Self-fulfilling Prophecy (tags)
The orchestrators of this global coup must be credited with a certain sadistic brilliance. Their sleight of hand succeeded, perhaps even beyond expectations. However, any power aiming at totalization is destined to fail, and this applies also to the high priests of the Covid religion and the institutional puppets they have mobilized to roll out the psyop.
A Phuilosopher's Critique (tags)
Because the declining middle classes are unable to see past individualism and economic self-interest, they stick with the fantasy that any loss of purchasing power is a temporary glitch awaiting systemic resolution – as if Capital were an eternal and inexhaustible mode of wealth creation.
The indispensable opponent (tags)
The West's hostility towards China has increased since China's engine began to stutter. At the same time, the US government is pumping massive amounts of money into the economy and has thus been able to prevent an impending recession for the time being, but is far from regaining its former role as a global engine of growth.
Instrumental Reason and Left Politics (tags)
In the neoliberal variant of capitalism, postmodern pluralism dominates and with it a reason that is no longer trusted to understand the whole.. For instrumental reason, the actual world is always the best of all possible worlds since the question of a better world cannot arise in it. No problem arises that makes another, not yet existing world necessary or desirable.
The Looming War Against China (tags)
In the United States, in the wake of Ronald Reagan's tax cuts for the wealthy & state-undermining deregulation, & Bill Clinton's "Third Way" takeover by Wall Street, there was an equally devastating shift of wealth & income to the finance, insurance & real estate (FIRE) sector. The "Third Way" was financial capitalism that made its profits by exploiting & indebting industry and labor.
Thinking the disruption (tags)
In capitalism, everyone hopes for salvation as "preservation of naked life", not as liberation and overcoming of the conditions. In any case, we have little left of messianic freedom, which is constituted under its own, non-prescribed rules. The god of capitalism will not save us, the world, or humanity.
Capitalism as Mental Illness (tags)
As to the stress mechanism, Adam Smith supplied that with his theory of “selfish interest” providing collective benefit. And while it’s inarguable that being forced to compete in a self reinforcing and ever accelerating rat race has provided us with many industrial and technological milestones, we must ask ourselves: at what cost? The fracture of social cohesion?
Zombie movies are an apocalyptic genre, in which there is an inkling that the given social order cannot last & has reached its development limits. The first great wave of zombies hit the Western culture industry during the crisis period of the seventies of the 20th century, when the "Golden Age" of post-war capitalism, full employment and mass consumption came to an end.
Social doctrine versus sacred market (tags)
In his new work "Out of Ego-Capitalism", the development economist &consultant at the UN Organization for World Trade and Development Patrick Kaczmarczyk takes a path of capitalism criticism. Referring to Christian social teaching, he attacks the "belief in the blessing of the sacred market," which goes hand in hand with the "individualization of problems."
African socialism & the common good economy are discussed. In view of the problems we face in our society today, triggered by the striving for power of the elites leading to social inequality, environmental destruction & corporate greed, there are good reasons to practice the common good economy as an alternative & sustainable economic model more strongly worldwide.
Authoritarian Capitalism (tags)
The banks and auto corporations were bailed out and rescued and the ensuing public debt was invoked in order to cut public expenditures on health care, education, pensions, and public salaries. Furthermore, a new race to the bottom has started.
The Seven Loose Pieces of the Global Jigsaw Puzzle (tags)
Toward the end of the Cold War, capitalism created a military horror: the neutron bomb, a weapon that destroys life while leaving buildings intact. During the Fourth World War, however, a new wonder has been discovered: the financial bomb.This new bomb destroys the polis (nation)
Senile Economics: Bubble Ontology and the Pull of Gravity (tags)
The entire banking system is closing in on folding, which is why it so desperately needs new inflationary liquidity to keep afloat. The Great Reset is our owners’ authoritarian attempt to respond to this systemic threat by taking control of the collateral (our lives).
The contradictory capitalist mode of production is thus not only the driving force[11] behind the mounting debt and economic crises,[12] it is also the cause of the unfolding climate catastrophe. “Man-made” climate change is in large part the result of the social system.
Pause for Thought: Money without Value in a Rapidly Disintegrating World (tags)
The tanking economy is the cause of these “misfortunes”. What we are sold as external threats is in fact the ideological projection of the internal limit of capitalist modernity. In systemic terms, emergency addiction keeps the comatose body of capitalism artificially alive
"One must expect a tsunami of global inflation, further impoverishment and mass migration (of cheap labor) - and all of this will be blamed on Putin. One must expect the return of pandemic threats that support ongoing efforts to globalize vaccine passports and the digitization of life."
Battle for Social Democracy and Unfettered Capitalism (tags)
Two opposing schools of thought face each other at the sickbed: neoliberalism and social democracy. Didn't the death-bells of neoliberals ring in the course of the financial market crisis? Were not neoliberals unmasked who first caused the whole mess with their deregulation?
Farewell to the unipolar world and Disaster capitalism (tags)
The sanctions have already proved to be a dangerous boomerang because they hit Europe harder than Russia... It is a suicidal illusion to try to win a war against the raw materials giant Russia - which possesses more than a third of all fossil energies and raw materials on earth...
Against the cannabilism of capital (tags)
Spiral downward and No exit! (tags)
The austerity dictates imposed on the Eurozone are only exacerbating the crisis they are supposed to be fighting. The austerity measures are leading to a collapse in domestic demand.
Total Competition or Repressive Administration of People (tags)
An awareness of the monstrosities of our glorious capitalist society is the first prerequisite for thinking beyond that society.:..The regularities of capitalist society are not laws of nature, so they can be abolished in principle. With such abolition, a new society can become possible.
Making yourself comfortable in capitalism (tags)
"Whoever has a wife should behave as if he had none, ... whoever buys as if he were not the owner, whoever makes use of the world as if he did not use it" (1 Cor 7:29f). Paul is speaking here to people who were "called" as slaves into the messianic church (1 Cor 7:21).
Degrowth - not just Green New Deals! (tags)
We live in a time of many and accelerating crises. Climate breakdown is breathing down our neck. Biodiversity is collapsing in ecosystems around the world, and many natural safety nets – water cycles, soil fertility, fish stocks, microbial diversity – are unraveling.
Myths of the Crisis and Enemy Images in the Media (tags)
The Ukrainian ambassador was quoted in the FAZ as saying: "All Russians are now our enemies". This rhetoric is classic enemy image cultivation... This homogenization is so pre-Enlightenment and always wrong.
Paraphysique du capitalisme (tags)
Toutes les fractions du capitalisme...
Capitalism In The Meat Industry Etc (tags)
Corruption in the animal agriculture industries as well as in arms sales, radio and tv licenses, animal researc etc.
Labor fetish and anti-semitism (tags)
"Work makes you free" was written above the gate of the Auschwitz death camp. How did the Nazis come up with that? Isn't work something meaningful, something good? What does it have to do with Auschwitz, of all places? Because work and meaningful activity are, two different things.
Interview on The Black Book of Capitalism (tags)
The book is: 1) a history of the three great industrial revolutions (introduction of the manufacturing system with the steam engine at the beginning of the 19th century, Fordist “self-mobilization” with the assembly line and the rationalization and the microelectronic revolution.
La communication aliénée (tags)
Le capitalisme est une monstruosité...
Capital is losing its capacity for productive investment and is turning to the financial markets, which are more profitable. It is with this money that the war machine and the trade deficit are financed. The US is under great pressure to constantly show that it is in control.
System Transformation or Barbarism (tags)
Overcoming capital is thus a necessity for survival. Consequently, the climate question is not a question of burden sharing, it is not a question of social security. The global exploitation process of capital, in which resources and energy are burned to make more money...
The Endgame of Capitalism (tags)
I develop a positive vision for a system change in part four. Before that, however, the question is raised how the corporations envision the system change: Their way of wanting to preserve their power after the inevitable collapse of the Ponzi-scheme of financial capitalism is a transition from free-market capitalism to feudalism.
Capitalist crisis policy is ultimately in a crisis trap... The central banks' billion-dollar "quantitative easing" may have prevented the collapse of the world financial system in 2020, but it is only a postponement of the crisis.
Is Green Growth the Solution? (tags)
Just as every millimeter of social progress must be fought for against capital interests, the protection of nature and climate must also be won against the rulers. In these struggles lies the future of the planet.
Capitalist dilemmas and The Greed for More (tags)
The overexploitation of nature did not remain without resistance. However, these were ignored by both the left and the right. The "requirements of shipping and agriculture" destroy original functions of the floodplain landscapes. "And if solutions within the system are so impossible to find,maybe we should change the system"
How to desublimate repressive? (tags)
Love is the gate to eternity, but what if a process of sexual liberation could save the status quo of existing ruling structures?
The Endgame of Capitalism: Introduction (tags)
This economic system is permanently out of joint. Interest rates have been virtually zero for over a decade, despite the fact that many consider interest a considered a cornerstone of the capitalist system. The central banks are pumping money into the system on an unprecedented scale, but this is not resulting in inflation.
Workout. The Crisis of Labor and the Limits of Capitalist Society (tags)
The Third Industrial Revolution represents a qualitative break in the history of productivity growth. This is because microelectronics facilitated a radical reorganization in production overall such that labor lost the central importance that it previously had and the application of knowledge became the main force.
The present crisis means that, to a degree previously undreamt of, ever-greater numbers of human beings will simply be declared “superfluous.” The much-invoked “new role of the state” has not the slightest chance of recreating a 1960s style social welfare capitalism, with full employment and a rising standard of living.
Capitalism as the religion of indebtedness and debt (tags)
In capitalism, the fundamental social relation is neither exchange nor production. Rather, it is debt that dominates and supersedes every other way of recognizing and valorizing the measure between people. Those who have money are creditworthy, manifesting the sign of God's grace.
Capitalism is not natural (tags)
Political programs in the 20th century, then, were meant to create equality, not merely alleviate poverty. How we live collectively, what we value as a society, and how we want to conceive of ourselves - all these questions were politicized by these programs...
Criminal banks and criminal capitalism (tags)
Since the 1970s, the real economy and the financial economy have been increasingly diverging. Gigantic assets vagabond around the globe, desperately looking for profitable investment opportunities.
Shrinkage means the voluntary downsizing of the national economy, including a reduction in gross domestic product. "Voluntary" here indicates a preference for voluntaristic solutions - though not as individualistic and unplanned where well-to-do opt out of the consumerist market model.
Alternatives to capitalism: Buen vivir (tags)
Capitalism is seen primarily as a system of institutional and racist oppression, and it implies a way of life that sees nature only as a raw material to be exploited. The claim is thus to break with the capitalist mode of production and life in order to create "other forms of life."
Our World is Not For Sale! (tags)
People's Global Action (PGA) was organized in a decentralized way by movements from all parts of the world. But we had no staff and no fixed funding. Everything was through crowdfunding. People were inspired by what PGA stood for, which was, first, the rejection of capitalism.
What does socialism mean in the 21st century? (tags)
"Socialism" should be much more than a mere buzzword. In light of the fact that current capitalism is in the process of destroying our planet and our prospects for a free, democratic, and good life, "socialism" must become a genuine systemic alternative.
Amazon's Meteoric Rise in World Capitalism (tags)
Amazon's meteoric rise is, in our view, a key moment in global capitalism. The company's rise to power reflects the increasing influence of neoliberal politics and corporate power in general. It represents a major shift in the global political economy, what we call Amazon capitalism.
Post-democratic Capitalism (tags)
The fact that money can buy political influence is a central problem for democracy. All citizens are equal in terms of their voting rights, but not in terms of their wealth - this is one of the great unsolved challenges of liberal systems of government.
Saving the planet by disempowering the elites (tags)
Humanity is at the final crossroads of becoming aware of the drama of the ecological and peace crisis in which it finds itself. The book "The Eco-Catastrophe" is a wake-up call to take note of the seriousness of the situation, to accept the Herculean tasks ahead, to understand the growth ideology of global capitalism.
Life Lies of the Islands of Prosperity (tags)
The embarrassing secret of the 'Western' model of society and development is that it only works under very specific political and economic, ecological and social conditions. Preconditions that lie essentially outside this model and are hidden or made invisible by the social actors of its glorifying preservation. '
Why capitalism compels renunciation and we could work less (tags)
How much human and natural resources are squandered on taxation, trade and advertising, how much on labor administration, justice, police, prisons, armaments, military? How many people work overtime without end, suffer heart attacks and burnout, wear themselves out in the brutal competition?
Many Crises-One System: Counter Power in Catastrophe Capitalism (tags)
A revolution does not come out of nowhere, but emerges from the struggles in the here and now. The point is that we can only fight for social or ecological progress against capitalist principles.
The discussion about Corona (tags)
Corona can only become a kairos if we gain the theoretical capacity of recovery and create the conditions for a transformation. Taking the healthcare system away from the markets and obliging large companies to be oriented in the common good would be steps to infrastructure socialism.
Behavior and body in the sights of capital (tags)
The proclamation of states of emergency in the spring of 2020, even if not in all countries, helped to consolidate a state crisis management system that overturned constitutions and now completely bypassed democratic decision-making processes.
When Wealth Destroys Wealth: Inverse Capitalism and its Limits (tags)
Ever-increasing real estate prices was an illusion. The boom that the US stock markets have experienced in recent years deserves the name fracking boom. Fictitious capital put the US economy back on the growth track.
Capitalism, Coronavirus and the Road to Extinction (tags)
The only way to ‘re-embed’ our economies and save our lives from ecological collapse is by intervening in the very heart of the beast: land and human beings need to be taken out of the market. The beast is not tameable; it needs to be killed.
The economy for faith healers (tags)
Due to the sharpening contradictions of late capitalist socialization, barbarism, not reason, is increasing. Reason is not advancing in the overall historical movement, as once postulated by Hegel. Only the overcoming of this false whole, would offer humankind a chance of survival.
Disease, Power and Capitalism (tags)
Have you tried DeepL.com, academia.edu, grin.com or grammarly.com? Send me your comments and/or discoveries - as we await the reopening of the libraries and the Biden landslide! Will the great comedian Stephan Colbert be the dark horse candidate?
Corona and the collapse of modernization (tags)
Corona is the trigger but not the cause of the worsening crisis situation. It will accelerate the disintegration of capitalism. Pragmatism and cooperation on an international scale are called for. Infrastructure socialism takes health care from the market and insists on the common good
Corona, capitalism and nature (tags)
"Radical reforms are needed. The policies of the last forty years must be reversed. The government must play a stronger role in the economy. It must no longer regard public services as costs but as investments. Redistribution is back on the agenda."
against the pandemic of capital, social revolution! (tags)
The state measures justified by the coronavirus are a qualitative leap, decisive and homogeneous, in the global counter–insurrection and in the bourgeois intentions to attempt to initiate a new cycle of the accumulation of capital. And in the face of this war the proletariat only has two paths: to sacrifice their lives in it or to oppose themselves to it in order to defend their human needs.
"We do not live in capitalism" (tags)
After the transition to Atlantic turbo-capitgalism, little can be recognized from the earlier times of the initiatives of the social market economy. In this situation, the counter-factual and fact-immune creed of all conservatives is enmeshed in a deep unconsciousness about the world.
On the Power of Money: Three by Eugen Drewermann (tags)
Only faith (as in a religion), the "invisible hand," the "law" of the "free" market can judge everything. State interventions can only be annoying. The market itself is allegedly "social". Everyone acts according to his advantage. The system is not social but criminal and unjust.
Make Social Democracy Great Again (tags)
Erik Olin Wright spoke of smashing, taming, escaping and eroding capitalism as alternatives of the transformational left. We must resist the "selective perception" of the elite that ignores market distortions, market failures, state failures, and the attack on the poor, seniors and students
How Misguided Financial Policy Strengthens the Right-Wing (tags)
Capitalism has shown how democratic processes can be easily evaded. The Chicago boys carried out their radical reform program that was known as shock therapy. This included dismantling social state structures, opening the market to foreign investors and shattering unions
From Ayn Rand to Paul Ryan: Capitalism as Morality (tags)
Society doesn't play any role in Ayn Rand's perspective. Rand reduced persons to the bourgeois who only thinks in economic categories and only needs to respect himself and no one else - unlike the citizen engaged in society and actively championing enlightenment.
