Some have suggested that Marx' prediction of the collapse of capitalism coming, and the subsequent rise of egalitarian communist land. Others have suggested that the collapse of capitalism may never come because it's taking so long.
We don't need the Oppressed People's Front to revolt and destroy capitalism, the 1% has already done an outstanding job destroying the free market and establishing a communist-style command-and-control economy. Capitalism, communism, all the -ologies and -isms have already failed, or not so much failed as simply always been moot when the rubber hits the road of human psychology and human history. When Russia switched sides, the perogies didn't get any better, the vodka still got them just as drunk, and the KGB, the oligarch networks of the Soviet Union still ran everything; only thing that changed was their marketing slogans. China is communo-capitalist by any account, but ultimately are still run by the same chain of Oligarchy. The US leans a little more towards Smith but as we all know, we have a monopolistic corporatist unification of government and business blurring into yet another incestual plutarchy of winner-take all banks and megacorps, thinly papered over by this mockery of capitalism called "choose Coke or Pepsi" (democracy facade is "Democrat or Republican"). Listening to debates about whether communism or capitalism is better/worse, which one is coming/going is like listening to CNN or Fox News talk about which giant bank needs to be "shored up" today; it's all a distraction from the fact that everything is and has been engineered in advance by the White Shoe Club from the subprime bubble to the collapse of Greece to the legislative and executive branches who make their preferred laws/decisions to the price of gas or dollars or rice or silver/gold, all for their benefit, and then post-facto we're mindwashed to believe it's happening via "the invisible hand" and "by for and of the people". It's just one giant scam being run by the cartel which pays the salaries of all those media outlets. We're just law-of-the-jungle barbarians prancing around in our -isms, our "Enlightenment" dissertation pipe dreams, sorting out the chimp pecking-order with penthouses and yachts instead of chest-beating. Waiting for capitalism to "collapse" is like waiting for Disneyland to "collapse". Fairytales and myths can't collapse, they can only be perpetuated to hold onto power and make a few billions.
Even if everything collapses and some new "system" is "installed", (which I doubt anything so organized will occur, rather a haphazard, chaotic decay and simulataneous rise of "shadow economic" forces) whatever new fad utopia it is will not substantially change the underlying problems that arise from million and billion+ groups of Homo Sapiens, namely inequality, violence, ignorance, and maintenance of control of the few over the many will persist.* Talking and blogging heads will get on smartscreens proclaiming the rise of next-genism, the new "system" replacing capitalism, and how great it's working. Facebook and Google will sell next-genism t-shirts, what remains of budget-gutted universities will churn out whole Amazon forests worth of paper on the merits and non-merits of next-genism thought. Ben Bernanke will tell us that in order to ensure survival of the next-genist system, we need to print 30 trillion more US dollars. Bank CEOs will demand bailouts or the next genism world will collapse. All the while, McDoubles will taste the same, iPads will still waste everyone' time, the rich will keep making sure they get richer, and the poor will keep getting exploited while jacked on drugs or netflix or Call of Duty.
Paradoxically, I think the change will be towards *real* free-markets (and let's not forget that markets are emergent phenomena as old as neolithics trading mongongo nuts for pteradactyl gizards, older than capitalism or any egghead's thesis) AND communities, which are currently beginning to develop organically in the 11 trillion+ "shadow economy" and through the rise of local, resilient, and sustainable self-sustaining communities -- as the gothic edifice of the dinosarchy (rule by gigantic, old, dying intitutions and individuals) begins to crumble leaving people without basic necessities like hospitals, food, police, electricity, etc. Love thy neighbor, distrust thy neighbor's Big Organization. That's what unites the Ron Paul Jeffersonians and the Ghandi hippie Naderists and the everyday Joe fireman who just knows he can't afford to get his broken tibia set, house is gone, and wife has left him for a JP Morgan accounting officer, who participate in Occupy and other movements like it. It's why hundreds of thousands of Americans are sliding out of the termite-eaten, gothic necropolis of conventional civilization, an exodus from Ponzi cartel world into intentional tent cities full of hydroponic carrots and free community health care. It's called "the invisible boot" of necessity.
Call it Libertarian-Communityism. :D
*Only possible caveat is if we start gaining some traction down the path of transhumanism and begin to rewire our own evolutionary programming to alter our value and habit systems. But a whole 'nother can of Pandora's Boxes lies down that road.
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