Wolff provides us with a brief history of capitalism as another class system that took over from the earlier class system under feudalism, and shows how the recent phase of globalization under capitalism has only increased the disparity between a tiny class of the rich amidst huge populations of the poor. His analysis leads to an interesting question:
Everywhere, those extremes provoked revolutions against feudalism that eventually yielded that system’s demise. Today’s extremes produced by a globalizing capitalism — Detroit versus San Francisco, Manhattan versus the Bronx, Germany versus Greece, China’s new billionaires versus many millions of poor workers and peasants — where might they be leading us?It appears to me that we activists and all humans will be spared the work of another major revolution because nature has had enough of our pollution. I am, of course, referring to the impending catastrophes awaiting us due to climate destabilization caused by our excessive burning of fossil fuels before we have a chance to turn things around.
