This is in the same neighbourhood of the city as the previous post. Timothy Garton Ash has a piece on the global future in today's Guardian. It contains what appears to my eye as an interesting, if forgivable, vagueness.
The first part of the article is devoted to establishing a central reality of the present, 'the global triumph of capitalism'. Everyone, Garton Ash says, is now doing it, and he goes on to back that up with supporting detail. Then he poses the question which his preamble has led the reader to expect:
Does this lack of any clear ideological alternative mean that capitalism is secure for years to come?Far from it, he says, because there are new threats to its future. However, when you examine what these are, you find just two types of very broad indication: one, some version of disaster, economic or environmental; two, acute political discontent in the face of the need for reshaped priorities, and the question whether this necessary change in priorities can be successfully accomplished.
What is interesting to me is that the future Garton Ash presents is: either, at the extreme point, a social blank (like 'barbarism' in the classic Luxemburgist formula 'socialism or barbarism', or else a change of priorities for the better but not spelled out in any detail as a societal model); or, nearer in so to say, it's just capitalism in an unstable, conflict-ridden condition. One way or another, there's no expressible alternative to capitalism.
Mapping out alternative futures, rendering them thinkable, is a difficulty not only for those of us who hope there is an alternative to capitalism.