New Survey: Global Distrust of Capitalism. But Capitalism Can't Fix it.

I touched on this study in a previous posting. It was reported in the Wall Street Journal online today. The author talks about measuring trust or what What I would call, and perhaps others would also, the mood in society. And particularly the mood among the working class and youth.

The study is very revealing in that confidence in capitalism is extremely low, not just here in the US but throughout the world.  More than half of respondents globally, 56%, believe that "capitalism in its current form is now doing more harm than good in the world." the study finds. The study says that the wealthier and higher educated are far more trusting of capitalist institutions than the "mass population.". It also refers to this group as the "Informed public" and the "frequent consumers of news."  Well the "mass" also consumes news but the mass media is one thing and the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times or Business Week is another. The more serious journals of capitalism are much more open and honest about the system. They need this in order to govern and are aware workers in the main don't read these journals.

However I do not think it is so much consuming news that gives this wealthier crowd more confidence in the institutions of capitalism; it is their privileges and material conditions. They are more financially secure, better connected. Black folks are not more suspicious of the state and society than whites because they read different papers or watch different TV shows. Their social condition, personally and historically teaches them to be. In the last analysis, consciousness has a material base.

83% of employees say they fear losing their job. And there are paradoxes here: 79% percent Believe businesses should provide retraining for workers whose jobs are threatened by automation. And business is seen as the most competent of all of society's institutions, yet the study claims that less than one third of those polled  trust that business will do thees things.

I just read the study briefly and it appears that, like many of the political candidates this election cycle, the authors believe capitalism has to change. Ethics, honesty, fairness (pay fair wages) are the answer. This is all happening as the global crisis of capitalism is intensifying. US capitalism, once the undisputed global power after the collapse of Stalinism, is this crazed animal that has the power to blow the world to bits but is clearly losing its economic superiority with the rise of China and to a lesser extent Russia and India.

But capitalism is not and has never been fair. It is a ruthless, violent system of production, the most cursory glance at the history of capitalism teaches us this.

The figures here not only confirm the utter bankruptcy of the capitalist mode of production and its intellectual defenders, but also why we are seeing unprecedented movements of the working class internationally. US workers should not mourn; we will have our turn. When the US working class moves in to struggle in a major way, the present obsession with identity politics, a product of the absence of a vibrant and powerful working class movement on the one hand and the dominance of the left liberal petit bourgeois on the other, will not dominate the discourse as it does today or in the same way.