While CNBC has seriously discredited the profession of economic prognostication, the London Financial Times is debating the future of capitalism and the Nation has a symposium on the (hypothetical) future of socialism.

Phil Mattera at Dirt Diggers Digest parses the capitalism piece, noting its attacks on unfettered markets, not to mention “naked greed, lax regulation, excessively loose monetary policy, fraudulent borrowing and managerial failure” — and a call to “stop the worship of money and create a more humane society.”  Mattera asks: “Did editorial copy intended for New Left Review mistakenly end up in the FT computers?”

He adds: “Following the damning critique of markets and poor government oversight, the last ones we should turn to for leadership are the powers that be. Yet that is exactly the group that dominates the list of those who, according to the editors of FT, will lead the way forward.”

Meanwhile at the Nation, Barbara Ehrenreich and Bill Fletcher Jr. suggest capitalism has “entered the death spiral,” and Immanuel Wallerstein spots a “structural crisis of capitalism as a world system” which he thinks faces “its certain demise in the next twenty to forty years.”  Tariq Ali, not so much.  “Capitalism is always faced with crises…It has failed many times before but has recovered…Its ability to adapt and survive should not be underestimated, even though it will do so, as before, at the expense of the majority it exploits.”

Fortunately, Wallerstein and Ali do agree that the social movements of Latin America present a promising model.  Wallerstein notes the Landless Workers Movement of Brazil, which supports reformer president Lula in elections but also maintains constant pressure on him.  Ali writes:  “The social movements in South America challenged deregulation and privatization more effectively than organized labor has done in North America or Western Europe.”

John Bellamy Foster points to Latin America and elsewhere for signs that “global resistance to the system” is growing. “If there is one place in this world ferment where mass dissent seems noticeably absent at the moment, it is in the United States, the epicenter of the global crisis. In my view, this is likely temporary. In the 1930s it took four years before the great revolt from below gained momentum.”

Rebecca Solnit urges recognition of an on-going “revolution that exists in little bits everywhere,” in thousands of local efforts “for gardens and childcare co-ops and bicycle lanes and farmers markets and countless ways do doing things differently and better….Enlarged and clarified, it could answer a lot of the urgent needs the depression brings.”

Of course, someone disagrees – Doug Henwood notes that while “very nice,” such projects aren’t “transformative” and don’t offer a model for “running a complex industrial society.”  We’d point out that the most very nicest thing about them is that they actually exist, and have mobilized many thousands of people.  All they’re waiting for is trainers from the Brazilian peasant movement to get them started seizing land.