The article provides a very good description of the current concentration of wealth that has been accelerating during the current neoliberal phase that characterizes capitalism into which the Empire has entered. However, Dolack overlooks one important point when he wrote in his opening paragraph about the motivation of greed:
Income re-distribution is always in the eye of the beholder, but never seen as such by those for whom more is never enough. The insatiable greed of financiers has reached the point where large corporations are now spending almost all profits on stock buybacks and dividends. And, despite that largesse, those companies are sitting on trillions of dollars in cash.It is not so much wealth that is worshiped by our masters, it is the power that is created by the acquisition of wealth. This is the real addiction that drives them on and on to accumulate ever greater amounts of wealth beyond which they could never spend.
Like any other hardcore addict, no moral or social considerations ever stand in their way of satisfying this addiction. Thus, wars, even global wars, never bother them--actually wars often end up producing more power/wealth for them. Extreme poverty doesn't bother them--except they regard it as visual pollution that they go to great lengths to avoid. It is precisely this insight that must drive us in the Ninety-Nine Percent to end the rule of this disastrous system and replace it with radical egalitarian societies. This is the only way we will prevent the coming catastrophes of climate destabilization and nuclear wars.
This insight is precisely why we shouldn't look to earlier forms of capitalist social development in which some mild forms of regulation were present. Capitalism is exactly like a cancer--it must grow or die. And we shouldn't look to our salvation in a "multi-polar" world where competing capitalist nations exist. Surely we have learned this from the horrendous experiences during the first half of the 20th century! While Russian and Chinese capitalists appear to be under the control of governments in their respective countries, how long can these benign relationships last? And, why should we see their social systems as something to be emulated?
