The Man on the White Horse

The Economist's lead story last week concludes, "Though economic logic suggests that the world economy is just going through a sticky patch, squabbling politicians could all too easily turn it into a meltdown." Of course the squabbling politicians themselves are merely symptomatic of a larger structural problem with world capitalism, the perception that they are responsible for business's woes will tend now, as it did in the last two centuries, to promote Bonapartist politicians--centrist figures who promise to stand apart from the political fray and concentrate power in their own hands to get things done ... cut through the red tape ... etc. The capitalist war drive--itself a symptom of falling profit rates--reinforces the trend toward dictatorship. Classic Bonapartism--and its Stalinist variety, still reinforced by China--in turn prepares the way for fascism. The alternative, of course, is to expropriate the capitalists and thereby thwart their antidemocratic agenda.