Before you lefties get too carried away with capitalism-bashing, even schadenfreude over the current travails of cross-border capitalists, mull over this.

The last great financial crisis of 1929 and the great depression which followed from it and lasted for most of the 1930s led to WW2. You don't really have to struggle to mount a pretty strong case about the war-inducing nature of the following combination:

- increased poverty making individuals more desperate and hence more likely to support extreme political parties;

- economic isolation and reduced cross-border economic links reducing nation states' perception of their own economic interest in the maintainence of peace.

The 1930s were, pretty much uniquely in the last 200 years, a period of reduction in economic liberalisation: national isolation, tariffs, hostility to free trade and falls in cross-border investment. Even WW1 didn't have as much impact on the massive 19th century globalisation of capitalism as the 1930s depression did.

In the modern era of nuclear weapons, scarcity of vital resources such as oil and metal ores, the risk of war and the likely carnage caused by war are massively higher. So the importance of the sense of mutual dependence of nations' economies caused by cross-border investment, in reducing e.g. the extent of recent Russia-West or China-West tensions to way below what they would otherwise have been, is all the greater.

Far from knocking capitalism, you really really ought to be praying for it with every fibre of your being. Because if it fails, nuclear holocaust won't be far behind.

Before you lefties get too carried away with capitalism-bashing

Yes that's been happening a lot on here I've noticed.

Lord Mauleverer wrote:

QUOTE:
The last great financial crisis of 1929 and the great depression which followed from it and lasted for most of the 1930s led to WW2.

I'd've said that WW2 was largely the follow-up to the ending of WW1 and the Treaty Of Versailles.

your post seems to working under the presumption that i'm not looking forward to the nuclear holocaust.

I can't imagine anyone wasting a nuke on Chorley. I suppose the Americans might drop one on us by mistake.

don't worry rogin, i'm sure there's enough supplies and shelter to last a lifetime under the big white church.

(my band once played in coppull - you'd be forgiven for thinking the nuclear holocaust hadn't already happened)

Typical freemarketeer logic: capitalism has got us into this mess, and only capitalism can get us out of it.

SR, you've just expressed two propositions, either of which may or may not be correct. Regardless of whether or not either or both of them is correct, there is no causal relationship between those two propositions. They are in fact entirely independent of each other, in terms of their accuracy. Logic has absolutely nothing to do with it.

Glad to see the GCSE History evening class is going well Mauleverer, but I think you've missed the main point that those on the left are making. It isn't, in most cases, 'this is great!', it's 'This is what we said for years was bound to happen, you stupid bastards'.

So what? That's irrelevant to the point I'm making, which is that the most dangerous thing that could happen now, in terms of avoiding the carnage of war, is a reduction in the liberalisation of world trade and financial markets.

Well in that case I'd say that there's a titanium-strong argument for seperating out the two- world trade on the one hand and the operation of unregulated financial markets on the other. The latter have grown parasitic on the former, and are putting far more strain on international trade and cooperation than any of the ideas being patted about on the left of the political spectrum.

In any case, it's the capitalists themselves who ought to be scared. There's a lot of public anger bubbling up about this. A whiff of insurrection in the air for the first time in a while.

Lord Mauleverer wrote:

QUOTE:
So what? That's irrelevant to the point I'm making, which is that the most dangerous thing that could happen now, in terms of avoiding the carnage of war, is a reduction in the liberalisation of world trade and financial markets.

Oh, so you are basically saying what I said you were saying. That didn't take long.

Yes. I didn't imply that I wasn't saying exactly what you said I was saying. I just queried the relevance of "logic" to the combination of two independent and empirically testable propositions.

Well done.

Lord Mauleverer wrote:

QUOTE:
I didn't imply that I wasn't saying exactly what you said I was saying.

is this still english?