At a more directly political level, United States foreign policy elaborated a detailed strategy of how to exert damage control by way of rechanneling a popular uprising into acceptable parliamentary-capitalist constraints – as was done successfully in South Africa after the fall of apartheid regime, in Philippines after the fall of Marcos, in Indonesia after the fall of Suharto and elsewhere.
One side -- the "half good" side behind Prime Minister Zhu Rongji -- while stifling political freedom at home, wants to take the capitalist road, loosen economic constraints, do business with the U.S. and join the W.T.O.
The basis of Marcuse's critique is the instinctive psychological drives posited by Sigmund Freud (1856 1939); according to Marcuse, these drives express longings that cannot be satisfied from within the psychological constraints imposed by capitalist forms of social organization.
In 1991, CGIL, the biggest of three big union groups, adroitly abandoned its traditional goal of class struggle, adopting instead bargaining demands that were thought to be reasonable within the constraints of a capitalist economy, and seeking "co-determination" rather than confrontation.
(I would also argue that the economic constraints of the capitalist system make decisive climate action difficult if not impossible, but that's a separate article/book/life's work).
Genuine progress - when possible within the constraints of a liberal capitalist model - comes from solutions that are local, evidence-based and democratically accountable.
With the collapse of Communism, we abandoned the old millenarian utopian dreams and accepted the constraints of reality — that is, capitalist socioeconomic reality — with all its impossibilities.
The stated goal of the event, organized by the venture capitalist Sunil Paul, was to "demonstrate the impact of applying information technology to resource constraints".
They believe that the capitalist system can deal with all kinds of limitations, that technology, say, can easily overcome any constraints on growth posed by limited reserves of oil or other natural resources.
