Truth Out has the article Austerity vs. Keynesian “Growth” vs. Economic Democracy.

Keynesianism (expansionary state economic intervention) never was capitalists’ preferred policy for capitalism’s recurring recessions and depressions. Their Plan A was government borrowing to bail out major financial and other corporations followed by “austerity policies.” Austerity repays the costs of bailouts by siphoning money away from (cutting) government jobs and services. Only when anti-capitalist movements threaten from below, as in the 1930s, do anxious capitalists abandon Plan A and shift to Plan B – eventually formalized as Keynesianism. Via government spending, Keynesian policies claim credit for jobs and income “growth” and aim to keep political control away from anti-capitalist forces. Keynesianism’s dependence on radicals’ pressure from below explains its strength in the 1930s versus its weakness today.

More such rhetoric like this is needed to scare the 1% into adopting plan B.

Capitalism has its internal contradictions as pointed out in this article.  Socialism or “Democratic Capitalism” also has internal contradictions.

Any ism that tries to boil down human nature into a simple explanation is bound to have internal contradictions.  However, if the best we can manage is to go from one extreme to another, we may have to accept that this is part of human nature, too.

I don’t know if the author of the above article, Richard D Wolff Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, meant it as I have taken it, but that does not matter.  The article is still useful no matter how he intended it.

I have been saying since it happened that the fall of Communism would let loose all restraints on Capitalism.  This would eventually lead to the rise of some system to counter the bad effects of unrestrained Capitalism.  Too bad the Capitalists cannot see the obvious and put some restraints on themselves.  Has there ever been an example in history where people saw looming disaster and took action to head it off?