Happy in Post-Capitalist America

History will probably see the Bush Depression, as well as the Bush
Wars, as minor blips in the very gradual descendence of capitalism.
However, it is the much more interesting transition from market
capitalism to state capitalism which, from where we write (at a desk
outside on the corner of a bridge over that little river runs through
the outskirts of downtown Santa Fe, NM), we are likely to already be
witnessing too closely for comfort. Excluding some of the not-simply-
xenophobic-horse-shit discussions of sovereign wealth funds, and
their role in re-capitalizing the banks in the wake of the subprime
crisis, we can already see the sprouting of a very old seed of state
capitalism in Bernanke's rescue efforts. It has actually always been
there, or at least since the codification of the Federal Reserve's
legally-defined categorical imperative: "You shall achieve maximum
employment." In other words, make them work. Everything we see the
Fed doing today, in terms of printing money in the form of discount
inter-bank loans, is aimed at creating a situation in which the
American people will "be employed" "maximally". The better the
superstructure is understood, the more diabolical and anti-populist
the "maximal employment maxim" seems.
The central banks by and large have a mandate to create the kind of
liquidity in lending institutions which allow them to inflate and
control commodities (like say housing) in such a way that people will
have to work for them. This is the nature of a boom. Tempt the
masses with the dream of accumulation; allow them to believe they are
the "smart money"; just keep them working to pay down the interest.
In what is taking place now, we can already see a dawn beyond the
ascendence of state capitalism: when people see beyond the social
stigma of the debt they have so idiotically elected to hoist on
themselves, and walk away from their loans en masse. It won't happen
this time, but someday it will. And there will be very little the
state can do about it.