yeah
if capitalist paradise means public transport, the health service, education and generally everything else publically funded falling to pieces, while the rich get much richer (and let's be honest, it does) then yeah we're in a capitalist paradise

other good points i failed to use:
*dissent being criminalised, slowly
*having our government controlled by big business
*increasing world hunger and poverty
*and in amazing state of affairs, the daily mail writers and owners being allowed to live

You have taken Callinicos' words out of context. Callinicos, when he writes about the economy, always takes care to point out just how fragile the world system is, just how crisis-prone it is. The fact that you have to take one sentence and rip it out of context makes me wonder what your motives are. Are you one of those tedious SWP-haters, who think the most important thing for the left to do is to oppose other leftist groups it disagrees with? Or are you just being slightly silly?

last time I looked world stock markets have crashed back to Sept 11 levels, with more bad news coming next week .... Let us look down the road a few months --- those unemployment levels are going to go up, and you see our healthy-looking southern english service sector economy (because any prosperity around is pretty regionalized at the moment) is going to be in a little trouble. Mortgages will become unpayable, so houses will be lost to lenders, so prices will come down, and then all the weight of debt people have taken on over the last decade will really hurt. There is a bill to be paid for the party of the 1990s, and I promise you we are going to hurt.

it sounds vaguely odd, but The relative wealth of recent times doesnt come free; as the socialist jack london put it,'prosperity has to be paid for'.
if its any consolation, capitalism is inherently doomed to collapse from time to time, and whether it gets up again is enitrly up to the socialist movement. remember too that 'capitalism' has many strands, and not all are flourishing by any means; manufacturing is slumping, the stock market is liable to fall further, the property market is out of control ; usually, the various parts of capitalism conrtive to get along with each other, but sometimes the tension shows.