Legal foundations of capitalism Book

Mandel's analyses of permanent inflation, the arms economy, and the credit system are the best parts of this book. It's amazing how frequently his predictions of ever-broader, ever-deeper crises seem to have become realized. He presents the basic gameplan of capitalists of the period from 1970 to the present: eliminating democratic and collective organizing rights, lowering wages, reconsolidating the industrial reserve army, and continued quasi-colonization of markets and resources. All of that is now with us. Yet he argues in the end that this has already become unbearable (in 1975), and therefore a socialist revolution is well on the way.

The methods of state subvention and tremendous expansion of consumer credit have floated late capitalism ever since, it would appear. There is no reason to think the crises aren't becoming still more acute, because it's obviously impossible to sustain indefinitely a world economic system built on outright fraud, irreparable debt, and universally rapid consumption of resources, while perpetually lowering wages and increasing taxes on working people to pay for the privilege. There is not much more surplus value to be squeezed out, when 1/3 of workers in the most affluent economy in the world barely (or don't) subsist.

Stay tuned.