The old capitalist economics that made America the world’s greatest superpower no longer exist.

I wonder if it ever did?

During the 40's America was on a war footing, followed by the Cold War then Vietnam. Eisenhower leaves office warning about a Military Industrial Complex, shortly afterwards Kennedy, a political outsider and threat to the status quo is assassinated. Less than ten years later the US goes off the international gold standard. Following that we have an era of wild swings in interest rates, deregulation of the financial system, and a series of government bailouts starting with Penn Central, Chrysler and Continental Illinois that takes us up to the present day.

Following an earlier world war, we have a housing bubble and stock mania that drives the nation to financial ruin, followed by a severe banking crisis, a confiscation of private gold, and the establishment of a virtual socialist state.

Further back we have an era of near perpetual financial crisis driven by excess speculation and insider dealings culminating in the establishment of the Federal Reserve.

Even further back we have an era of expansionism driven by railroad cartels operating under virtual monopoly via government land grants, and financed mainly by British banks. During this period we have a highly divisive civil war driven by a cartel of Northern Industrialists for control of the textile markets, while profiting handsomely from currency inflation and incident war expenditures.

Going right back to the beginning, we have an era of virtual genocide launched against the original inhabitants of the land, with what treaties that did exist routinely violated with no respect given to property rights, the very foundation of a capitalist society. We note in passing an era of slavery that began about this time and lasted 100 years.

So where in all of this do we find anything remotely resembling Capitalism, except in the Marxist sense of the word? I don't see it. Maybe it peeked out from under the covers once in a while, but the impulse was crushed as quickly back then as it is today.

People like to tell stories about themselves. They never cast themselves in a bad light, even though history, when read correctly, often does. Even the legendary Pilgrims of American Mythology started out as a a communal order who left the old world because it wasn't intolerant enough for them. Too much personal freedom. Not enough respect for religious authority. That was their driving principle. They only abandoned communism and adopted freeholding when faced with imminent starvation.

From a strictly materialist point of view, America owes its success to the fact that it started with a huge, largely uninhabited land base filled with natural resources, and protected on both sides by two great oceans. Anyone would have done well in those circumstances, it just happened that the Dutch and British, being seafaring nations, got there first.

ebear