Karl Polanyi on Unfettered Capitalism (tags)
Karl Polanyi condemned profit greed and deregulated markets. Today's capitalism critics are his heirs and don't know it. An unfettered capitalism is responsible for the world coming out of joint. "Finance capital was put in the driver's seat."
"We Gotta Get Out of this Place" (tags)
"Bourgeois theorists have always believed capitalism to be “everlasting” because, they claim, it is in accordance with “human nature.” For them, all crises are only cyclical and transient:" This interview is from www.exit-online.org, 2/23/2016
Utopia, Technology and Struggle. Ways out of the Crisis of Social Democracy (tags)
The big question is still open. Must an emancipatory project aim at a changed distribution of incomes or is hedging capitalism through regulation and redistribution enough? In other words, is shifting to an eco-Keynesian path sufficient to create equal life chances?
Market Economy: The Superrich Endanger Democracy (tags)
It is easy to influence politics with a lot of money, and civil society is often just a nuisance. In the US, this problem is everywhere, but Europe is catching up.
From Enlightenment to Counter-Enlightenment (tags)
Brilliant minds elevated "the market" into a "higher being" of the post-modern age to which we must submit. The primacy of the market replaced the primacy of politics. Dr. Schulmeister is an economic researcher in Vienna whose latest book is "The Road to Prosperity" (2019).
Please Disrupt Capitalism! and The Return of Hope (tags)
The old quotation from Gramsci describes our plight: "The old dies and the new cannot come into the world. It is the time of the monster." The Good News is that the time of no alternatives is over. The Bad News is that the wrong alternatives and discussed.
Please Disrupt Capitalism! and The Return of Hope (tags)
The old quotation from Gramsci describes our plight: "The old dies and the new cannot come into the world. It is the time of the monster." The Good News is that the time of no alternatives is over. The Bad News is that the wrong alternatives are discussed.
Capitalism and democracy: what if we have it backwards? (tags)
Surveillance Capitalism on Democracy Now (tags)
Must watch short video about how the big websites operate.
"Capitalism will make migrants out of all citizens" (tags)
No one speaks about the right to be deeply rooted in one's country and not to be uprooted by global capitalism. In reality, the elite is demophobic. That means, it hates people and democracy. We must be populist and not elitist today, democratic and not demophobic.
What are the Alternatives to Neoliberal Globalization? (tags)
Capitalism seemed to have a more social or civilized face for a time. After Roosevelt's New Deal and the defeat of fascism, gradual development of the social state occurred in Europe. Unions were accepted. The rulers were forced to political and social concessions.
The Populist Makers and Dangerous Optimism (tags)
The people vote and capital decides. Another capitalism appears that is marked by an anti-liberal and intolerant culture. The goal of the new capitalists is the same as the old capitalists: to make the rich even richer. The governing elites gamble away the future of coming generations.
Paraphysique de proxémie guerrière (tags)
Le capital peut tout récupérer et l'adapter...
Finance Capitalism and the Digital Economy (tags)
The financialization of the economy and the rise of the commercial Internet are directly connected... At the beginning of the digital economy, as Marianna Mazzucato and others showed, was an investing state that took over the installment financing for digitalization.
Crisis Regulation in Global Capitalism (tags)
The globalization euphoria waned with the 1997 Asian crisis. Hundreds of billions were needed to bailout bankrupt banks. The US with its high solvent demand stabilized the world economy for a long time. The US could become indebted in its own currency.
Post-capitalist Perspectives (tags)
Capitalism is winning to death. The exit from the overheated machine of capitalism represents an enormous challenge. We cannot avoid the question about common property in the search for alternatives.Can greater social equality be achieved without changing property relations?
Against Market Radicalism (tags)
Capitalism is not "the end of history" as the American Francis Fukuyama postulated in 1992. The system question is open! The economy should be re-embedded in society. What seems rational in microeconomics collides with the irrationality of maximum profits as en end-in-itself
Social Policy as Social Infrastructure (tags)
Work and income must be uncoupled. In Germany, thanks to higher productivity and information technology, 30% more was produced from 1970-2010 with 30% fewer workers. Demonizing China will not resuscitate the Rust Belt. Social policy is crucial.
Authoritarian Capitalism and Digital Demagogue (tags)
Trump is not an individual phenomenon but one of many structural manifestations of the sudden change of neoliberalism into authoritarian capitalism.
Work and Digitalization and A Corpse Governs Society (tags)
On the 2018 Day of Labor, many were worried. No one can deny digitalization affects work. Artificial intelligence greatly changes professions and whole branches. Well-paid jobs become scarcer. Rebuilding the social state seems necessary. Capitalism's blind flight through history is ending.
The systemic reasons for the crisis are more important than a sudden fall in prices. Stocks are held on average 22 seconds, not 6 months or ten years. Real-capitalism is a plus-sum game. Financial capitalism is a zero-sum game.
The Shortwave Report 03/09/18 Listen Globally! (tags)
A weekly 30 minute review of international news and opinion, recorded from a shortwave radio and the internet. With times, frequencies, and websites for listening at home. 3 files- Highest quality broadcast, regular broadcast, and slow-modem streaming. Spanish National Radio, Sputnik Radio, Radio Havana Cuba, and NHK Japan.
Authoritarian Capitalism (tags)
Phenomena like Trump and the new nationalisms confirm the actuality of the theory of the authoritarian personality articulated by Wilhelm Reich, Erich Fromm, and Theodor Adorno. By their structure, capitalist social media encourage narcissism and are not social media
"We live in an unstable world, and the instability is going to increase. it is a world where a billion people feel hungry everyday, and the hunger is going to increase. In mid 2007, a number of banks suddenly discovered they could not balance their books and stopped lending..."
The Future as Transformation (tags)
There is no future with present-day capitalism. Capitalism stands for a movement of endless profit-making. Only a radical breach with the capitalist accumulation dynamic can nurture the hope of a reasonably tolerable future for human civilization on this planet.
Capitalism Criticism 2.0 (tags)
"Capitalism contains crisis as rain clouds contain rain" (Jean Juares, 19th century socialist). Profits increase in the neoliberal model, not investment (Nicolas Krowall). The competitive pressure drives businessmen to reduce investments in labor and wages.
Slavery as a Human Right (tags)
Slavery lives in modern forms like debt slavery. Capitalist society stands in opposition to human rights and does not only realize human rights. Capitalism cannot realize essential demands from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The Welfare State in Crisis (tags)
Since 2008, crisis was the defining political theme. "No one should be fooled about the majority will of the population regarding taming wiled finance capitalism. The system could only be bailed out from collapse with taxpayer guarantees." (Habermas 2010).
Trump is More than "Silly Tricks" (tags)
Trump will run the US as a big business is run. Trump did not come out of nowhere. Trumpism is an expression of a reactionary revolt of those angry because they were politically stripped of power. Trump turns reality upside down.
Demonstrates how capitalism works using the board game Monopoly as an example. CC-BY-NC-SA
Limits to Growth Published Forty Years Ago (tags)
The MIT scholars under Dennis Meadows came to four core conclusions: 1) there are limits to economic growth on finite planet, 2) the economy and population are growing exponentially, 3) exceeding limits will lead to collapse and 4) collapse could be avoided by turning from growth
Capitalism as Regressive Descent Society (tags)
The escalator is going down and no longer up as in the "social modern age." The social trend drives toward precariousness and the accompanying social descent. Social institutions and securities are being cleared away.
Become a Solidarity Person (tags)
The majority of the world's population doesn't want to know anything about globalized neoliberal capitalism anymore. Many millions are dying in the consequences. The political institutions are extorted by financial elites and their media aids. The interests of big owners of capital dominate.
Capitalism in the Faith Crisis (tags)
Trust in the "invisible hand" is a religious exercise ensuring a rule over people that is destructive and fatal. Christians and Marxists wage a common struggle against the spirit, logic, and praxis of the false money-god and its servants.
Without Social Democracy, Capitalism Will Eat Itself (tags)
Only the left can save capitalism now. The exploding inequality undermines growth, democracy and the social contract.
Trumpism and the Working Class (tags)
Trumpism understood via Dimitrof
A society of social descent, precariouisness and polarization has emerged out of the society of ascent and social integration. The modern age continues developing but backward. The social state, is a de-commodifying institution since it socializes risks.
The Rise of the New Left Political Vocabulary (tags)
The older vocabulary looked at capitalism, racism, and sexism (for example) as social systems or institutions that could and probably would be defeated, once and for all, in the foreseeable future.
Ethics and the Profit System: Global Change of Values Necessary (tags)
Profit-making is not profit-maximizing. From the magic word profit-mongering is derived the absurd unequal distribution of wealth, cheating of consumers, the exploitation of workers and ultimately the abolition of democracy. An invisible hand makes business profit into common good
The Crises of Today's Economy (tags)
The market is not a subject but an instrument. Nevertheless "the primacy of the market" replaced "the primacy of politics." Neoliberalism actually serves the interests of finance capital. A doctor whose therapy causes sicknesses cannot understand this. Our elites are in great distress.
We Must Choose: Capitalism or Democracy (tags)
Middle-class democracy only knows formal political equality. Rule over public opinion grows out of the dominance of capital. The alternative is authoritarian capitalism or solidarity democracy. Resistance is the command of the hour.
The Social State Benefits All of Us (tags)
The social state can on ly fulfill expectations when financed on a broad and just basis. The social state must be adjusted to do justice to the pressing challenges.."The social state is the greatest cultural achievement in the 20th century"
The Totalitarianism of the Market (tags)
Neoliberalism demands reeducation for its implementation like command socialism. The neoliberal view of the person is exemplified by the figure of the Homo Oeconomicus and is the antipole of the socialist person. All persons are entrepreneurs of themseves.
Planned Crises or Alan Greenspan's "Tsunami" (tags)
Greenspan knew his policy would create a financial bubble that ultimately had to burst. The subsequent crisis was consciously accepted since it speeded up the process of creative destruction. Lessons from the 2008 financial meltdown include shrinking the financial sector and expanding the public sector.
Capitalism as a Religion (tags)
"Capital is the only god that the whole world knows, sees, touches, smells, tastes and excites all our senses. It is the only god that doesn't encounter any atheists" (Paul Lafargue's little known genial satire "Religion of Capital" from 1887.
Capitalism's growth problem (tags)
Contemporary capitalism has a big problem. And no one seems to be able to refute it. The problem, as Robert J. Gordon sees it, is that economic growth is slowing down, it has been for decades, and there’s no prospect for a resumption of fast economic growth in the foreseeable future.
Paraphysique du capitalisme (tags)
Camisole physique et psychique, voilà le capitalisme....
Rosa Luxemburg Explains Capitalism Using Spoons (tags)
In this excerpt, the teenage Rosa Luxemburg teaches her family about Marx's Das Kapital, explaining material and social relations and the problem of money.
The Crisis of Economists (tags)
The mainstream economy doesn't know what an argument is any more. Claims or assertions are made. This neoclassicism is not a science but resembles a religion that proclaims dogmas. The economy is a social science that offers interpretations.
Neoliberalism as a movement and ideology is a world of ideas where egoism and personal responsibiilty are celebrated, the social is faded out and no place exists for solidarity and social balance. Everyone is the creator of his own happiness here.
After the Attacks in Paris (tags)
“We are at war!”: such is the leitmotiv of government officials and politicians from the various French parties, after the deadly attacks in Paris and Saint-Denis.
Capitalism is the Problem (tags)
Prosperity in large part is based on the ecological and social exploitation of poor countries in Africa and Asia. Today 20% of humanity consume 80% of global resources. The poor are played off against each other while the richest hide billions in tax havens.
The Middle Class Abolishes itself (tags)
Middle class citizens with a little wealth who invested this on the stock exchange are responsible for certain jobs becoming more and more precarious... Many economists claim market forces regulate themselves and society doesn't need to intervene.
At the end of yet another «historic» marathon session Brussels negotiations between the Greek government and its creditors, a «definitive» agreement has yet again been found to «resolve" the Greek crisis: Greek Prime Minister Tsipras and his team have come to accept as a condition for new loans to the virtually bankrupt Greek government, a plan of austerity measures significantly harsher than he had rejected a week earlier and against which he had, supposedly, held a referendum! The only point where he apparently got something concrete, is that of the reduction in military spending: the creditors have accepted that it is weaker than what they asked for...
www.openculture.com gives us 700 free movies, 700 free E-books and 450 free audio books. The information economy is an economy of abundance that challenges the past economy of scarcity.
On the End of Capitalism (tags)
The bridge from capitalism to the new "post-growth economy" is lacking. Hardly anyone reflects about the process of transformation...If the climate should be spared, flying cannot be a human right. The R-word will be unavoidable again: renunciation.
Free collection of articles.
Less Growth and Less Work (tags)
French economist Thomas Piketty described neoliberalism or finance capitalism as an "inequality machine." Profits soar and investments are delayed. Keynes spoke of three phases: investments, surplus and stagnation. Reduced working hours is the only way to full employment.
Degrowth - a vocabulary for a new era, 19pp (tags)
From a degrowth perspective, the current economic crisis is the result of systemic limits to growth. It is not a cyclical crisis or fault in the credit system.
In San Francisco, "Dispatches Against Displacement" -- a review (tags)
A work by a prominent San Francisco housing activist in a context of ongoing defeat for San Francisco renters...
The attack against Charlie Hebdo (tags)
After the attack against Charlie Hebdo, all the formidable power of the media and bourgeois propaganda kicked in to use the emotion born of the bloody massacre to rouse support for "national unity" and the "values of the Republic." the Government, parties of the left, right and far- right (excised by the organizers of the Paris march, the far-right Front National (FN) of le Pen called for demonstrations in the provinces), trade union apparachniks and multiple associations called for large demonstrations of unity: so that rich and poor, unemployed and capitalists, workers and employers could march together for "freedom of expression" and against "terrorism", behind French political leaders and government officials and those of other countries, German, Spanish, English, etc. or even Turkish such as the Prime Minister of that government which has imprisoned dozens of journalists, which violently suppressed Kurdish demonstrators (thirty dead) and which supports the activities of jihadist groups in Syria, Israelis such as Netanyahu still dripping in blood from all its victims in Gaza, etc. a true imperialist Holy Alliance.
Piketty Puts Capitalism in the Crosshairs and Angry Yoga (tags)
The time is right for alternative economics, reducing working hours, community centers, free Internet books and redefining work, strength, health, happiness and success. More at www.freembtranslations.net, www.nextnewdeal.net, www.foreffectivegov.org, www.onthecommons.org, www.therealnews.com,
Thomas Piketty and the Growing Inequality in Capitalism (tags)
"When capital profit is permanently higher than the growth rate for production and income which was the case up to the 19th century, capitalism automatically produces unacceptable and arbitrary inequalities that radically put in question the achievement principle..."
Prof Lim's review of E. San Juan's radical interpretation of Rizal in SISA'S VENGEANCE (amazon.com) focuses on Rizal's view of women as actual/potential agencies in the national liberation struggle of the Philippines from Spanish colonialism and U.S. imperialism. Dec. 30 marks the anniversary of Rizal's execution by the Spanish colonial govt., making him the national hero of the Filipino people.
This introduction to Tomasz Konicz' "On the Search for Alternatives to the Permanent Capitalist Crisis" (2014) is translated from the German. Empire could be replaced by republic as excess could be replaced by access and more by enough Capitalist contradictions/dislocations are signs.
Christmas message 2014/No place for refugees in Fortress Europe/Reflections on Christmas E (tags)
It's a strange thing, that Christmas is to be celebrated more luxuoriously every year, wile the true meaning of Christmas is, that there was no place for a poor Child in the Inn, like nowadays boat refugees are not welcome in Fortress Europe. Only when all refugees are welcome in Europe, there will be a true Christmas.
Unconditional Basic Income and Solidarity Economies (tags)
Without the social contract, we become wolves to one another. Basic economic, social and cultural human rights include the right to participate. Everyone should share in the wealth and prosperity brought by automation, labor-saving technology and higher productivity.
