http://www.inthesetimes.com/archives/tags/capitalism/ In These Times features award-winning investigative reporting about corporate malfeasance and government wrongdoing, insightful analysis of national and international affairs, and sharp cultural criticism about events and ideas that matter. en-us Expression Engine jessica@inthesetimes.com seamus@inthesetimes.com Fri, 20 Jun 2008 05:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3751/the_ambiguous_legacy_of_68/ In 1968 Paris, one of the best-known graffiti messages on the city's walls was "Structures do not walk on the streets!" In other words, the massive student and workers demonstrations of '68 could not be explained in the terms of structuralism, as determined by the structural changes in society, as in Saussurean structuralism. French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan's response was that this, precisely, is what happened in '68: structures did descend onto the streets. The visible explosive events on the streets were, ultimately, the result of a structural imbalance. There are good reasons for Lacan's skeptical view. As French scholars Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello noted in 1999's The New Spirit of Capitalism, from the '70s onward, a new form of… capitalism revolution Susan J. Douglas Fri, 03 Oct 2008 04:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3951/saying_no_deal_to_this_new_deal/ The marriage of American capitalism and democracy has always been a Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee affair -- stormy and erratic since its hasty wedding. But during the debate over a Wall Street bailout this week, we watched that matrimonial knot unwind into a tangled tale of terror. As a financial crisis became a political panic, capitalism murdered democracy (ironically, while pursuing a vaguely socialist bailout). Only, unlike a typical horror story, the dead body wasn't hidden, it was dumped in the nation's public square. The fiasco started, like most, with unreasonable demands. Under threat of financial meltdown, capitalism's corporate lobbyists asked our democracy to forsake its usual deliberations and hand over $700 billion of taxpayer money in less than… capitalism financial crisis Wall Street Susan J. Douglas Sun, 19 Oct 2008 05:00:00 -0500 http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3998/americans_unwilling_to_face_reality/ It's not as though no one saw it coming. Here's the economist Michael Hudson, writing in the May 2006 issue of Harper's magazine: "The reality is that, although home ownership may be a wise choice for many people, this particular real-estate bubble has been carefully engineered to lure home buyers into circumstances detrimental to their own best interests. . . . The bubble will burst, and when it does, the people who thought they would be living the easy life of a landlord will soon find that what they really signed up for was the hard servitude of debt serfdom." Other commentators, including Warren Buffet, said similar things about the derivatives market. It was prescient stuff for anybody who cared… economy labor deregulation capitalism Susan J. Douglas