Capitalism and Marxism in The Bakken

I was not going to post this story. Don sent me three stories this morning and I have posted two of the three. I had not planned to post this one, the third. It was a "human interest" story, a "dog-bites-man" story, and I was rushed to move on to other stories.

But then, the story struck a chord, especially in light of my reading (almost finishing) David Graeber's Debt: The First 5,000 Years, c. 2011.

I have posted a few passages from that book in earlier posts, so regular readers will know what I'm talking about. "Surf-by" readers won't care.

But the following from the story in The Dickinson Press would warm the cockles of David Graeber's heart.

Pomerleau, a Richfield, Minn., native, lives in one of eight apartments the school district owns to provide affordable housing for teachers.

While most two-bedroom apartments rent for $2,500 a month in Williston, Pomerleau and her roommate, a first-year math teacher from Chicago, share rent of $850.

The teachers who live in the apartments support each other and have game nights and social activities as a group.

“It’s a community feeling,” said Pomerleau, 23. “It’s a great place to start out.”

I think it's a wonderful story. Good for Williston. Good for the school district. 

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A Note To The Granddaughters

This is what I wrote last night. In view of the story above, I may pick a different passage from David Graeber's book for this note. We'll see. For now, the note below was written independently of the story above; do not link the two.

David Graeber is moving faster now. It seems in just a few pages we have moved from the Medieval Ages to the Tulip Bubbles to the bubble of 2008. One can feel the energy, the angst, or maybe it's Stevie Nicks and Rhiannon in the background. So, at page 357 of 391 pages of narrative; reaching a tipping point; the climax as it were ...

If there's something to be learned here ... Capitalism is a system that enshrines the gambler as an essential part of its operation, in away that no other [system] ever has; yet at the same time, capitalism seems to be uniquely incapable of its own eternity. [Wow!]
I should be more precise here. It's not entirely true that capitalism is incapable of conceiving of its own eternity. On the one hand, its exponents do often feel obliged to present it as eternal, because they insist that it is the only possible viable economic system: one that, as they still sometimes like to say, "has existed for five thousand years and will exist for five thousand more."

On the other hand, it does seem that the moment a significant portion of the population begins to actually believe this, and particularly, starts treating credit institutions as if they really will be around forever, everything goes haywire.

.........

Much of this seems to turn on the nature of national deficits and credit money. The national debt is, as politicians have complained practically since these things first appeared, money borrowed from future generations. Still, the effects have always been strangely double-edged. On the one hand, deficit spending is a way of putting even more military power in the hands of princes, generals, and politicians; on the other, it suggests that government owes something to those it governs.

.........

One could go further: the moment that the fear of imminent social revolution no longer seemed plausible, by the end of World War II, we were immediately presented with the specter of nuclear holocaust. Then, when that no longer seemed plausible, we discovered global warming. This is not to say that these threats were not, and are not, real. Yet it does seem strange that capitalism feels the constant need to imagine, or to actually manufacture, the means of its own imminent extinction. It's in dramatic contrast to the behavior of the leaders of socialist regimes, from Cuba to Albania, who, when they came to power, immediately began acting as if their system would be around forever -- ironically enough, considering they in fact turned out to be something of an historical blip.

Perhaps the reason is because what was true in 1710 is still true. Presented with the prospect of its own eternity, capitalism -- or anyway, financial capitalism -- simply explodes.