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There are no longer any "forces that slow, then reverse the pendulum." This is because historical developments -- some of them without precedent -- have eliminated all such forces, not only now but quite probably forever. These developments include:
(1)-The collapse of the Soviet Union. The Communist Revolution of 1917 terrified capitalism into disguising the fact it is nothing more than the means of elevating infinite greed into ultimate virtue; thus capitalism was forced to assume a less-savage facade. The presence of the U.S.S.R. in the international equation -- no matter how imperfectly the Soviet Union fulfilled its own promise of economic democracy -- was a powerful and often effective obstruction to capitalist domination. Indeed the variously named KGB was without peer as a thorn in capitalism's side.
(2)-The destruction of the New Deal and the marginalization of all its advocates. The New Deal was unquestionably humanity's best reflection of the global influence of Marxism and thus the best possible response to the innate savagery of capitalism. The New Deal grafted the historical truth of class struggle onto U.S. constitutional principles, with official recognition of the paradox that capitalism is both intrinsically evil yet -- at this sad stage of human development -- nevertheless vital. But from the perspective of the capitalists themselves, the New Deal was as much an obstruction at home as the Soviet Union was abroad: hence the aborted capitalist/fascist coup of 1934 and all the subsequent domestic political history -- assassinations, scandals etc. -- leading to capitalism's ultimate achievement: the Bush Regime, the unifying purpose of which is to restore capitalism to all its original unlimited tyrannosauric savagery.
(3)-The lockstep control of mass media via corporate monopolies. Forty-five years ago, when I entered journalism, 90 percent of all U.S. newspapers were independently and locally owned, which meant U.S. journalism was as diversely opinioned as the population itself. Now nearly 98 percent of all U.S. media outlets -- print and broadcast alike -- are owned by fewer than a dozen monopolies, and these have interlocking boards of directors. Thus capitalism now speaks with a single infinitely greedy voice. The apparent variations in its message are merely illusions to prop up the delusion of democracy when in fact there is merely ever-more-obvious tyranny.
(4)-The deliberate dumbing-down of the U.S. citizenry by corporate-run public schools and academia. By any standard imaginable, no industrialized people on Earth are more pathetically ignorant -- and therefore no people on earth are more easily defrauded and manipulated.
(5)-The Big Reveal: now that most Americans are too zomboid-minded to think about it (see 2, 3 and 4 above), replacement of the Big Lie that "capitalism is merely an economic system" with the ever-more-obvious truth that the core ethos of the New World Order is governance of the entire planet as if it were a corporation. The corollary fact here is that "the global economy" is merely the newest euphemism for fascism -- fascism precisely as its founders described it: absolute rule by unapologetically tyrannical executives, total enslavement of all the rest of us. Think Wal-Mart on a global scale.
(6)-The longer-range implications of Peak Oil and global warming. The impending combined political, economic and technological collapse is without precedent in human history. For example when the Roman Empire collapsed, the characteristic horse-lever-pulley-oxen technology continued undiminished until it was replaced by the technologies of the Industrial Revolution; the characteristic post-Roman economy ran on of its own inertia until international trade was shut down by the Muslim invasions of the seventh and eighth centuries -- thus the economic motive behind the later Crusades, which in turn generated the economic impetus (including "surplus" wealth) for the Renaissance and thus too for the subsequent Industrial Revolution. NOTHING LIKE THIS CAN EVER HAPPEN AGAIN. Humanity has become so dependent upon petroleum that when the petro-economy dies, petro-technology (and petro-politics) will die with it. The BEST scenario projects the restoration of horse-and-buggy technology, including the end of flight forever and a wholesale return to steam and sail propulsion; the worst scenario projects a return (literally) to the stone age; both predict a human die-out (fostered by a combination of warfare, plague and starvation) more dire than anything in the planet’s history: reduction of the human population by as much as 90 percent. A collapse of this magnitude does not allow for any pendulum-swing: the last time around it ushered in a Dark Age that lasted nearly 1500 years -- a Dark Age that, based on the resurgence of theocracy, is in fact still continuing. This time -- with nothing like the rescue-technology provided by petroleum ever again even remotely possible -- the Dark Age will literally last forever: that is, until humanity itself becomes extinct. See also (8) below.