Economics is Onesided and Reactionary (tags)
The homo oeconomicus cannot be our hope and is not desirable or future-friendly. The economic benefits to the capitalist entrepreneur are in contradiction to nature and to the person..We face completely oversized financial markets that have uncoupled from the real economy creating value.
Capitalism and Its Crisis Proclivity (tags)
The liberal economists of the 19th century claimed no crises could occur in capitalism since every supply creates its demand. On the other hand, Marx and Engels recognized early on the causes for crises in capitalism. The contradictions of the accumulation process lead to crises.
The empirical-historical analysis of the top incomes and their wealth are in the center with Thomas Piketty's "Capital" (2014). The share of the top 10% was never below 60% from 1917 to 2012. A wealth tax is vital to reverse the exploding inequality.
Neoliberalism forms a free entrepreneur out of the oppressed worker, an entrepreneur of himself. Everyone is a self-exploited worker of his own enterprise. Everyone is master and servant in one person. The class struggle is also changed into an inner struggle. One problematicizes oneself...
The Coming Alternatives and The Function of the Enemy (tags)
Future criticism of capitalism is not a taboo any more. Why is there so little resistance against capitalism. Capitalism is a secular religion... Thanks to ISIS, "we" can forget all the other problems. If an enemy disappears, the possibility of shifting our conflict to it also fades.
Down with the Imperialist War in Iraq and Syria! (tags)
In early August the American government decided to launch a limited “humanitarian action” – in the form of mass bombing! – in Iraq, after an international campaign to mobilize public opinion over the plight of the Yazidi and Christian minorities who have been threatened with “genocide” by the advance of Islamist rebels of “the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant” (better known by the acronym ISIS).
From real capitalism to finance capitalism and (hopefully) back (tags)
Stephan Schulmeister is an incredible Austrian economist who deserves a great English readership!
Irresponsible New York Times Presstitution (tags)
NYT
The wealth of others has become more a problem and less an incentive. Capital is blind, Thomas Piketty says. Capital grows faster than the economy. Differences in wealth are inherent in capitalism but do not represent a natural law. A society can accept them or act against them.
Who Cares? A Feminist Critique of the Care Economy (tags)
We live in an increasingly uncaring world. Patri- archal capitalism offers rich financial rewards to those who pursue their individual self-interest and penalizes those committed to the care of others. Competition is more highly valued than cooperation...
The Abiding Economics of John Kenneth Galbraith (tags)
From The Great Crash, we have of course the conviction that financial panics affect real activity. No one in the 19th century or with experience of agriculture ever seriously doubted that the economy runs on credit or that real activity depends on banks. Only in the higher reaches of academic life could such a thing be denied.
The "Great Transformation" of the 21st Century (tags)
An end of the Great Crisis is not insight at the beginning of the 21st century... The regime of finance-market driven accumulation has not brought forth any new formation of capitalism capable of development.
REMEMBERING JOSE RIZAL AND SISA, THE ANTI-POSTCOLONIAL DIFFEREND (tags)
June 19 this year marks the 53rd anniversary of the Philippines' national hero Jose Rizal's birthday. In Nov 1884, Rizal joined mass demonstrations in Madrid to protest the government's repressive policies. He wrote to his family:"Filipinos are dishonored, entrapped, debased, opposed and tyrannized," so he had to disguise himself three times. The following review centers on Rizal's ideas and Sisa, the character in Rizal's novel, who symbolizes the "wretched of the earth," discussed in E. San Juan's book, SISA'S VENGEANCE (available at amazon.com & createspace).
Video: Why Capitalism is Killing the Planet, 27 min (tags)
Market anarchy as promoted by Adam Smith is different than prioritzing human needs. We must put the brakes on industrial growth. Equivalent jobs must be provided for closed industries.
Neoliberalism has brought us back to Rockefeller's best times. Bill Gates is 1.4 million times as rich as the average American. A "feudal lifestyle" is made out to be worthwhile and in no way negatively described. Thus "re-feudalization" is dulled as a polemical term.
On the Death of John Kenneth Galbraith (tags)
The great economist John Kenneth Galbrath was shocked at the public squalor alongside private affluence. He devised the horse-sparrow theory, horses must be fed so the sparrows can live. A healthy economy means shrinking the financial sector and expanding the public sector.
Structural Weaknesses of Capitalism (tags)
Ignorance and ideology replaced facts and economic fairness under Reagan. Reagan appealed to the Laffer curve and argued tax cuts bring higher revenues, He confused investment and speculation, SROs and SUVs, militarism and security and decried government as the problem.
In the Whirlpool of Deregulation (tags)
The economy changed from real- to finance capitalism since the 1970s. This was not an accidental development. The economic researcher Stephan Schulmeister sees a pattern where deregulation created problems that were fought with more deregulation.
Capitalism as a Secularized Religion (tags)
It is never too early or too late to challenge the dominant narrative. Capitalism is a fetish social formation, a demolishing of being not a reform of being. Capitalism may be the first case of an indebted cult, not an atoning cult, possibly the most bloodthirsty cult of humanity's history.
Philippines: Shield Yolanda rehab efforts from 'disaster capitalism' (tags)
Amid allegations of overpriced and substandard temporary shelters constructed for survivors of Typhoon Yolanda, Akbayan Partylist urged the government to shield the rehabilitation efforts from possible “disaster capitalism.”
Marx, White Supremacy and the Left (tags)
Convo w/Chuck Morse on Murray Bookchin (starts at 5:16) anarchism and how radicals and progressives can continue the movement. If you reuse please credit original source. Source: Fleming, Teka Lark. [Black & Tan Show]. (2014, January 13).Episode 6: Marx, Race and the Left and interview with Chuck Morse on Murray Bookchin [Video file]. Retrieved from http://youtu.be/PmROYoIqZ1U Length: 25:34
The Tiger and His Trainers (tags)
How preposterous to think we can avert the next crisis without regulating or shriveling the financial sector, addressing income inequality and radically rethinking the meaning and assumptions of economics? Hans-Jurgen Urban likens the financial crisis to a tiger breaking from his cage and sees the welfare state and unions as trainers
Book Review: "The Victory of Capital" (tags)
A society can only provide for the future by investing today in the production of tomorrow...What may be sensible economically for a private individual or individual business could be harmful for the national economy, particularly when the economy staggers.
VIDE: Zombie Politics and Casino Capitalism (tags)
Henry Giroux: Is the market mentality so powerful and taken for granted that public imagination cannot resist? Educated hope recognizes problems without romanticizing. Ideas matter and offer framework to allow us to be critical and literate.
Is Capitalism at an End? (tags)
The capitalist system in its current form is no longer fit for today's world. The system that led us into crisis has long been ourdated. The brave new world of neoliberalism lies in ruin. Surveys show that a majuority of people regard capitalism as unjust and unsocial.
Consumption: Endless Growth is Senseless (tags)
Writing in 1930, John Maynard Keynes thought people would soon have everything they need and envisioned a 15-hour work week. In the midst of the worst economic crisis, he foresaw a world where people had to work much less because their needs were satisfied.
The United States of Inequality (tags)
class war
Capitalism is not the Opposite of the State (tags)
Without the permanent intervention of the state, there would be no functioning capitalism. No economic branch depends on the state like the financial branch The deregulation was based on the trick of slandering state regulation as strait-jackets.that could strangle the economy.
Is Capitalism to Blame for the Syrian War Drive? (tags)
Obama’s push for war in Syria seemed so deeply irrational, so crazed, that many people naturally asked, “Why is this happening?” And “who” wants it to happen? Few Americans actually believed that Nobel Peace Prizing winning Obama suddenly wanted to bomb Syria because “Assad gassed his own people” (especially when zero evidence was given to prove this).
Video: Taming Capitalism Run Wild : Richard Wolff (tags)
The system must be changed because the system leads to stagnant wages over 30 years, totally inadequate creation of family-wage jobs, education for the elite and destruction of nature. A public debate on job creation and shriveling the financial sector is vital.
Ten Theses on the Crisis and its Solution (tags)
Problems don't disappear when they are ignored. Deregulation is a collective and political crisis. Language and democracy are endangered when arsonists are called firefighters, when private losses become public losses and crime in the suits is normalized as a business model.
The Dislocation of Homo Oeconomicus (tags)
"Students rate the teachers and demand a very specific kind of knowledge from them: it should be measurable, packaged and practical and cannot contain any uncertainties. Experimenting or thinking is not desired. There is a relation between service-provider and customer..."
Detroit Mirrors America's Decline (tags)
Detroit
Rail Disaster in Canada (tags)
The aftermath of the worst rail disaster in Canada for decades leaves at least 47 dead with many of the victims still unaccounted for.
Statement on the Trayvon Martin case and voter suppression
They want capitalism without democracy; we want democracy without capitalism (tags)
The policy of crises and impoverishment disrupts our lives and the lives of millions of people in the world. More than 300 persons were gravely injured through blows, tear gas and pepper spray. Blockupy had an important political success.
"Politics prepared the ground for financial war" (tags)
The current economic crisis is a product of political mistakes, economic incompetence and criminal energy. Capitalism altogether has been a declaration of war. Politics bungled deregulation. The wisdom of the market never existed.
The Elite Look Down on Democracy (tags)
The thought-models of the economy have conquered all other social sciences. The person in these models is a homo oeconomicus, a rational agent whose only drive is maximizing his benefits. Only an action with the driving force of egoism is rational.
Mirror images and ideological straitjackets on the path from Solidarity to sellout (tags)
A particularly harsh brand of capitalism was instituted via shock therapy in Poland, against the repeatedly expressed will of Poles. Unemployment, severe wage cuts and a growth in poverty were the results, just as with today’s austerity programs.
Those who do the work in the workplace should get the rewards (tags)
People are taught to have a 19th century, romantic notion of capitalism — a myriad of small enterprises competing in a free market. But a “free market” has never existed. Capitalism was built on brutal displays of force, and continues to be based on violence.
Spectacle of Irrationality (tags)
The bailout umbrella may establish a modern kind of feudal rule. The abdication of politics is one of the worst consequences of the financial crisis. Many politicians believe the market-radical nonsense that tax cuts finance themselves.
The toll of privatization and the ideology of “there is no alternative” (tags)
One million people are estimated to have died as a result of capitalist “shock therapy” in the former Soviet bloc; other health indications demonstrate a catastrophic toll from capitalist offensives.
Vulgar Materialism: The Madness of Growth and the Casino (tags)
Renouncing on growth or tolerating a shriveling economy is hard. Greece is a shocking example. Many people cut down the last trees because they could not afford heating oil. Nature is the first victim in an economic crisis. Whole generations are traumatized.
Erich Fromm on Karl Marx (tags)
The capitalist production method makes a few persons absurdly rich while the others hardly have enough to survive. Capitalism also makes people unfree and unhappy because their access to their true needs is blocked.
Seeing bias but supporting the architect of bias: We have a long way yet to go (tags)
The wealth and power gained by Europe during the ascendancy of capitalism was built on slavery. Capitalism continues to be based on massive inequalities, which requires strong social divisions in order to be maintained. Divide-and-conquer is an old technique.
Capitalism or private property is not the cause but the product, the result, the necessary consequence of alienated labor. No person needs 400 times his neighbor. They play even if it ruins them. It is high time for the left to pull the motivation plug.
Paraphysique du capitalisme (tags)
Le monde de la séparation est la séparation du monde...
Paul Krugman Discovers Marx (and Misses the Point) (tags)
In his recent New York Times op-ed piece, Princeton professor and regular columnist for The New York Times, Paul Krugman observed: The American economy is still, by most measures, deeply depressed. But corporate profits are at record high. It’s simple: profits have surged as a share of national income, while wages and other labor compensation are down. The pie isn’t growing the way it should — but capital is doing fine by grabbing an ever-larger slice, at labor’s expense.
Stagnation, not growth, is the norm for mature capitalism (tags)
The dynamics of a mature capitalist economy result in stagnation and financialization, creating deepening inequality.
Why UN Climate Agreements Fail (tags)
History will undoubtedly deliver the harshest condemnations of the UN climate talks currently underway in Doha, Qatar. But the conference was laughable before it began; the inept “goals” of the talks stand in tragic-comic opposition to what we already know about climate change — that the climate has already changed in profound ways and its trajectory spells doom for civilization if drastic, coordinated steps are not taken in the immediate future.
Ideology and Morality: What the Financial Crisis teaches about functioning of democracy (tags)
Moralizing is a form of argumentation found in many ideologies and academic systems of thought.. State interventions, we were taught, are bad because they run counter to the objective laws of the market.. The market is a social institution that we interpret in different ways..
To Krugman, the increasing ideological blindness of German politicians can only be explained by their belief that "hard times must be the necessary punishment for earlier excesses." Krugman overlooks that the hard times and excesses do not concern the same people.
Self-directed workers as a “cure for capitalism” (tags)
Employees themselves should make the decisions concerning the business. They can consider a far wider set of issues and concerns about adopting new technology, or any other strategic decision, thereby fully weighing the effects on themselves, their families and their communities.
Free Internet Book: "The World Crisis" (tags)
Once the source of hope, the US is often a source of fear. Closing most of the 700+ bases would be a step from empire to republic. Security is a political and social challenge, not only a military project. Development should be a right, not only a hope and a promise..
Banks, Bankers and Banksters (tags)
An unrestrained speculative capitalism emerged out of investment capitalism. New financing instruments are invented. Risks are trivialized or glossed over to soothe the population. Boundless indebtedness becomes the norm. The new age led to immediate profit eclipsing investment.
Is Capitalism Collapsing? (tags)
One of the causes for the obvious helplessness of the governments is that they function as simple receivers of orders of the financial industry. The financial industry has no interest in a policy that would make it liable for its inflicted disaster..
Cloud-sourcing and Cloud-working: Brave New World of Work (tags)
"Nothing is more absurd than to try to enforce capitalist property relations within the expanse of the World Wide Web.. In the ideal case, the competing persons in the asocial networks should become part of a `cloud' of living workers.."
The Capitalism of Hopelessness (tags)
Regulated capitalism reached its peak in the class compromise of the 1960s when representatives of workers could put the screws on the steamroller CEOs a little. The enemy and dynamic are lost to capitalism. Capitalism flows into a society without utopia and alternative.
Out of the Slump: The Only Road (tags)
A real analysis of the United State’s economic history is rarely discussed by politicians or media alike, since the conclusions that would be inevitably drawn would be out of step with what politicians are currently advocating.
Democracy in Crisis: The Terror of the Economy is a Danger to Democracy (tags)
There is a powerful crisis dynamic that is stronger than the will of the sovereign and its democratic institutions. When capital relations fall into crisis, everything can be instrumentalized: the basic law, democracy, human rights and human life. Economic pressure creates extremism of middle.
Capitalism and the Mad Uncle in the Attic (tags)
The economy should be a part of life, not a steamroller crushing creativity and self-determination.
Stop the neo-liberal crisis politics - dispossess the beneficiaries! (tags)
We are experiencing the deepest crisis of capitalism since the great depression of the 30s.
Taxing the Rich and Its “Left” Critics (tags)
In a recent article published on the website of Socialist Viewpoint, Chris Kinder criticized those on the left who call for raising taxes on the rich. Identifying himself as a Trotskyist, Mr. Kinder displayed particular displeasure with Trotskyists who embrace this demand. Yet, as we will argue, his arguments fundamentally deviate from the political-strategic framework established by Marx and Engels and developed by Lenin and Trotsky.
America's Left and Romney's Economic Agenda (tags)
Axel-Fair Schulz is a professor of political science at the State University of New York, Potsdam.
On one hand, industrial capitalism made possible those reforms that are part of democracy. On the other hand, owners of capital fear too much democracy. In the 1980s, the head of Volvo said: Sweden needs Volvo but Volvo doesn't need Sweden.
Extreme liberal responses to Supreme Court health care ruling increase polarization (tags)
Democrats consider the health care decision by the Supreme Court to be a victory, while Republicans are feeling a loss. As Republicans regroup and plan the next step toward getting the law repealed, Democrats are enjoying their win.
