[getsmart-l] The shape of things to come

[23skidoo]

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/neil_clark/2007/08/the_shape_of_t...
<http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/neil_clark/2007/08/the_shape_of_things_
to_come.html>  

The shape of things to come 

Boorish Britons on the streets of eastern Europe are showing their hosts 
just where the turbo-capitalist road leads. 
==================== 
Yet, while education was communism's greatest achievement, it was also, as 
Mikhail Gorbachev conceded, its achilles heel. The high general level of 
education throughout the socialist bloc meant people were able to develop 
a critical faculty, which was then used to question the system. It is a 
great irony that intellectuals led the challenge to communism: the very 
fact that there were so many intellectuals, and such an air of 
intellectualism in society at large, was a direct consequence of the fact 
that the society set such a high store on education. There's little chance 
of today's turbo-capitalism making the same "mistake". 

What turbo-capitalism wants is not a cultured, well-educated working class 
whose members read Huxley, play chess and debate political issues, but 
materialistic, under-educated consumers: people who will unleash their 
frustrations at living such unfulfilled, alienated lives not through 
anti-capitalist agitation and questioning the structure of society but by 
getting "smashed" each and every weekend. 

As long as the new working class can adequately carry out their jobs, and 
buy the consumer goods that Nazi-style marketing techniques brainwash them 
into believing they must possess, turbo-capitalism is content. Concepts 
such as culture, education, and behaving well in public places do not come 
into it. 

 

 

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