Michael Hudson argues that the industrial capitalism of a previous era has given way to a new form of financial capitalism. Today’s financial capitalists, unlike capitalists in Marx’s day, now claim their share of the surplus by passively extracting interest or economic rents…

what do y’all think of this? It makes some good points and Micheal Hudson is probably not right, but I have one criticism to make. One of his arguments that the richest people are still industrial capitalists (because they started businesses that do stuff), not finance capitalists, but as Cory Doctorow points out, those companies are basically just rentiers at this point. Amazon makes most of its money hosting other businesses on their site, “Meta” makes most of its money hosting being a middleman connecting advertisers and unpaid content creators poorly. Thus, it seems at least the emperial core has increased rentierism. This doesn’t mean it’s not built on peripheral industry and that reindustrializing the west would benefit average people, but it does seem to be good news about the decline of empire. Other thoughts?

  • QueerCommie@lemmygrad.mlOP
    8·
    1 year ago

    Varoufakis: “Capitalism’s changed so much it can’t be called capitalism anymore.”

    Mason: “Capitalism hasn’t changed. Your eyes are deceiving you if it looks like it has to you!”

    People who read Lenin: “Capitalism can change a lot without abandoning its core components and ceasing to be capitalism. What you are seeing is the tendency for monopolies to form and innovation to thusly fall.”

    (i couldnt find a good meme template)