Money, Power, and Politics (tags)
There has been much talk recently about the impact of money on politics, especially in the wake of the Citizens United ruling that has ratcheted up the role of corporate money in political campaigns. Organized labor was quick to blame this ruling for its defeat in Wisconsin. And many have assumed that the relation of money to politics is like a law of nature: the more money one has, the more political power one can wield.
La communication aliénée (tags)
La communication aliénée est la communication de l'aliénation...
Capitalism Can Be Cured (tags)
"The Occupy movement protests worldwide against the power of banks. The Indignados in Spain demonstrate against the system that gives them this crisis and high unemployment. No saying has been criticized more vigorously than Margaret Thatcher's `there is no alternative'."
Battles over Autonomy: The Commons Alternative (tags)
"The Commons is a way of reproducing society that opposes the market logic, puts in question private property, profit and competition and points to a future form of society beyond capitalism.. The Commons is not the solution but the change of perspectives that makes possible new solutions."
Beyond Corporate Capitalism: Not So Wild a Dream (tags)
"The first step toward public ownership is recognizing that it is not the radical departure most imagine it to be. Two of the most cost-effective health providers in the United States—one a far-reaching insurance system, Medicare; the other a direct hands-on healthcare delivery system, the Veterans Administration—are run by the government.."
The High Stakes Battles to Save Public Schools (tags)
Dr. Steven Strauss, Baltimore neurologist, former linguistics professor and Freedom Socialist writer will discuss why capitalism will not allow quality education for all, and how socialism can provide for everyone.
Democracy, risk and liability are turned upside down when trillions bailout the banks and workers, pensioners and unemployed must pay the bill. We live from those who say No to corruption, to the state reduced to a trough or errand boy for the banks (Bill Moyers).
Solidarity, social justice and sharing open doors while deregulation and trickle-down mythologty lead to exploding inequality and generalized insecurity. Karl Marx asked why capitalism cannot solve poverty, unemployment and exploitation.
The Systemic Causes of the Crisis (tags)
The crisis is 30 years old, not 4 years old. The causes of the crisis can be found in the real goods-producing economy, not in the financial markets. The wildly proliferating financial markets did not drag the industry into crisis but kept alive the industry through credit-financed demand.
In the crisis, there was a paradigm based on the belief in unlimited economic growth on a planet with infinite resources. This paradigm identifies happiness with wealth, well-being with accumulation of material goods and progress with consumerism.
What is the Origin of Wealth? (tags)
"Europe faces the choice of falling apart in the crisis or taking steps to another economic model," 50 scholars from the advisory board of Attac Germany declared. They make the connection between the chaos of the financial markets and the scandalous distribution of wealth
$3.8 trillion budget sets up election-year fight with Republicans (tags)
The US faces a revenue crisis and a war spending crisis. The Congress, a millionaires' club, isn't about upholding the constitution but maintaining plutocracy and crony capitalism. Without the social contract and government of the people, we become wolves to each other.
From Protest Camp to General Strike (tags)
Something crucial happened in the US in 2011. The strengthening of the Occupy movement, first on Wall Street and then in hundreds of American cities, is celebrated as the revival of the revolutionary middle class. The movement in the US seems two steps ahead.
So much crisis was never analyzed with a crisis-conditioned satisfaction guarantee! Instead of seeking culprits, we must seek the systemic causes of the indebtedness dynamic. These gigantic debt mountains were necessary to keep capitalism functioning. Fewer and fewer workers can producer more and more goods in an ever-shorter time.
The Twilight of Capitalism (tags)
Those who defend more capital will be the instrument of destruction of capitalism.
Raul Zelik and Elmar Altvater discuss the nature of utopia, economics, how growth and work become fetishes, how what is rational in micro-economics can become irrational in macro-economics, time prosperity and how Marx recognized the contradictions in capitalism.
Learning from Roosevelt (tags)
Harry Hopkins, head of WPA under Roosevelt, created 4 million jobs in 2 months. How many jobs in health care, education, bridge repair, community centers and journalism could be created today? Solutions are not lacking, only political will. Viva sharing and redistribution!
John Holloway, Hillel Ticktin, Immanuel Wallerstein on Capitalism's Crisis (tags)
Marxists have been predicting the disintegration of capitalism for so long that most people - including most Marxists - stopped believing it would ever happen. But today anyone who reads the financial press knows that the system is in an unprecedented crisis with no clear way out. The following articles offer a variety of ways of understanding the crisis so we can begin to create a world beyond capitalism:
Commons - Taking Charge of Things (tags)
The capitalist market economy develops more and more into a crisis economy. Capitalism is not a totality. Everything we need has never been transacted over the market, for example the whole informal economy in developing countries and the unpaid work in families.
Neoliberalism as Greatest Error in the History of Economic Thought (tags)
Efficiency and prosperity can only be realized on capitalist markets when the economic system is bound in a social order under the primacy of politics. Democratic legitimated politics and the provision of public goods is derived from the "anatomy of market failure."
Beyond Possessive Individualism (tags)
Shrinking the financial sector and abandoning neoliberal myths are vital to prevent the next crisis. The authors, German Young Socialists in their 30s, decry the myths that incomes are just, self-interest leads to public interest and economics and politics are separate.
Book Review: "The Great Crash or the Century Crisis" by Elmar Altvater (tags)
Capitalism is at an end and the whole world is drawn into the mess. Preventing this is an ethical imperative and a political duty. The multiple crisis has dragged on for years. The political class allows this to happen. Political answers to the debacle can only be found with clarity on causes.
The Occupy Wall Street movement, Engels, and the Theory of Socialism (tags)
The theoretical foundations of socialism as put forth by Frederick Engels in his book Anti-Dühring are still valid today and schould for the basis of the OCW movements around the world.
Please Sign the petition to amend the Constitution for revoking corporate personhood at: movetoamend.org
Critique of Marianne Williamson at Occupy LA (tags)
A critique of a small part of Williamson's speech regarding capitalism.
The crisis is 30 years old, not three years old. The causes of the crisis should be tracked down in the real goods-producing economy, not in the financial markets. The financial markets were keep alive up to the collapse of the speculative bubble by credit-financed demand.
Some further thoughts on the OWS movement (tags)
I have been following the Occupy Wall Street developments with interest because ultimately I consider the only reasonable way entrenched elites become unseated is if there is mass action by citizens. I do not think military coups are a very sound way to lay the groundwork for grassroots
Underway to Plutocracy: Financial Crisis (tags)
No promise of salvation can be imputed to capitalism any more.. The market is regarded as a natural law and power of fate. Nothing but Darwinism was left of the liberals' hope for progress. That Darwinism rejoices in the survival of the fittest and the sorting out of weaker debtors.
Is Capitalism Devouring Its Children? (tags)
The state was extorted by the banks. Bailing out the banks was regarded as without alternative..Rating agencies should become public institutions and system-relevant banks dismantled. Growth- and stability funds should be established as the credit-givers of last resort.
The Capitalism of Hopelessness (tags)
The capitalism of hopelessness is a capitalism where the enemy is lost, where capitalism can no longer fulfill its promise of prosperity for the people as in the 1960s and where capitalism neutralizes all utopian energy and alternatives. Public jobs must be created in the emergency.
The World is Out of Joint (tags)
The financial crisis has become a state debt crisis. "The rise of democracy was not possible without the social and legal civilizing of capitalism. The deregulation euphoria of democratic governments made possible the incredible ascent of the financial oligarchy."
The Game with Ignorance and the Growth Panacea (tags)
A world wide economic and financial order decays to a pure end-in-itself and no longer serves people. A system build on an ideology in which everything-even the person-becomes a product is legitimated by apologists who trivialize derailments of social life as "normal."
Zombie Housing, Zombie Banks, Zombie Governments: Economy Cassandra Says Marx was Right (tags)
"Karl Marx had it right. At some point capitalism can destroy itself because you cannot keep on shifting income from labor to capital without not having excess capacity and a lack of aggregate demand, and that's what's happening." --Nouriel Roubini
Video: Who Killed Economic Growth? (tags)
Once 90% of investment was productive. Now 90% of investment is speculative. States become errand boys of the banks. The real economy falls by the wayside. the financial sector must be shriveled.
economy
The Crisis of Financial Market Capitalism as a Challenge for the Left (tags)
The crisis of neoliberal financial market capitalism broke out in its center and has one central systemic cause. This crisis was triggered by the independence of the financial sphere... A solidarity mixed economy, democracy and peace are alternatives.
The Zumbis of the consumption attack again.
Causes and Consequences of the Financial Crisis (tags)
The neoliberal restructuring and globalization of capitalism has led to states becoming the spoils of financial capital. The neoliberal program is enforced with the help of states. Governments only react to the conditions set by the economically powerful. This is the end of politics.
Fukushima and Capitalism (tags)
"Capitalism and its countless horrors seem more credible to us than an alternative. We believe in capital, the deadly promise of endless growth. We cynically pay it tribute as though the rule of people over people and nature were something dignified. A world of sharing and community is possible."
The Zumbis of the consumption attack again.
Business in Crisis: Vulnerable to Attack (tags)
Sectarian leftists love to moan about the power of capitalism. It seems it cannot be upended or even reformed. Activists are hooked on hopelessness. Is it any wonder why activists are caught blindsided by events like Tunisia, Egypt, and Wisconsin? These recent actions are manifestations of resistance against the presumed neoliberal order.
A powerful wave of anger among the poor and unemployed Arab masses shakes the young, voracious and brutal capitalism of the North African and Middle Eastern countries supported by the old and bloody capitalism in Europe and America. Anticipation of a social wave that can only be resolved in favor of the vast majority of the population by the emergence of the proletarian class.
After Mubarak: What's Next? (tags)
revolution
Video: Crisis of Capitalism (tags)
David Harvey says it's time to look beyond capitalism toward a new social order that would really allow us to live within a system that could be rational, just and humane.
The End of the "Golden Age" of Capitalism and the Rise of Neoliberalism (tags)
"The central point is that the financial sphere has the potential of developing into an autonomous subsystem of the whole economy with an enormous capacity of self-expansion..Like cancer, it has no internal control mechanism. It can only be brought under control by external interventions"
Guns. Violence. Tucson. Mexico. China: The tentacles of capitalism (tags)
The capitalist class desperately try to separate the actions of individuals from society. There is no "system". Capitalism is never to blame, only the crazed and murderous actions of flawed individuals.
Free Internet Book: "Needs and Limits" (tags)
"The logic of capitalism must be replaced to address the crisis of ecological overshoot and to achieve a sustainable well-being."
True and False Causes of the Financial Crisis (tags)
If we can produce enough for all in superfluity-and we are already technically in this position-why must the whole enormous social wealth be squeezed through the needle of buying and selling, money, profit and growth? We all deserve something better than capitalist crisis economy.
CRAZY-BEAUTY CAPITALISM (tags)
Is the fashion of the moment to criticize the government? Why not to do this with profit?
The Crisis, Money and Us (tags)
"One we had a coordinated social market economy. This `Rhine' capitalism embodied the insight gained in bitter experience that totally freed markets are self-destructive. This insight was lost somewhere between Friedman and Hayek, Thatcher and Reagan.."
The November 2 midterm elections were not only a decisive rejection not only of the Obama administration but a full-scale endorsement of free-market economic policies and lassiez-faire capitalism — albeit by a much smaller segment of the American electorate than voted Obama and the Democrats into power in 2008. Millions of Americans voted against the party under whose watch unemployment has risen from 6.2 to 9.5 percent, and bought into the Republicans' critique that the reason for Obama's failure is he's been too much of a progressive, unduly burdening the private sector with regulation and taxation. Thanks to talk radio and Fox News, millions of Americans profoundly believe that Obama and the Democrats are far more radical than they are — and as long as they remain on the air and have their current level of influence, U.S. politics will continue to move even further Right.
Worldwide Economic Crisis 2.0 or the Collapse of Neoliberal Finance Capitalism (tags)
The present crisis is a consequence of the fact that exploding business profits found inadequate investment opportunities in the productive sector and turned instead to financial speculation. Deregulation created "law-free" spaces" with the abrogation of all political controls.
Between Austerity Mania and Megalomania (tags)
The more capitalism invokes its rationality, the more irrational it seems to be. Fewer and fewer persons handle more and more tasks. This savings mania was forced to the detriment of quality controls. The economy should be a part of life, not a steamroller crushing self-determination
French Worker Struggles for Justice (tags)
struggling without union support
Science Daily reports on a new study linking health with wealth.
Capitalists, Global Warming, and the Climate Justice Movement (tags)
(This essay was published in Anarcho-Syndicalist Review, #54, Summer 2010, pages 23-28. For this internet edition I've made a few more changes and additions). An urgent analysis of the climate crisis and call to action.
US Capitalism in Crisis: An Emperor With No Clothes (tags)
The champions of US capitalism are having to get used to a changing global stage on which they play a diminishing role
Life after the Peak: Capitalism and the Market Economy (tags)
All over the world there are experiments with renewable energy, solidarity economies and non-profit economic forms. A growth acceleration law will be absurd when fossil energy runs out. We will need a growth de-acceleration law.
Dr. Steve Best on "The Left, Capitalism, and Animal Rights" (tags)
This is an excerpt of Jon Hoch interviewing Dr. Steven Best on April 29, 2010. To hear the entire interview, please see: http://negotiationisover.com/2010/05/11/an-interview-with-dr-steven-best-the-left-capitalism-and-animal-rights/
True and False Causes of the Financial Crisis (tags)
The jubilant singing about free enterprise as the supposedly best of all worlds sounds much quieter than at the beginning of the 1990s. We urgently need alternatives. This is now a matter of survival. As it was taboo to doubt the rule of the church in the Middle Ages, the thought prohibition of questioning the market economy is in effect.
The Financial Market Must Become a Public Service (tags)
An institutional crisis faces us, not individual failure. Egoism makes one short-sighted; greed makes one blind. Capitalism is not simply a market system. Capitalism is a social order. Therefore it cannot be left to economists to decide which laws of the market should operate.
"The Mother of All Evil is Speculation!": Oliver Stone's "Wall Street 2" (tags)
In "Wall Street 2," Wall Street is marked by profiteering, lack of understanding for Asians and fixation on getting the customer "on the hook" at the end. "This is the biggest sellout in history... If we don't do it, there will be no history."
The BP oil spill and American capitalism (tags)
"BP of course has done us wrong, as all corporations do. But it is capitalism that should be put on trial. This is an opportunity to move the people to that understanding. All who stand for progress and human advancement must seize this moment. In every conversation, every letter to the editor, every email, every blog post and every twit we must work to put the transformation to a different society on the table. Only an economy based on fairness and sharing can save us from the disease of capitalism that is ravaging this earth. Now is a time to scream this from every corner of the globe. In our groups and associations and as individuals we can begin this now. We may not stop until we have a new world!"
Work- and Social Criticism in the Time of Capitalist Running Amok (tags)
The term social goes through a fundamental change of meaning. Earlier social described an obligation of society to its members. Today the little word social stands for the caring duty of members of society toward the capitalist machine
The death of macho: The era of male dominance is over (tags)
The most enduring legacy of the Great Recession will not be the death of Wall Street. It will not be the death of finance. And it will not be the death of capitalism. These ideas and institutions will live on. What will not survive is macho.
IRON MAN 2 AND THE VICTORY OF THE TRUE CAPITALISM (tags)
It is not enough to see is necessary to understand.
For a Proletarian and Communist May 1st! (tags)
Workers! The general conditions of life and work have been deteriorating for years, becoming ever more intolerable.
Citizen Money as a Bold Social Utopia (tags)
"Spring has returned. The earth is like a child that knows poems." (Rainer Maria Rilke) Citizen money would guarantee a reasonable life for all. Citizen money challenges our social and cultural assumptions and uncouples work and income.
Alternatives to Capitalism (tags)
Neoliberalism, financial market-driven capitalism, intensifies the crises. However the root of evil lies in the developmental laws of capitalism. Neoliberalism is based on double standards and double speak where CEOs are job creators and workers are cost factors.