(7)-The re-emergence of tyrannosauric capitalism in all its innately fascist savagery is a wholly predictable response to the impending collapse summarized in (6). The ruling class intends to maintain its position no matter what. Even in the best of times, the only way it can accomplish this goal -- that is, the maintenance of profits and "growth" -- is by enslaving the rest of us. But now with genuine apocalypse just around the corner, the capitalists' intent becomes unapologetically brutal: hence (especially as a psychological preparation for the open restoration of slavery) the concept of "human capital," also the methodical concentration of wealth by various strategies both economic (outsourcing, downsizing, pension-theft) and political (destruction of what remains of the social safety net, refusal to spend money on public transport, deliberately genocidal measures like the Medicare Prescription Drug Lord Benefit). Hence too -- though far too late to be of any genuine help -- the greater-than-ever relevance of Marx, especially the historical truth of class struggle.
(8)-The re-emergence of theocracy as a primary mode of social control. Until the Industrial Revolution, Western Civilization suffered under an unbroken Dark Age of theocratic tyranny, 1,476 years of the unspeakable horror of absolute rule by Abrahamic religious authorities -- a climate of infinitely hateful misogynism and infinite oppression not a whit different from what we see in the Muslim world today -- this from the Edict of Milan (aka the Edict of Constantine) in 313AD until the American Revolution, which gave birth to the modern world's first deliberately secular state. Now humanity is backsliding into what is obviously an inescapable Dark Age state of oppression. Indeed, since the rigid hierarchy and limitless greed essential to capitalism were born of Abrahamic dogma -- "god's chosen people" whether Jewish, Christian, Islamic or economic; all of nature (including woman) as the property of “the chosen” to enslave or exploit at will -- it is only logical that capitalism would return to its source to facilitate maximum tyranny. Hence the bottomless corporate funding of Abrahamic Fundamentalism (whether Christian or Islamic) as the ultimate means of guaranteeing a population reduced to mindless zomboid compliance; hence too the why-factor underlying the overwhelming probability of an endless Dark Age.
(9)-The capture of the Democratic Party by the forces of capitalist tyranny means there is absolutely no hope for progressive change within the system See above, (2), "the marginalization of all (the New Deal's) advocates." Hence for example the Clinton Administration was as hateful to poor and disabled people as were the Republican administrations before and after it. This is the essence of the problem faced by U.S. progressives: the fact that we -- like the New Deal advocates -- are being marginalized to absolute powerlessness: a condition that promises to be everlasting precisely because of permanent and unbreakable capitalist control of mass media and public education.
(10)-The emergence of new and potentially everlasting technologies of oppression means there is no hope of liberation. Even in a climate of total collapse, government in service to capitalism will always maintain its ability to tyrannize its slave populations -- “slave population” in this instance meaning every one of us who is not part of the ruling class. Just as the collapse of the Soviet Union ended forever all hope of liberation from without, so does the advent of oppressive surveillance technology end forever all hope of liberation from within. As long as government exists to serve and protect the ruling class -- and under capitalism that is the ONLY purpose of government (a fact ever more obvious as the Bush Regime ignores its critics and concentrates its power) -- there will always be electricity to fuel the surveillance apparatus, even if the electricity has to be generated by slaves peddling bicycles, and there will always be the means of exterminating those of us who are dissidents. Thus the new technologies destroy not only any hope of self-liberation via a Marxist renaissance but -- in concert with theocracy -- also nullify every scintilla of the formerly near-infinite potential for liberation implicit in the resurrection of the symbol of the Great Goddess and the associated advent of ecofeminism and ecosocialism.
For these ten reasons alone -- and there are many others -- the pendulum theory of politics and governance is no longer valid.
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