time.

wingedcentaur