The sociologist Dr. Atilio Boron, professor of political theory at the University of Buenos Aires, is an internationally known radical political author. UNESCO awarded him the “International Jose Marti prize” on July 17, 2009
Finance Capitalism Devalues Labor (tags)
Businesses are capital investments in the hands of shareholders. Consequently managers only serve the interests of shareholders.
20 Theses against a Green Capitalism (tags)
Is a Green New Deal possible? These theses were published in an English translation in: Prager Fruhling (Prague Spring) in December 2009.
VIDEO: Joseph Stiglitz' "Freefall" on BookTV (tags)
"Incentives matter. Short-sighted behavior on an annual basis involved excessive risk taking. `Too big to fail' is ersatz capitalism socializing losses.
Climate Justice, Not Growth Mania (tags)
"In green capitalism, the bio-crisis is at the center of the growth strategy. The Green New Deal represents a kind of ecological inversion of Kennedy's famous sentence: Ask not what you can do for the environment but what the environment can do for you..."
Descent Into Barbarism: The US and NATO Wage War on the World (tags)
"In our time, war, it seems, has already begun. The US oligarchy and its NATO allies are waging a veritable war on the world: killing, disappearing and incarcerating millions of civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan – a war that is expanding into Yemen, Somalia and the rest of the Horn of Africa, with the militarisation of sea lanes and oceans (see Chossudovsky, www.Globalresearch.ca) and the setting up of “forward projecting” military and missile bases in every continent (see Rozoff, ditto). On top of ordinary poverty and misery, the world is truly seeing another historic descent into barbarism. Given this war-mongering dynamic, the growing US antagonism with Iran, Russia and China is far from an idle threat. It is the logical next step for a deeply illogical economic system. But history is not inevitable. We are not necessarily programmed to repeat its horrors. A combination of global communications among citizens and political and social consciousness may be enough to prevent a military conflagration and overthrow the misrule of the oligarchy. What is needed is a) a widening of the recognition that capitalism as a system of social production is finished; and b) the case has to be confidently made that an alternative is very possible."
Ten Years After Seattle (tags)
We must develop a new strategy for the movement. Neoliberal policy destroys the idea of the public. Neoliberalism privatizes and instrumentalizes production, communication, language and emotions. We should prepare for a long phase of barbarism and violence.
Obama times?
What is Inflation? (Ver. 2.1) (tags)
Inflation is a rise in the general price of things. As a result, people believe they are able to buy less things.
Disaster Capitalism Headed to Haiti (tags)
worker exploitation follows disaster
The Origins of Modern Socialism (tags)
The specter of socialism is again haunting the minds of the corporate elite, from the Americas to Europe and beyond. This, after decades of pro-capitalist campaigning from the corporate media, which has always confused “capitalism” with “freedom.” But of course freedom and democracy cannot exist alongside tremendous inequalities of wealth — or next to corporations wielding absolute power over elections and governments.
Sherry Wolf: Lesbian Socialist Activist Speaks in San Diego (tags)
Lesbian socialist Sherry Wolf came to San Diego December 3 to promote her new book, “Sexuality and Socialism.” Wolf offered a provocative critique of much of the Queer community’s orthodoxy, most notably the Queer mainstream’s embrace of the notion that people’s sexual orientation is inbred and genetically determined. She also mused on how and why the Queer movement morphed from a liberation struggle demanding sexual freedom to an elaborate commercial mechanism to promote Queer-owned businesses. Her final conclusion: there can be no true sexual liberation as long as capitalism survives and forces most people to spend their time working at jobs they hate and taking care of families on their own.
The system itself is degenerate. The great financial crisis is the trigger for seeking another capitalism. Deregulation becomes an end-in-itself; the state per se is of the devil. The state should be taken seriously as a production factor.
End the Fed? Or End the Market Economy? (tags)
When Republican Congressman Ron Paul recently introduced legislation to audit the Federal Reserve, diverse sections of the political spectrum applauded. And rightfully so. The Fed’s role in the still-developing bank bailouts is one of utter secrecy; the total cost of which — as estimated by the bailout’s Special Inspector General, Neil Barofsky — could cost taxpayers $23.7 trillion. The fact that legislation needed to be introduced to raise the question of the whereabouts of these funds points to a larger breakdown in U.S. democracy.
Two Anniversaries: Berlin and Seattle (tags)
November 2009 was not only the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall — an historical milestone reported to death by the corporate media — it was also the anniversary of an event the corporate media chose to ignore: the 10th anniversary of the mass protests against the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Seattle in November and December 1999. The challenge for radicals and progressives today is not only to revitalize the spirit of Seattle but to take back the initiative in an era in which the biggest and most confrontational mass actions are being staged by the "teabag" Right.
The Rules of the Game, Not the Players (tags)
In the last three decades, the financial markets have grown much faster than production.. The respective players (whether public or private) are not the problem but the rules of the game.. The goals and means of production must be redefined
The High Risk Business of Banks (tags)
The model of financial market capitalism collapsed with the greatest crisis of the financial markets since the worldwide economic crisis at the end of the 20s. The enormous accumulation of financial assets was based on redistribution of incomes continuing for 30 years.
IMPERIALISM ITS RISE AND INEVITABLE COLLAPSE (tags)
“I was in the East End of London (a working-class quarter) yesterday I attended a meeting of the unemployed. I listened to the wild speeches, which were just a cry for ‘bread! bread!’ and on my way home I pondered over the scene and I became more than ever convinced of the importance of imperialism.... My cherished idea is a solution for the social problem, i.e., in order to save the ..........inhabitants of the United Kingdom from a bloody civil war, we colonial statesmen must acquire new lands to settle the surplus population, to provide new markets for the goods produced in the factories and mines. The Empire, as I have always said, is a bread and butter question. If you want to avoid civil war, you must become imperialists," quoted by Cecil Rhodes an English Stateman to a journalist in 1895. 1. V.I. Lenin, Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism
A New Paradigm: The New Deal of the 1930s (tags)
The New Deal that led out of the worldwide economic crisis in the 1930s was based on the combination of a new technical-economic model with a new socio-economic model. Obama's achievement is not turning the necessity of overcoming the crisis against the social principle
Freedom of Religion in Libertarian Spain (tags)
Hello, For anyone interested, here is Part 2 of the 'Libertarian Spain in the 1930's' series
Is Growth Only Possible Through Inequality? (tags)
Does capitalism make the rich richer and the poor poorer instead of creating prosperity for everyone as promised? Inequality declined considerably between 1930 and 1970 in western industrial states.
Planned Economy Instead of Chaos Economy (tags)
For years US imports have doubled US exports. For 10 years China has contributed $2 billion a day to finance US consumerism. Trade policy in the WTO, GATT and NAFTA have led to mass unemployment. Part time work for all and/or unconditional basic income could humanize society and assure dignified life.
The "return of the state" as crisis administrator (tags)
The prodigious inflation in the financial markets over the last 30 years was not caused by wilful or incorrect political decisions, but is the expression of a structural crisis of the valorisation of capital, a crisis that began with the end of the post-war Fordist boom.
Capitalism Criticism 2.0 (tags)
Marx identified the falling rate of profit and the self-destruction of competition as contradictions of capitalism. Wages do not keep up with investments in machinery. Speculation and the explosion of the financial markets were encouraged by deregulation and higher profits.
Long Live Tobin. Commentary on Financial Regulation (tags)
"Turner's demand for introduction of a global Tobin tax on all financial transactions is a very old demand. The tendency of banks to take flight in casino capitalism and neglect their role as servants of the real economy has made the crisis into a real fix for us.."
Michael Moore’s Movie ‘Capitalism: A Love Story’ a Must See (tags)
Michael Moore’s movie, ‘Capitalism: A Love Story’ will be a shocking revelation to the millions of Americans who believe in capitalism; however, socialists will understand that ‘Capitalism: A Love Story’ does not reveal the ultimate danger and damage that capitalism is wreaking on the working class and world economies on a global scale.
Alexander: Go See “Capitalism, a Love Story” (tags)
Michael Moore’s movie, “Capitalism, a Love Story” will be a shocking revelation to the millions of Americans who believe in capitalism; however, socialists will understand that “Capitalism, a Love Story” does not reveal the ultimate danger and damage that capitalism is wreaking on the working class and world economies on a global scale.
Last Dance for Capitalism (tags)
Capitalism reaches its inner limit and strangulates itself and the environment. Increasingly effective measures lead to fewer and fewer workers producing ever-greater quantities. The real economy becomes an appendage of speculation bubbles.
Satiation or Two Limits of Growth: John Maynard Keynes (tags)
"The first great economic crisis of the 21st century marks the end of a failed political-economic experiment..The past 30 years of redistribution from bottom to top were a glistening epoch for the owners of capital.."
Capitalism is the Problem: System Error (tags)
The chaos that we now witness is only the latest crisis of the global economic system. The system has not succeeded in keeping profits at the level of the postwar years. What is good for one capitalist is not necessarily good for the system. Triple-digit billions have been pumped into system
Review: Karl Polanyi-How the State Created Capitalism (tags)
In "The Great Transformation" (1944), Karl Polanyi deconstructs the myth of a free market economy that develops naturally and spontaneously and the idea of the state as a counter-pole to capital. The transformation of labor and land into commodities was a painful process.
We Fight Capitalism, Not the Crisis of Capitalism (tags)
Capitalism is a social system, not a natural law. Capitalism has proven it cannot end wars, prevent crises or make possible a good life for all people. Instead of solidarity, the capitalist social system teaches us envy and egoism. Now those who privatized the state cry for state bailout packages.
Why The U.S. Government Hates Venezuela (tags)
The propaganda wheels are turning fast. The barrage of anti-Venezuela misinformation that began while Bush was in office has intensified in recent months. Not a week goes by without the U.S. mainstream media running at least one story about the “dictatorial” Venezuelan government. Historically, the U.S. government’s foreign policy “coincidentally” matches the opinion of the media and vice versa.
The Crisis in the Crisis or How Sick is the System (tags)
Crisis is a synonym for experiences of difference. It changes something. Afterwards nothing will be as in the past. Until recently the "manager" and "business" were models for all areas of life. Do private vices always become public virtues?
John Kenneth Galbraith: Relentless Fighter Against the Powerful (tags)
In the 1960s John Kenneth Galbraith decried the coexistence of private affluence and public squalor and denounced trickle-down economics, feeding the horse so the sparrow can live. System- and structural criticism are vital today as the myth of the self-healing market lies shattered
The Crisis and the Left: Democratizing instead of Privatizing (tags)
"Neoliberalism has no future..Since time immemorial, (neo-) liberals have wanted as little democracy as possible as an unavoidable evil that should not get in the way of the real kingdom of freedom, the capitalist market economy.."
"The basic trust in capital still exists. Modern capitalism has gained a firm place in our subconscious. The debacle of the global financial markets should have led to a rethinking long ago. But the culprits will probably get off lightly because the capitalist system is held as divinely ordained."
Economic Crisis and the Crisis of Neoliberal Ideology (tags)
The crisis has his origins in the "real" economy. Inequality is the ideological motor of neoliberfalism. German president Kohler described the financial markets as a monster. The metaphor has changed from market as rational subject to monster.
Wolf Larsen, Nietzshe and the Titans of Capitalism (tags)
When young, Jack London was an oyster pirate on San Francisco Bay and a believer in might makes right. After working many occupations, he saw many decent, strong, hard working men incapacitated due to accidents, fate, disease or the workings of capitalism. In less one had rich relatives, one was out of luck. Greatly to his credit, Jack London became a socialist.
Socialist Stewart Alexander: Washington and Capitalism in Shambles (tags)
Since President Barack Obama took office in January, the U.S. economy has gone from bad to worst. Nationwide, home foreclosures continue to climb, consumer spending is down due to the credit crisis, more than 6 million Americans remain unemployed, and while paychecks are shrinking, inflation and gas prices are on the increase. The U.S. economy and capitalism is in a total mess.
The End of Neoliberalism and the Crisis of Capitalism (tags)
"Guaranteeing the social infrastructure and social security for everyone should be central instead of guarantees for banks and corporations and socialization and democratization of the economy instead of nationalization!"
Free market and democracy are incompatible (tags)
Capitalism = McCarthyist dictatorship
Let's Really Attack our Economic Problems (tags)
Let’s show the trickle down theory the door. If a goodly majority ever faces economic reality, we could fashion a better world. It is however the wealthy that will have to sacrifice.
Santa Cruz Anarchsit Convergence Workshop Descriptions (tags)
The Anarchists are Coming! There will be almost 40 workshops and discussions at the Santa Cruz Anarchist Convergence from May 7-11th. Here are times and descriptions of all of them! Also: flyers, dates, times, and descriptions of several events surrounding the convergence. Check it out!
Actually, it's the system, President Obama (tags)
"Capitalist cycles recur. Each economic cycle imposes huge, painful social costs. In a parallel ideological cycle, most politicians, mass media and academics swing ridiculously between hyped celebrations of deregulation and (re)regulation as "the solution to our economic problems.."
For the Resumtion of the Class Struggle! (tags)
The economic crisis which has crashed down on society has already had and for a long time will have disastrous consequences for the lives of the masses, as every worker can see in his daily life or her work. The bourgeois economists themselves admit it: they do not know what the causes of the crisis are – satisfying themselves by blaming the greed of the bankers or excessive financial deregulation – and they do not know when it will end and give way to the long-awaited “economic recovery”. The current crisis is the crisis of the capitalist mode of production, incapable of stopping itself, forced to produce always more commodities, at a certain point it comes up against the limits of the market.
The End of Finance Market Capitalism: Renaissance of Socialism? (tags)
The crisis offers an historical chance to civilize an unbridled capitalism with reform policy. The future relation of market and state is the focus of attention.. Financial markets are characterized by herd behavior. Risk consciousness disappears.
It is not a conjunctural crisis (tags)
"instinct is the hereditary knowledge of a specific program of life"
"Low-Wage Capitalism" Author Speaks in San Diego (tags)
Fred Goldstein, contributing editor of the Workers' World newspaper and author of the new book "Low-Wage Capitalism," spoke at the Malcolm X Library April 18 and described the current economic collapse as a classic "crisis of overproduction" in the Marxist sense. Though Wall Street greed and the bursting of the housing bubble played a part, he said, the real cause was the capitalist class's success in driving working people's wages down, not only in the U.S. but worldwide, to the point where workers can no longer afford to consume the products they produce. He called for a mass progressive movement to make explicit economic demands, especially jobs.
Banksters of Capitalism (tags)
The April issue of Facts for Working People. Issue includes Banksters of Capitalism, Tent Cities, and a Program for the Unemployed
Putting Finance Capitalism "Back in Its Box" (tags)
Their scheme is permanent debt bondage
Disarm the Markets! New Attac Basis Text (tags)
The therapy depends on the diagnosis. Mechanisms, instruments and actors can be identified whose action and teamwork led to the crash. The age of a unipolar world was very short. An historical chance is opening against finance capitalism.
Rasmussen Poll Indicates American Shift Toward Socialism (tags)
Perhaps the most significant aspect of this poll is the response from people under thirty. The statistics indicate that 66% of this demographic are actively questioning capitalism as a system.
The Crisis of Finance Market Capitalism as a Challenge for the Left (tags)
"The problems we face today cannot be solved with the minds that created them" (Albert Einstein).
You don’t want to pay for the crisis of capital? Then just don’t do it. (tags)
A critique of the calls for demonstrations against the G20 in Berlin, Frankfurt and London under the slogan “We won't pay for your crisis! – For a solidarity society”
SOCIALISM: THE TIME IS NOW - Los Angeles Conference & Workshops (tags)
The U.S. government ensures banks and big corporations get trillions in bailout funds while millions of workers are losing their jobs and homes in California and the rest of the U.S. If you want to build a fight back movement against racism, bigotry and capitalist exploitation, join us for the April 25 Conference & Workshops in L.A. Be part of the struggle for socialism! Find out what socialism is, what we aim for, and why socialism is the only answer to the misery created by capitalism.
