John Cassidy in The Guardian:
Trump’s assault on the old global order is real. But in taking its measure, it’s necessary to look beyond the daily headlines and acknowledge that being in a state of crisis is nothing new to capitalism. It’s also important to note that, as Karl Marx wrote in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon: “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please.” Even would-be authoritarians who occupy the Oval Office have to operate in the social, economic and political environment that is bequeathed to them. In Trump’s case, the inheritance was one in which global capitalism was already suffering from a crisis of legitimacy.
Consider the decade before he was re-elected. In 2014, the global financial crisis and the Occupy Wall Street movement were fresh in the memory. The French economist Thomas Piketty appeared on bestseller lists around the world with his tome Capital in the Twenty-First Century, which highlighted income and wealth inequality. Bankers, billionaires and defenders of free market capitalism appeared to be on the defensive.
More here.
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