The Larger Struggle

Last week, on June 14, David Brooks wrote a column to describe the struggle between democratic capitalism and state capitalism as to deflect the incovenient truth of the larger struggle around us. Although for David Brooks the larger struggle is about the type of capitalism, as he conveniently places together in the "evil" state capitalist systems those of Iran, China, Venezuela, and every other evil doer that he can remember. Surprise, surprise, he places BP and the Obama administration on the democratic side. By using some Shumpeter and "creative destruction" or by saying that Mobil Exxon is not as big and bad as we think, because there are worse out there as the state-owned energy companies. Brooks is really stretching in his argument because what the untappable hole in the middle of the ocean point to is the uncontrollable greed that drives capitalism and now threatens to drown all of us in oil. How ironic after a century of expansion, political intimidation and war over fossil fuels, we are about to be drowned in oil.

However, Brooks is right, there is a larger struggle over the loss of power and legitimacy of government everywhere: from the inability of the US government to stem this global environmental disaster, to the European governments being helpless to deal with the rating houses of Moodys and Standard & Poors, to the government of Kyrgyzstan, which fires live bullets upon its own people. The larger struggle Mr. Brooks is over governance in a global world where the imperative of the market is greater than imperative of regulation.