Global Day of Action: We Will Not Pay for Your Crisis March 28 Berlin (tags)
Dominance of the profit logic and economization of all areas of life must be ended. Capitalism cannot solve global problems like poverty, insecurity, climate change, destruction of the environment, wars and dismantling democracy-it causes them!
Capitalism and Nature: Elmar Altvater (tags)
The capitalist formation of society is characterized by growth fetishism, the notion that boundless growth is socially necessary. Capitalism is historical. "If its beginning is certain, its end is also certain."
The Restof the World is Rioting! Los Angeles, You will Burn! (tags)
Los Angeles, The world is changing, Civilization is collapsing, Capitalism is failing.
http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/03/what_is_marxism.html
Financial Markets: Is No One Responsible? (tags)
Enlightenment is part of overcoming crisis, not only money packages. Ten officials in every boardroom is not the solution. Rather the problem is the incredible transformation of the modern bank into a service enterprise with an adjacent casino.
Overstrained Capitalism (tags)
Neoliberalism has driven the world into the greatest disaster since Hitler and Stalin. With Ronald Reagan, a president entered the White House who constantly proclaimed the state in the end was something bad.
"Mainstream politicians want to "fix" capitalism so we can return to a state of steady economic growth. But capitalism is broken when it is growing -- we don't want to return to business as usual. How can we use this period of economic collapse to move farther away from capitalism?"
Systemic Failure: Capitalism "Lays an Egg" (tags)
deepening economic crisis
Robert Jensen Challenges Patriotism, Industrialism (tags)
University of Texas journalism professor Robert Jensen spoke in San Diego February 21. His talk was billed as a challenge to the idea of patriotism, but he also said flatly that the industrial mode of production and the way of life it has allowed are no longer sustainable and the world's population will have to live in small, self-sufficient local communities. His speech also attacked "the coarsening of the culture" represented by the easy availability of pornography.
Capitalists Attempting to Redefine Socialism (tags)
Since Congress passed the first $168 billion government stimulus, the “S” word has become a favorite term for the corporate media in referring to socialism. It would be more appropriate to use the “S” word to refer to “stimulus” because it is evident that the capitalists are moving no closer to a transition to socialism; however, as the U.S. economic crisis continues to expand and the failure of capitalism become more apparent to the world, the wealthy ruling elite are now sustaining capitalism with one stimulus after another.
Will Obama Start the Next Trade War? (tags)
While campaigning to be president, Obama gave the general impression that he would act “cooperatively” to solve international problems, moving away from the Bush strategy of irresponsible “unilateralism.” But Obama took an aggressive stance towards China even on the campaign trail, including the accusations of “currency manipulation,” “violating intellectual property rights,” and “devaluing their goods.” Of course, the average American cares nothing about these types of crimes, nor should they.
Obama’s Campaign Promises and the Laws of Capitalism (tags)
Throughout his campaign, Obama made repeated overtures to working people. He talked about job creation, a tax cut for the middle class, health care, education, the rescinding of the lavish tax cuts for the rich, clean energy, facilitating unionization, and the elimination of the "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" policy for gays in the military. One got the distinct impression when he was campaigning that Obama was oriented to helping ordinary working people, who are now struggling to pay their bills, not the rich.
Competing Ideologies: Davos v. Belem (tags)
alternate ideological views
The world today is undeniably chaotic — war, abject poverty, and unimaginable wealth exist side by side. In an attempt to explain the current social turmoil, some have resorted to religion and apocalypse, while others place the blame on the few bad apples that held positions of power as the economy slid into destitution. And then there are those who blame conspiracy, immigrants, or a society-wide lack of morality. All of the above explanations seem to be missing a crucial ingredient. A simple observation should be central to any explanation of the current economic crisis: There are huge surpluses (or overproduction) of houses, cars, food stuffs, and many other products that millions of people desperately need, but cannot afford to buy. This is the essence of the problem.
The Blood of the Black Sheep (tags)
Crisis and Catharsis. Capitalism begins its great self-purging to remain what it is. The Wall Street boys and girls have not forgotten how to make money amid crisis. The speculation bubbles burst. The fictional wealth dissolves in thin air thanks to falling home prices and stock prices.
The Danger of Right-Wing Populism (tags)
A strange trend is appearing in the political realm of the Left. Self-proclaimed political conservatives — many current or former members of the Republican Party — are being given considerable room in Left publications, for example in Counterpunch and BuzzFlash. At first it seemed accidental, with only sporadic occurrences. Now these “renegade” right-wingers enjoy ample room in spaces formally reserved for “lefties only.” How is this to be explained?
mp3 audio: "Grasping the Financial Crisis" (tags)
Sam Girdin and Leo Panitch teach political economy at York University. The Toronto School of Creativity and Inquiry offers this mp3 audio in the hope that thousands of discussion groups will arise in the world.
Google video: Capitalism Hits the Fan-A Marxian View (tags)
Richard Wolff, a professor of economics at UMass Amherst, talks on the current "financial" crisis and capitalism in general. A form of socialism is presented as a possibility for exhausted and anxiety-ridden workers.
The capitalist system does not make a mistake; it is the mistake. Capitalism is the problem. The solution would be an independent-socialist social order whose highest principles are mutual aid, respect for nature and a nonviolent rule-free humanly just world.
"Wild Speculation is Sin" (tags)
"Marx recognized the core of globalization as a globalization of capital..He also warned against the economization of all areas of life..A capitalism without ethical and legal frameworks is misanthropic..The social market economy is a civilization product.."
We Are Already In The Future! (tags)
At election’s denouement, to the Right the outraged, self loathing of the loser & the losers, including one dude standing mutely in Michigan, a Republican delegate, in a Klan suit, describing Obama as an “Islamic communist”. To the Left, the self important drears who had urged us to throw our votes away, as they objectively, in the name of their “principles”, gave votes to John McCain.
Holy Scripture is the Standard, not Capitalism (tags)
Describing the dominant system as a social market economy is a deception. Social justice should be the integrating element of our economic order. Justice is not something additional to faith in God. Trust in the invisible hand is the core of the religion of the market.
Tax and Spend Liberalism versus Hyper-Inflation (tags)
Indirect Taxation of packrats
Former U.S. Attorney General, Ramsey Clark, to Speak at National Conference on Socialism i (tags)
Former U.S. Attorney General, Ramsey Clark, to Speak at National Conference on Socialism in Los Angeles. December 6-7, 2008 on the UCLA campus. Activists and progressives from across the country are gathering for a two-day conference to discuss organizing and ways to fight back against racism, sexism, imperialism and other issues effecting working class and oppressed people.
Some thoughts on the current economic crisis and capitalism
Hope in Common, by David Graeber (tags)
We seem to have reached an impasse. Capitalism as we know it appears to be coming apart.
Klaus Offe, a left thinker, once proposed Offe's paradox, the idea that"while capitalism cannot coexist with, neither can it exist without the welfare state." Canada has done better than some countries in protecting social welfare. The welfare state is not dead; what is dead is econ security.
Bankruptcy of the Last Utopia (tags)
The economy should be a part of life, not a steamroller crushing creativity and self-realization. The economy should serve humankind; humanity should not serve bankers, SUVs and sports stadiums. The same Chinese letter represents crisis & opportunity.Will future be more human?
Rich of the World, Enrich Yourselves! (tags)
Financial jugglers speculating with food, oil and other raw materials caused double-digit inflation and made staple foods like rice and wheat into luxury items for millions. Neoliberalism with one blow managed to drive nation states to the defensive.
The ONLY ANSWER to Capitalism Conference (tags)
The ONLY solution to Capitalism.
Barack Obama, new mouthpiece of ruling class interests (tags)
In renewing its great traditions of struggle, the American proletariat will have to fight the coming blood and tears policy of the Obama presidency
Welcome to Finance Market Capitalism (tags)
The financial market escapades must be the problem because capitalism itself cannot be the problem. The state bailout measure prepares the ground for inflationary developments.
Not "Fascism or Obama": Fascism and Obama (tags)
It is all too obvious that anti-fascism renounces revolution. But anti-fascism fails exactly where its realism claims to be effective: in preventing a possible dictatorial mutation of society. The fight for a democratic state is inevitably a fight to consolidate the state, and far from crippling totalitarianism, such a fight increases totalitarianism's stranglehold on society.
The Death of Capitalism (tags)
This latest crisis may be the last one that capitalism can survive.
What the Economic Crisis Means for Us and How to Defend Ourselves (tags)
Gloom and Doom-----The pillars of the U.S. capitalist economy are crumbling and falling all around us while the federal government frantically races from one crisis to another, throwing money at them as if throwing water on a fire. It could well turn out that the money represents only a few drops of water thrown on threatening flames that will soon billow into an out-of-control wildfire so that nothing President-elect Barak Obama has proposed will succeed in averting the disaster.
Financial Market Capitalism: Neoliberalis become State Socialists (tags)
Neoliberalism is neither new nor liberal. All freedom is demanded for capital, even though human dependence is intensified and human existences destroyed. The state becomes a functionary for neoliberal concepts. The debts of Fannie/Freddie are added to the nine trillion.
Capitalism changed into "finance-driven" capitalism. The profit rates for industrial capital fell in the past decades. Washington could be paralyzed under the debt yoke like Japan in the early 1990s. After decades of market idolization, the US has rediscovered political power.
STOP THE PRO-WALL STREET NAZI FASCISM OF THE MCCARTHYITE MCCAIN – PALIN HORSE! (tags)
Like the Nazis the Republican campaign is spreading phobia against Marxism to cover up the Republican and Reaganite coddling of Wall Street capitalism, profiteering and deregulation and for the Bush-Paulsen-McCain bailout of Wall Street. Time to stop politicians plumbing out bail-out profits for Wall Street capitalism! Time for real, socialist, Marxist change!
AJLPP Analysis on the Current World Capitalist Crisis (tags)
The capitalist bailout rammed into the US Congress has infused into the banks more than $ 500 B out of the $ 700 appropriations. But despite the huge infusion to the capitalist system, the crisis marched on with impunity. The Alliance-Philippines (AJLPP) believes that the latest unraveling of the “free market” dogma, the ultimate exposure of the failed concept of “neoliberal globalization” and the gravity of the current level of the economic and financial crisis of the imperialist powers headed by the US is now totally exposed to the whole world. But this phenomenon must be explained and understood and should not be feared. We must act to face this crisis with renewed determination and readiness to struggle for the people and to change this rotten system.
The Broken Pact with the People (tags)
Trust capitalism and shun government interferences we were told. But irresponsible bankers saw the chance to get rich quick and went for it. Their future has become ours-and the promise of a common good has evaporated along with faith in democratic capitalism.
The Future as Possibility: Elmar Altvater (tags)
The state should not be a trough for the super-wealthy. Representatives representing money and not the people are marionettes of a corrupt campaign financing system. The system must be changed if it is to survive. Call Congress 1-800-270-0309.
The government-business looting of America.
Foreign countries will not finance US wars and US consumption for ever. The US must accept the new reality that countries want to diversity, not accumulate dollars. What becomes of a country that refuses systemic criticism and sets missions and agendas above facts and realities?
No to the Bailout of the Capitalist Speculators! (tags)
The financial crisis that has been heating up since early 2007 reached the boiling point in late September. Credit markets virtually stopped functioning. A full-blown panic swept stock markets worldwide. The U.S. economy is in the throes of a recession that could turn into a Depression lasting for years. In these dire straits, the Wall Street speculators who set off this crisis are demanding that the government rescue them with a bailout priced at $700 billion. The actual costs will be far higher, a trillion dollars or more. Meanwhile, the Democrats are pushing hardest for the Bush bailout of the banks. Presidential candidate Barack Obama blames "greed" for the crisis on Wall Street (capitalism without greed?) and says there must be no "blank check to Washington" -- meaning he's for putting in a few conditions as window dressing. Following in the Democrats' footsteps, the AFL-CIO labor bureaucrats called a demo for "No Blank Check for Wall Street." Yet no amount of regulation will stop the boom-bust cycle of capitalism. Meanwhile unemployment lines are growing and a million families were thrown out of their homes by bank foreclosures in the last year. While the fat cats, Democrats and bureaucrats are all going for the Bush bailout to prop up U.S. capitalism, revolutionary Marxists oppose this trillion-dollar giveaway to the Wall Street speculators, calling instead for a program of transitional demands leading to the expropriation of the banks and the entire bourgeoisie through workers revolution.
Bail-Out, Economic Democracy and the Socialist Path (tags)
David Schweickart, political philosopher, discusses the financial crisis, what it exposes about capitalism, how it can set the stage for economic democracy, and open the socialist path.
Pulling the plug won't mean the end of the world; there is an alternative. Let's do a Kevorkian on this rotten system.
Karl Marx's Accurate Prediction (tags)
Karl Marx's accurate prediction about the continuing crises in capitalism and the resultant concentration of the world's wealth in fewer and fewer hands and the impoverishment of workers
Criticism of Consumerism and Criticism of Capitalism (tags)
With the striking climate change, the "western lifestyle" has come into crisis. Our consumption is more environmentally-friendly but we simultaneously consume more and more so the environment is hardly relieved. Necessary social framing conditions are faded out.
Tarot Cards and the Left (tags)
How prognostications of doom encourage passivity over action
Facts for Working People (tags)
Labors Militant Voice (LMV) publishes a newspaper which aims to talk to the working class about issues effecting us. August issue: Why Gas Prices are so High, How to Apply for a Government Bail Out, Strikers in South Africa chant "Eat the Rich" and Why we Need a Workers Party Now.
Capitalism’s final death throws. (tags)
Are finally upon us.
Life is Gift, not Possession (tags)
In "Kaspar Hauser," Jacob Wassermann describes a town suffering under a long drought. With the wells dry, the town becomes enmeshed in violence and recrimination until a little boy plays so beautifully on his flute that water rises again in the wells.
Alternatives to Free Trade: Fair Trade and Beyond (tags)
The global debate around free-trade and its consequences has evolved tremendously in recent years, from tiny circles of leftist critics into a broad international protest movement. Although the movement began to bloom in response to the policies of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the biggest demonstrations have been in response to the now-popular "bi-lateral" free-trade agreements that economically powerful countries sign with poorer nations. Once one has become conscious of the problems created by free-trade agreements, whether they are international or regional, an immediate task presents itself: finding a feasible alternative. Yes, the trade policy advocated by most big business politicians is "free-trade," and yes, this policy has had devastating consequences for working and poor people worldwide, while filling the already-full bank accounts of the rich. But the issue of "free-trade" alone isn't sufficient to fully explain the vast social problems that plague so many countries.
Doug Dowd's "At the Cliff's Edge - Part II" (tags)
a stinging indictment of US imperialism
Doug Dowd's "At the Cliff's Edge" (tags)
an indictment of imperialism
Arnaud de Borchgrave on McClellan, Neocons & Clean Break (tags)
Arnaud de Borchgrave on McClellan, Neocons & Clean Break
AJLPP Sautes the 35th Year of the NDFP (tags)
On behalf of the Filipino American community in the United States and all its allies, we in the Alliance Philippines (AJLPP)consider it fitting and proper to extend warmest greetings to the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) in celebration of the 35th anniversary of its founding on 24 April 1973 when its 10-Point Program was unfurled and promulgated. We share in the Filipino people's jubilation that the NDFP has won great victories in the application and development of the policy and tactics of the united front in advancing the people's democratic revolution against foreign monopoly capitalism, domestic feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism in the Philippines.
"We Believe, We Are What We Buy": Identity-Shopping (tags)
Happy Earth Day! That doesn't mean buy a Toyota Prius! Buying a Prius can be a substitute for sparing the environment. While capitalism, consumerism and commerce arenot evil, life is denatured when commerce is everything.
