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I donl;t accept the 70's as terminator by any means; and you mention precisely the points I already touched on, the fact that at the time all talk of alternatives was irrevoicably related to the Cold War. The 1970's oil shocks were an ezxternal event, not one brought about purely by internal causes, and the environment is such that specualtion can now be conducted with the shadow of the Soviet Union looming over it all.

The oil shocks were still the end of the good times, though. I mean, the data's just sitting there; you can't pretend that they didn't happen just because Marx didn't predict them.

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(not that I would accept that "proper" communism was a "viable proiposition" in that set of circumstances).

People thought it was, which comes down to the same thing.

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Originally Posted by Zichao

The oil shocks were still the end of the good times, though. I mean, the data's just sitting there; you can't pretend that they didn't happen just because Marx didn't predict them.

Lol, didn't he? I'm merely pointing out that they were external factors, not ones brought about the internal contradictions of capitalism, and the difference is significant. And secondly, I mean that while the noil shocks were certainly sigfificant, they didn't interrupt the stable period that Western capitalism had enjoyed from the 1940's. Capitalism itself was basically stable and rode out the tempest pretty much unscathed.

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People thought it was, which comes down to the same thing.

In their perceptions, yes. I am merely pointing out that I am not oblige4d to agree with them, and that I don't.

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Lol, didn't he? I'm merely pointing out that they were external factors, not ones brought about the internal contradictions of capitalism, and the difference is significant. And secondly, I mean that while the noil shocks were certainly sigfificant, they didn't interrupt the stable period that Western capitalism had enjoyed from the 1940's. Capitalism itself was basically stable and rode out the tempest pretty much unscathed.

And because it doesn't fit in with your chosen theory, you're just going to ignore it.

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In their perceptions, yes. I am merely pointing out that I am not oblige4d to agree with them, and that I don't.

Well no, but the object of discussion is mass opinion, not whether you are right.

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Originally Posted by Zichao

And because it doesn't fit in with your chosen theory, you're just going to ignore it.

I have not ignored it at all, I have pointed out that its injection into this issue is irrelevant. I'm not obliged to take any old non-sequitur as if it were a cogent objection.

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Well no, but the object of discussion is mass opinion, not whether you are right.

Well yes, except that I was pointing out only my own opinion, in parenthesis at that.

Originally Posted by contracycle

I have not ignored it at all, I have pointed out that its injection into this issue is irrelevant. I'm not obliged to take any old non-sequitur as if it were a cogent objection.

Your basic argument is still "the current crisis is important because it fits the theory, the 70s oil shocks aren't because they don't".

Voices of the ancients – Bad Science

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Originally Posted by Zichao

Your basic argument is still "the current crisis is important because it fits the theory, the 70s oil shocks aren't because they don't".

No, in fact my argument is "the current crisis is important because it has challenged the ideological underpinnings of the system, and the oil shocks are not important because they didn't."

Nothing fuzzy there.

Originally Posted by contracycle

No, in fact my argument is "the current crisis is important because it has challenged the ideological underpinnings of the system, and the oil shocks are not important because they didn't."

Really?
I seem to remember the late 60s and 70s as being ideologically agitated (May 68, Summer of Love, anarchist/leftwing terrorism, mao collar shirts etc etc). And how could a RPG fan like you forget that the 80s, as a consequence of the crisis imposed to deal with the galloping inflation of the 70s, led to the emergence of the CyberPunk genre...

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The late 60's, yes. But that didn't carry over much into the 70's after the events of 68 died away without having much impact (and amid the evnts of the Prague Spring). There was nothing similar in the 70's; the very fact that there were forms of exemplary terrorism is itself proof that there was no sympathetic mass consciousness to be worked with. The 80's were the point at which freemarket fundamentalism really took off, in the persons of Thatcher and Reagan,when Keynes reputation was tarnished, and Globalisation became the new buzzword. So yes indeed, various forms of SF and other bits if the intelligentsia, as it were, correctly started running the scenario to its logical conclusion and warning against the direction of travel, but again that demonstrates not that there was a an anti-capitalist consciousness, but that there wasn't one.

Critiques of capitalism have only really gathered significant momentum, since 68, in the late 90's, and even that I think is putting things very generously. And they necessarily appears under the banner of anti-globalisation becuase the argument could only really be made that capitalism wasn't good for other people in the world, not that it was damaging to us. What we have now is a very different mood indeed.