Ms. Tett begins her review of PostCapitalism: A Guide to our Future, by Paul Mason with some interesting observations on Wikipedia, but it isn’t long before the usual Financial Times’ Anti-Left Hysterics becomes primary, not anything like a surprise. But notice that the Financial Times was/is a defender of Neo-Liberal Utopianism, while Ms Tett exercises the right to criticize the Left Utopianism of Mr. Mason, in the unflattering light of rhetorical shrillness, among other crimes of literary/political decorum. Could the double standard be more obvious?

What is interesting to me, as an American, is the idea that Post-Capitalism elides from the conversation the reality, that with the utter failure of the Neo-Liberal idea/practice and the failure of Austerity, followed by the present economic stagnation is to be succeeded by  Corporatism: the passage of the TPA and it’s successor the TPP are the secret laws that inaugurate that regime, that replaces the ideas and practices of republican rule i.e. the eclipse of popular sovereignty and the rule of indigenous law making,  and the rise of corporate NGO’s as the final arbiters of  how we might live, in a political world remade in the image and practice of a demonstrably failed Capital. Not to speak of the conformity and predations of America’s bought and paid for political class. And the fact that Obama had to appeal to the arch-reactionary Republican Party, to pass this travesty, indeed this utter betrayal of our political tradition, makes a mockery of his original public relations gambit of ‘Hope and Change’.

Perhaps the Post-Capitalism of Mr. Mason might be the successor to the Corporatism that looms in the future of America, but how long must we wait for the myth of the self -correcting Market to become a reality? Or should we discard this along with the collection of Political Romantics that dubbed themselves Economists: Hayek, von Mises, Friedman or script writer and Prophet of Greed Ayn Rand.

Almost Marx