Non-Profits, Privatization, and Capitalism (tags)
As soon as we begun organizing our workplace into a union— a drug and alcohol rehab center— the murky non-profit world proved to be an obstacle. When first approached, many of our coworkers asked the same question, “would a union even work at a non-profit”? And to this we normally answered, “why not?” – Although a better answer might have been, “Why do non-profit workers believe they should have less rights or pay than other workers?” And with this question you’ve opened a Pandora’s Box that leads down a series of questions and answers that reveal a lot about how modern society functions, especially the relationship between workers’ standard of living, non-profits, and the present state of the capitalist system itself. To help explain the gargantuan role that non-profits play in modern society, a book of essays about the subject -- cleverly named The Revolution Will Not be Funded-- was released by INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence. In its introduction chapter, the book explains how non-profits have evolved into organizations that divert political movements into dead ends, shape public opinion, and most relevant to this article, perform services previously done by the state.
"The workers who have to sell themselves bit by bit are a commodity like every other commercial article." This quotation from the 1848 Communist Manifesto is an accurate description of the current system which is morally sick and lacks consensus.
The Legal Criminality of Finance Capitalism (tags)
The market mechanism, the Keynesians say, is not efficient or balanced. Charles Ponzi was one of the greatest swindlers of American history. Instead of the capitalist economy holding the strings of politics, politics could use economic power to create new realities.
VOTE PSL in 2008: Put Human Needs Over Profits (tags)
The Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) is fielding a slate of candidates in the 2008 U.S. presidential elections: Gloria La Riva for President and Eugene Puryear for Vice President. The campaign is rooted in the struggle for socialism. We believe a better world is possible and together we can make it happen.
The End of Capitalism As We Know It: Book Review (tags)
Capitalism needs a pension. The time for a dissolution of the historical phenomenon of this special economic form is overdue. The good old capitalism now appears as a development-brake and catastrophe-accelerator because monopolies are impractical and inflexible.
Holiday Season Hypocrisy (tags)
Consumerism corrupts the holiday season.
The immiseration of the working class – Marx was right! (tags)
Just a couple of weeks ago, America's government tax collectors, the Internal Revenue Service, issued a new report. The IRS found that the richest 1% of Americans earned a record 21.2% of all income in 2005, up from 19% the year before. At the same time, the bottom 50% earned just 12.8% of all income in 2005, down from 13.4%. This was a record. IRS data only go back to 1986, but other academic research suggests that the last time wealthy Americans had such a high percentage of the national income was in the 1920s. And there's more. The IRS data show that the incomes of people right in the middle of all the income brackets (where half earn less and half earn more) fell 2% between 2000 and 2005 when adjusted for inflation, to $30,881. At the same time, the income level for the top 1% grew 3% to $364,657, or over ten times as much! This shows that capitalism is not only a breeder of economic crisis, war and waste, but is also a system of grotesque exploitation and injustice. When Marx wrote Das Kapital around 150 years ago, he argued that "pauperism (poverty) forms the condition of capitalist production and of the capitalist development of wealth... in proportion as capital accumulates, the situation of the worker, be his payment high or low, must grow worse".
"Chaos is a Sign for the System's Fall" (tags)
Bush is an absolute disaster. Instead of withdrawing and adjusting to the changed geopolitical situation, he leaped suddenly into the abyss. Capitlaism is in crisis because endless capital accumulation can no longer be guaranteed to capitalists. Speculation reaps bitter fruits.
Reforms and the System Question (tags)
According to Marxist perspectives, capitalism develops with crises and ruptures. Possibilities of revolutionary social upheavals open up in these crises. The old wisdom of the Fordist age that cars cannot buy cars has lost all value to the elites.
Retirement under capitalism (tags)
Sometimes small statistics can have huge implications. The U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics recently reported that the age at which U.S. workers retire has risen for the first time in 100 years. According to the report, in the mid-1980s, 18 percent of people in their late 60s still had jobs; today, it is 29 percent. Millions of U.S. workers can no longer look forward to the “Golden Years” of guaranteed Social Security, Medicare health insurance and employer pensions. One in four baby boomers surveyed said they would likely never be able to retire – in other words, they will “work until they drop”. For those that do want to retire, the age at which they can do so is also being systematically raised. Workers born in 1960 or later must wait until age 67, rather than 65, to get their full Social Security benefits. There is talk of raising it further to 70. The mainstream media took scant notice of this, and for good reason; it’s a huge indicator of deeper processes that are destroying the standard of living of workers in the United States and internationally. A quick look into why workers are delaying retirement – if they have the “luxury” of retiring at all – points a condemning finger at the current state of international capitalism, while at the same time warning younger workers of the even worse conditions they’ll certainly face under the auspices of the capitalist system.
Is Dennis Kucinich an Alternative for U.S. Workers? (tags)
Millions of U.S. workers and youth have come to reject the inhuman conditions the crisis of capitalism is producing: the War on Iraq, the Katrina disaster, attacks on immigrants, stagnant wages, cuts in social services, the health care crisis, and on and on. On the basis of events, consciousness is changing, starting with the most advanced and active layer of the workers and youth, and is increasingly directed toward a break with the capitalist system and its representatives. It is in this context that Dennis Kucinich, a six time congressional incumbent from Ohio, who is now in his second run for U.S. president, has generated interest among those disaffected with the “business as usual” politicians. Kucinich presents himself as a “progressive alternative”, and to his credit he stands out favorably on many issues when compared to the rest of the mainstream candidates. He has been a vocal and consistent opponent of the War on Iraq from the very outset, calling for a full withdrawal of U.S. troops. He has said that if he wins the presidency, his “first acts in office will be to cancel NAFTA and the WTO”. He is also the only presidential candidate who openly opposes for-profit health care in favor of a national single-payer system.
A Hundred and Fifty Years Later and Marx Still Prevails (tags)
Marx Was Right But Don’t Tell Them
For a Future of Solidarity and Justice (tags)
The Economic social model is an alternative to the American mini-welfare state. The irrationality of finance capitalism appears in that the stock price rises while the value of labor falls. Labor is shamelessly robbed of its rights and dignity.
No matter what they say, the bourgeois cannot escape the fact that Marx's ideas still hold water after all these years. His analysis of the capitalist system, its laws and contradictions are as relevant today as they were 150 years ago. The serious journals of capitalism confirm this.
Reviewing Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine" (tags)
The human wreckage of disaster capitalism.
Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine" and the policy of Disaster Capitalism (tags)
"Shock and Awe" is what the media and pentagon called the bombardment of Baghdad by U.S. forces at the start of the 2003 Persian Gulf War. We remember the horrible visuals well, just as we remember, in graphic detail, our own shock and awe event on September 11, 2001, when we were treated to the first in a series of psychological trauma for the new the "War on Terror" PR campaign. All of these horrible events were designed to turn us, and Iraqis, into pliable infants, willing to let our government do whatever they want in order to "protect us."
Tranforming Capitalist Schooling (tags)
School is back. So are liberals and conservatives, bickering over how to preserve capitalist schooling. At issue is how to get beyond capital, its promises of perpetual war and meaningless jobs. How shall we keep our ideas, yet teach?
The Coupon Clippers Get A History Lesson From One Of Their Own (tags)
Bourgeois theoreticians take measures to assure their class that the present crisis will pass. "Do not panic" is the message. Good times will return and the robbery can go on. Time for a history lesson.
'Old Europe' Bails Out Idiot-run Free-Market US Government - Again (tags)
Right now, the entire world's banking system is being pressed to the limit of what it can do to prevent a worldwide crash of the capitalist system due to what one European banker called "a complete evaporation of liquidity" [Source: "ECB reportedly weighs dollar swap with Fed", MarketWatch.com, 13 August, 2007]. In layman's terms, that means that the world's banking system is running out of the funds needed to keep the capitalist credit system running.
A Short Introduction to Marx's Das Kapital (tags)
Marx’s analysis of capitalism, unlike bourgeois accounts, is conducted from a historical perspective. In other words, Marx was keenly aware that during the march of history, one economic system, because of internal, irreconcilable contradictions, has been replaced by another until it too falls victim to similar contradictions. Of course, when one is born and matures within a single economy and lacks knowledge of any other system, one tends to take one’s own for granted, believing that it will persevere forever. A historical perspective has the advantage of forcing us to rise above the provincial perspective that assumes economic systems are eternal. We survey from above the vast array of systems that have played their fleeting role on history’s stage. For this reason, Marx’s analysis of capitalism is specifically written with the purpose of unveiling its inner contradictions so that the possibility of its demise stands boldly in relief. This runs directly opposed to bourgeois portrayals of capitalism as “natural” and hence as unalterable as the law of gravity itself.
For a United Anti-War Movement (tags)
The world situation is characterized by extreme political, economic, social, and military instability. Humanity has entered an unprecedented period of wars, revolutions, and counter-revolutions. This is at root a reflection of the crisis of the world capitalist system, with the crisis of U.S. capitalism at its center. Capitalism is an economic system based on private ownership of the means of production and the relentless pursuit of profits. This leads to vicious competition between rival capitalists for control of the world's natural resources, markets and labor. Under capitalism, national governments negotiate trade deals, use diplomatic pressure, and often resort to military force to defend the interests of "their" country's corporations.
Is Barack Obama an Alternative for U.S. Workers? (tags)
After years of Bush’s open-ended war on working people at home and abroad, many on the “left” are desperate for an alternative. For many, that alternative is Barack Obama, a Democratic Senator from Illinois. Obama, who is very careful with his words and actions, has done a good job so far of portraying himself as a “sensible progressive”. However, far from being a “progressive” alternative, Obama is at his core a typical representative of the bosses’ political parties. Despite presenting himself as a candidate of “change”, Obama is a defender of capitalism and imperialism, and hence of exploitation and oppression. On all fundamentals, he is far closer to Bush than he is to being a genuine alternative for working people.
Why your revolution is no liberation! (tags)
During the recent weeks and months a spirited debate developed in different German left wing newspapers and groups about the sense or non-sense, the perspectives and the means and goals of the mobilisation against the G8 summit. Different German and Austrian anti-fascist groups started a campaign to criticise a wrong analysis of capitalism widely spread in the anti-globalisation movement. In the context of this campaign several public discussions and lectures were held, a special webpage was set up but above all reader was published that contains a set of basic texts referring to this problem. This reader is available in German and English and will soon also be published in French in order to spread the debate also across other countries. Check it out: www.no-liberation-reader.tk
Capitalist Globalization and the "middle-class" (tags)
Since the 1970s, the social consequences of the current period of capitalism (commonly referred to as globalization) have primarily affected the working class, especially those in manufacturing jobs. Despite the consequential deterioration of large cities and countless smaller towns — not to mention the pauperization of large segments of the population — the effects were dismissed by politicians and the mainstream media as necessary evils. The victims of this process were told to pick themselves up by their boot-straps, go back to school, and learn to integrate into the new, technology-driven global economy. How things have changed! Experience has exposed all the promises of globalization to be lies, and now those who think of themselves as "middle-class" are finding themselves on the chopping block. These skilled workers — engineers, Information Technology workers, accountants, legal and medical personnel, etc. — are confronted by the combined forces of a shrinking labor market, outsourcing, and the corporate-led importation of foreign workers through the H-1B visa program.
"Capitalism is not the solution" (tags)
Attac turns against the unjust sides of globalization. We need the contagious power of the ideas of freedom, justice and equality. The last European revolution in 1989 succeeded despite dictatorial conditions.
Book review of Benjamin Barber's "Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults and Swallow Citizens Whole"
ILPS May First 2007 Message (tags)
The International League of Peoples’ Struggle extends its most militant greetings to the workers and other toiling people of the world on the occasion of International Workers’ Day. We commemorate the first May Day in 1887 when hundreds of thousands of workers struck in every major American city calling for an 8-hour workday. In Chicago, the police brutally attacked the strikers and demonstrators. A rally in Haymarket Square to protest the police brutality was also attacked. A number of labor leaders were framed on trumped up charges and hanged while others were thrown in prison. One hundred twenty years later, the workers still suffer from the barbarities of capitalism. They have to struggle to achieve their own emancipation and the emancipation of mankind.
What is good for the economy and what is good for people diverge more and more! Nevertheless the opposite is drummed into people..Capitalism only knows the irrational end-in-itself, making more money out of money until the end of time. Capitalism strikes its own limits.
Frantic Lunge from Drowning Conservative (tags)
Howard’s latest glib contribution, ‘Australia Rising’, delivered at the Queensland Media Club today, is yet another attempt to claw back into favour and steal attention away from the Murdoch endorsed future Prime Minister, Kevin (I can suck harder than you) Rudd. Howard’s spin-doctors have been working overtime to no avail it would seem. Following the ridiculous and desperate attempts to steal the agenda with infantile attacks on US presidential candidates, the HIV positive and most recently Howard's very revealing and ‘removed’ call for divine intervention regarding the water crisis, the “Australia Rising” speech will no doubt be greeted by the public with all the disdain it deserves!
Virginia Tech: Laying The Blame (tags)
There will be a lot of blame dished out in the aftermath of the Virginia Tech massacre. But one element will be missing and that is the system itself. Capitalism and the society it nurtures will remain unscathed in the big business press.
"Unemployment is a Victory" (tags)
Higher productivity allows a maximum in prosperity to be realized with a minimum in human labor. Freedom, not full employment, is the alternative today.
Solidarity with the General Strike in Guinea! (tags)
Four days after its official beginning on Monday, the general strike continues in Guinea. The production of C.G.B, the second leading Bauxite producer in the world, has been halted, the workers also having stopped the trains carrying ore, while the production of the other consortium continues to grind towards a halt (provoking incendiary inflation in the prices of bauxite and aluminum on the world market). All economic activities are paralysed.
Capitalism and Corruption (tags)
Until recently, the bribes paid by German firms abroad were deducted from the corpor-ation tax as operating expenses..The neoliberal dogma doesnt need any religion since it makes capitalism into a religion.. The cult of abstract riches cannot replace morality Mergers and takeovers are central.
David Simon: “We’re Headed Towards Separate Americas!” (tags)
The award-winning author of the acclaimed HBO program, “The Wire,” painted a grim picture of this country. David Simon said: “We’re headed [towards] separate Americas.” Speaking at Loyola College, in Baltimore, MD, on Feb. 6, 2007, he said that “unencumbered Capitalism has become our God.” In our greedy society, Simon underscored: “Human are worth less, not more: less.” He said America is going to be a “more brutish, cynical and divided place.”
Welcome to 2007, the year of plain sight and little doubt! The criminal incompetence of the Bush regime is impossible to hide, thanks in part to a highly successful American son, Bill Gates – and everyone thought that Bin Laden posed the greatest threat to the American way of life! It was Bill Gates, the world’s most successful capitalist, who, a decade ago, accelerated the development of the “information super highway”. His superbly streamlined and devastatingly efficient marketing machine facilitated the age of open communication that many take for granted today.
FAITH BASED INCINERATOR INITIATIVE (tags)
It is my grave concern that American workers, especially Christian workers, and others who snub wisdom in spite of, or in lieu of faith, be paid on time, and on their regularly scheduled payday. Therefore I demand that Bush pay me what he owes me on time or God will surely torture him in hell for a minimum of 500 years. The current balance due would be about 100 million dollars.
The Rise and Fall of the UN (tags)
One’s opinion of the United Nations reveals a lot about political consciousness; and because perception is usually based on experience, it’s only natural that people from different countries have opposing views about the UN and its pillar institutions— the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and the World Trade Organization (WTO). In the United States, familiarity of the UN is limited to vague notions of ‘international democracy’ and ‘peacekeeping’, words that inspire the noblest of intentions; the World Bank and IMF on the other hand are institutions that invoke little reaction among the US public. How and by whom the UN was formed, whose interests it serves, and the actual history of its ‘peacekeeping’ missions are all things rarely examined. It is the purpose of this essay to look at the formation and development of the UN, and in so doing, attempt to show the evolution of the capitalistic system itself, which was ‘reborn’ upon the back of these hardly-neutral organizations.
Open Letter to the Rulers in Germany (tags)
We were almost convinced we really had the same interests as your corporations, banks and politicians. We almost believed that all our desires could become reality in capitalism.
...
Dissecting the war on terror (tags)
After five years of post 9/11 government, U.S. foreign and domestic policy continues to be dominated by the all-encompassing ‘war on terror’. Events have since exposed this so-called war for what it is: a gross propaganda campaign used to suppress civil liberties and launch global war.
