Dmitry Orlov's Collapse Deficit of Capitalism Ought to Be the Subject of Global Debate

Following one of the Alice in the Wonderland rabbit holes, I found a gem in the form of Dmitry Orlov's study of the "collapse gap" comparing the USA and the USSR in terms of their institutional, structural, and cultural preparedness for a collapse of the system. It is a classic, I must say. It was published nearly exactly 8 years ago and it deserves to become a subject of a national, if not global debate.

Whatever one may say against "communism," it was based on the idea of building strong and freely accessible "commons." Capitalism is based on the Tower of Babel of predatory egoism (best rendered by de Sade from one side and Ayn Rand from the other side) where, as Marx put it correctly in the Communist Manifesto, all human relations are progressively (regressively) reduced to money--no money, no relations, no dignity, no property, no freedom, no life.

At the end of World War I, Max Weber, being one of the right-wing theoreticians, was paving the way for the emergence of Nazism and fascism in which, under the conditions of an acute crisis and last stage of capitalism, cash payment is being replaced by the "monopoly on violence," as the "bond" and "new essence" that takes place when the fiction and fiat of money dissolves.

If communism was based on the dictatorship of the party, which tried to be a vulgar form of the rule of the philosopher-kings, who were neither philosophers nor kings, capitalism is a dictatorship of money--dictatorship of tokens without which one's humanity is not recognized. As we see in Ukraine and elsewhere, capitalism in its today's late or last? form,is now trying to save itself through Nazification (hence the meaning of all these Maidans). And to do so, it tries to impose and enforce a monopoly on violence, even if it means doing so through proxies, such as ISIS or al Qaeda or other death squads turned into whole armies now, or by other formations the true allegiance of which is still partially denied, or through the expansion of NATO.

In this light, one cannot but conclude that the elites themselves, the world capitalist oligarchy is already busy not only preparing itself for a possible collapse of the capitalist system, but that it is even trying to direct and control the process.

But here is a link to the remarkable study by Dimitry Orlov itself:

http://www.resilience.org/stories/2006-12-04/closing-collapse-gap-ussr-was-better-prepared-collapse-us