A World Beyond Capitalism Conference! No Charges for anything! (tags)
The Second Annual International Multiracial Alliance Building Peace Conference, known as the 2006 A World Beyond Capitalism Conference is set to begin August 26th in Portland. It will continue from August 26th-28th, 2006. There is no charge for anything! http://aworldbeyondcapitalism.org
Uniting the Liberals, Lefties, and Progressives (tags)
Ever since the classic revolutions that begun the current epoch of ‘democracy’, and more importantly capitalism, there have remained an inherent disunity among those loosely defined as progressives. Why this lack of unity exists, and why our political opponents do not seem to suffer from the same ailment is something worth examining.
The Planetary War of the United States of America (Dec2001) (tags)
Sooner or later the competing bourgeoisies will attempt to free themselves, to unite, to escape from America’s more and more choking dominance.
The Second American Revolution : Religion and Capitalism (tags)
A brief examination of the 'family values' of a happily married couple.
The Second American Revolution : Capitalism, Proverbs and Parables (tags)
I will speak to them in parables (sound bites). I will reveal to them mysteries and the secret things which have been kept hidden from them for long ages past. A revolution is a propaganda war and it the decisive battles are not fought with guns.
The Second American Revolution : More Revolutionary Proverbs (tags)
More proverbs and parables
On Jonathan Kozol's "Manifiesto" (tags)
The struggle for social justice can begin in schools, with a mass movement to take direct action in order to overcome racist high-stakes tests, and imperialist wars.
Visiting the SCF: Report Back (tags)
Impressions from my second visit to the farm (I'm from Sonoma County)
True Nature of Obscenity (tags)
We are daily surrounded by capitalist obscenities such as poverty, war, injustice and inequality. Insult is added to injury when bourgeois spokespersons such as Billy Graham blame God and human beings. It is enough to make a person swear.
Break the Neoliberal Hegemony! (tags)
This call to a new LEFT party in Germany could give hope to all who yearn for social justice and structural/systemic corrections. While corporate profits and assets incomes set new records, wages, unemployment benefits and pensions are cut.
The Dilemma of Capitalism (tags)
Without capitalism, we could not live but we can hardly survive with it. Shifting social costs is the real core of capitalism..Politics is powerless toward the economy. Governments are forced to weigh the control of capital against positional deterioration.
The Utopias of Capitalism (tags)
:Government and freedom exclude one another" Max Barry in "Jennifer Government." In the negative utopia, the dystopia, the fear is over capital interests. Workers are no longer paid because their work is divine service.
What we can learn from the immigrants rights march (tags)
Two days after May Day's mobilization of immigrants and their supporters, Ricardo Alarcon, President of Cuba's National Assembly, took a look at the marches and drew some conclusions. for the struggle for a better world everywhere.
It’ no accident that many people are finding a rekindled interest in the writings of Karl Marx; the international assault of workers wages and benefits, continued warfare, and economic instability in general are causing a revival of the buried and slandered ideas of Marxism. Many of these concepts offer tremendous insight about the origins and workings of capitalism, and thus the causes of many of society’s current problems. Needless to say, involved are immense implications for anybody interested in becoming an activist. A “Marxist” is someone who accepts some of the key points about history and society first explained by Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels, and elaborated further by the writings of Lenin, Trotsky, and many others (Stalin, Mao, etc are Marxists in name only). Unfortunately, one cannot learn about these ideas by going to college, aside from the many biased and bastardized versions of the subject. The following is a brief explanation of some of the more important concepts of Marxism.
The Libertarian Anarchist Antiauthoritarian Forum in Athens, Greece, May 4-7, 2006 (tags)
Libertarian, Anarchist and Antiauthoritarian Forum, in Athens
The Long War: The Apotheosis of Capitalism Part One & Two (tags)
Sheepdog's Pic. Extremely important perspectives on the current goading of the people into a future of war and terror, and Project Granite Shadow. Ralph Schoenman and Mya Shone provide analysis on the collapse of Capitalism into Permanent War.
There are millions of refusals, millions of people who say or cry No everyday..Refusing to obey means breaking the rule of capital.. The utopian star of a different society exists for all of us but our ways of seeing this star and trying to reach it are different.
No Work instead of Precarious Work (tags)
After the fall of the New Economy, flexibility, individualization and outsourcing are obviously threats not promises and mean nothing but poverty and precarious working conditions.
Libertarianism: Bogus Anarchy (tags)
A rebuttal to this essay is Contra Sabatini: Bogus Critique by Tim Virkkala, wherein Sabatini's interpretation of the individualist anarchists is disputed. In my opinion the analytic meaning of "anarchism" takes precedence over historical factors. Thus any ideology which wants to disband the State can rightfully be called anarchist.
Steve Miller, Bono and Angela Merkel—What An Act (tags)
As US capitalists intensify their offensive, the global club to which they belong meets in Davos with poster boy Bono offering them a cover.
Our activity is our power Organizing the victory of desire against survival, post-political politics
Hardly anyone today dares financing the social state by cutting the armament budget.. The fat years are over! Three cheers for dis-possession! Expropriation instead of representation!
Katrina’s Aftermath: The Catastrophe Continues (tags)
Katrina was not a natural disaster; it was and still is a social disaster. Katrina and its aftermath is the market at work for you
Capitalism Loves Violent Revolution (tags)
keeping peace
China's Global Reach: Book Review (tags)
China is rising and understand its consequences
The Bush Staff Goes To Morals School (tags)
Ethics morals and .........and the hush hush about Larry Franklin full links: lark.phoblacht.net/mlr711055g.html
Global Capitalism: the Scourge of Democracy (tags)
global capitalism is an economic Colt 45 for the times
Another world is possible. This is directed against the famous and thoughtless assumption of the impossibility of alterna-tives at the "end of history".. The substance of societies is tapped for financial institutions.
CAPITALISM AND SOCIALISM (tags)
Every year since 1990, the United Nations publishes its Human Development Report. It contains the most authoritative data on the state of the world. These reports are available online: hdr.undp.org/reports/view_reports.cfm?type=1. Based on those reports (referred to by year, followed by page), what does our world look like?
Anarchism is a political theory which aims to create anarchy, "the absence of a master, of a sovereign." [P-J Proudhon, What is Property , p. 264] In other words, anarchism is a political theory which aims to create a society within which individuals freely co-operate together as equals. As such anarchism opposes all forms of hierarchical control - be that control by the state or a capitalist - as harmful to the individual and their individuality as well as unnecessary.
Irrationalism and Ideology in Risk Capitalism (tags)
Reductionist worldviews promise "order" in the mixed-up social consciousness.. Psycho-analysis has coined the term "regression" for this process of escapism..Psychic regres-sion involves withdrawal to a state of original immediacy, an earlier less complex stage.
Genocide in New Orleans Perpetrated by US Capitalism (tags)
We are witnessing genocide of the black workingclass community of New Orleans and the exposure of the rottenness of American capitalism in its refusal to adequately respond to the disaster from the latest hurricane.
Literacy in Economic Questions (tags)
The neoliberal total market was created through political strategies, above all the installation of dictatorships by the secret service and military interventions of the US, not through democracy.."
16th WFSY - Chavez once again calls for socialism as the only way to destroy capitalism (tags)
Bolivarian Revolution
A Little Box of Bullshit (tags)
The spinners and the bullshitters have presented us with a very narrow box to fit inside. But through acting and thinking outside that box, we can liberate ourselves.
Purgatory of the Market (tags)
"The new capitalism is also a totalitarian movement that cannot or will not rest until it has seized the whole world and put everything in private hands that previously was subject to state or civil control.."
A Revolutionary ‘Sound bite' (BKH) (tags)
Bring revolutionary clarity which is required to overcome and destroy counter revolutionary mass confusion, the product of the propaganda attacks and deceits of this current ruling system.
Magical Mysterious 1967 (tags)
Nobody could have predicted 1967 in 1966. It seemed to come out of the clear blue sky. But it didn’t. It had been germinating for a long, long time. And there is no reason to think that if we couldn’t see it coming in 1966 that we would see it coming now.
Theses on Domination and Barbarism (tags)
"The policy of scapegoats in Germany and elsewhere devours the liberal foundations of society little by little and produces tears in the fundamentals of demcoracy.. A counterpart could be a new social contract for the 21st century.."
The cynical misuse and perversion of the word ‘freedom’ has made it difficult to discuss the idea rationally. But freedom is real and so is oppression. Those that pervert the term will tell you that a homeless person is free. That person has been indoctrinated.
Reflections on Socialism (tags)
The main political task at this moment is to assemble the necessary social forces to defeat Bush and his counterparts in Congress and elsewhere.
Capitalism Criticism: Inexorable Struggle for Survival (tags)
"The civilized foundation of cooperative human life is furtively undermined by the capitalist form of organizing society.. Rational objectives often capsize into social irrationa-lity.. Unemployment is a form of violence.."
Shock without Therapy, Market without Order, (tags)
Half of Russia's assets are gone. Was this caused by Yeltzin, the IMF or the Washington Consensus? This article by a Ukrainian novelist tells us that the end of history and victory capitalism are over as utopias. May we be summoned to serious reflection.
And in the end we can look back on our lives and remember all the great shows we watched on television; the great virtual escape from alienation.
Lacking Brains or Just Fearfull? (tags)
Some indymedia writers (or those on Resist.ca or axisoflogic.com) sound like they make sense – very few actually show any understanding of the problems that the world faces - and fewer seem to have any ability to begin to conceptualize solutions!
Maybe we need them to take care of us. Maybe we need them to, as *they* say, take the risks. But then again, maybe we don't.
Wal Mart has recently given workers in Quebec the great 'fuck you' for having the guts to organize. A sign of the times.
Bush Concealing Imperialist Goals Behind Democratic Rhetoric (tags)
Webster's defines euphemeism as the substitution of an inoffensive term for one considered offensive..Capitlaism has little to do with democracy or freedom or liberty.
May Day Anti-Authoritarian Contingent (tags)
Mayday Anti-Capitalist and Anti-Authoritarian Contingent April 30th, Gather at 12 noon at Olympic and Broadway
Call for Revolutionary Anarchist Contingent M19 (tags)
March 19, the 2 year anniversary of the US’s latest imperial affair, we call for a revolutionary anarchist contingent, which will march in the ANSWER demonstration at 12 noon, M19 at Hollywood and Vine.
The So. Cal. Grocery Strike: A Years Perspective (tags)
Its been a year since the end of the longest grocery srike in US history. Where do we stand now, and what really was at issue? Was anything really resolved? (orginally posted at :www.worldsocialism.org/usa/blog)
NEW ANTI-CAPITALIST WEBSITE: PROLE.INFO (tags)
Announcing a new anti-capitalist website: http://www.prole.info It has lots of pamphlets in PDF form, as well as a number of online texts. Check it out.
Chavez: Capitalism must be transcended (tags)
Hands Off VenezuelaCampaign
The Nationalisation of VENEPAL: What does it signify? (tags)
Hands Off Venezuela Campaign
Chavez nationalises VENEPAL under workers control (tags)
Hands Off Venezuela Campaign
Building Bridges Radio: Wal-Mart's Template & Attorney General Gonzales? (tags)
Building Bridges: Your Community and Labor Report brings you this 28 minute radio program. TO LISTEN CLICK ON WEB LINK BELOW
Building Bridges Radio: Wal-Mart's Template & Attorney General Gonzales? (tags)
Building Bridges: Your Community and Labor Report brings you this 28 minute radio program. TO LISTEN CLICK ON WEB LINK BELOW
The System: Capitalism and its Role in American Society’s Plunge into the Abyss. (tags)
commentary and analysis of capitalism's devastating role in american society. good read
Unprofitable of the World, Unite! (tags)
Capaitalism is a threat to humanity, not a chance.. The logic underlying this system is simple and brutal. Only what is profitable is entitled to live.. Capital is insatiably greedy for human labor to transform labor into more and more capital..
Collective Indymedia Santiago which is abandoning the Indymedia Network (with all its memb (tags)
Collective Indymedia Santiago which is abandoning the Indymedia Network (with all its members).
For a Real Independent Journalism: criticism to the Indymedia Network. (tags)
For a Real Independent Journalism: criticism to the Indymedia Network. Collective Indymedia Santiago. (Official notice from the Collective Indymedia Santiago about it’s imminent expulsion from the Indymedia Network).
Rhine Capitalism, Anglo-Saxon Capitalism and Redistribution (tags)
Anglo-Saxon capitalism is an unbridled capi-talism whose profit logic overrules all social and environmental interests. Rhine capitali-sm has a social net so workers are not redu-ced to cost factors. "The Cold War against the social state leaves..another republic."
Venezuela: After the Referendum (tags)
* The August 2004 elections legitimized Hugo Chávez's presidency, approved by the multinational powers-that-be, despite the opposition's claims of electoral fraud. We, at El Libertario (issue 39, September/October 2004), presented an indepth analysis of the consecuences of the referendum, as well as proposals for action in the new circumstances. We shall now quote a couple of notes from that issue that express the essence of the venezuelan anarchists' perspective.
"We do not boast of our victory": Hugo Chavez (tags)
"I am not the most important. What is central is a humanist project, an alternative to capitalism, a concept, an experience and a new dream that will increase in honor and dignity.. The world has many reasons to doubt declarations of the US government.."
Anti-Commuinst Democrats Illegally Challenge Socialist Candidate Petitions (tags)
The outrage of the fascist tactics of the stinking, rotten Democratic Party in keeping socialist, Greeen and the Nader-Camejo ticket off ballots has now reached Illinois, proving again that the only reason the Democratic Party exists is to keep the Reds and Greens out of office so as to perpetuate capitalism and the exploitation of the workingclass.
Annulling Debts as a Great Step (tags)
"The goal must be redefined beyond goods production and abstract labor, beyond the market and the state.. The great step of debt cancellation occurs when the burden can no longer be endured. The new finance capita-lism is a bubble and debt capitalism.."
Capitalism: It's not inherently evil, I mean it (tags)
US style Capitalism with its "me first" ethos encourages job flight and Enron-style financial mismanagement. But It doesn't have to be this way. Honor the worker and the worker will honor you.
Brave New World of Work: The Political Economy of Insecurity (tags)
"The utopia of the free market has an unintentional upshot: the Brazilianization of the West.. What is most remarkable is the new similarity of development profiles, the incursion of the precarious, intermittent, fluffy and unsanctioned in the Western bulwarks.."
Ding Dong The Witch is Dead (tags)
Reagan's death is time to celebrate for working people
Ding Dong The Witch is Dead (tags)
Reagan's passing is a time to celebrate for working people
Rep. Sanders, (I) Vermont Provides a Refreshing View! (tags)
A BUZZFLASH GUEST COMMENTARY "The Collapse of the Middle Class" by Rep. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the only Independent in the U.S. House.
The Lord of the Rings: Good versus Evil (tags)
A comparison of a couple of the good versus evil theories propagated by the Bush administration with one that I think bears a closer resemblance to the truth.
california apoc conference workshop call-out (tags)
We are looking for speakers and/or workshop presenters for an upcoming Anarchist People of Color conference, to take place in Oakland April 16-18.
Pentagon report and global environmental crisis (tags)
The Pentagon is saying in the report printed below that world capitalism is going to be thrown into severe crisis by the developing environmental catastrophe. For all activists, and for the working class in general, this is the most important report to be made available to us in decades.
peacecoup.us - Defeating Crooked Capitalism (tags)
please forward
A better world is possible: The struggle for socialism and democracy (tags)
The best hopes and dreams of the U.S. people do not lie with U.S. big corporations or the extreme right-wing movements they sponsor. In fact, the ultimate interest of the majority of our people is in a more democratic, a more egalitarian, and a more peaceful USA.
An article on the true nature of Marx and socialism/communism.
We Can Do This: Direct Action against Global Capitalism and US Imperialism (tags)
Ingrid Chapman has been involved in direct action organizing for the past 4 years. At 23, she has helped pull off successful mass actions, worked with thousands of activists around the country and bases her work in the question, "How do we build broad based movements capable of challenging global capitalism and US imperialism?" While it is easy to get depressed about the state of the world these days, those in power would also like us to forget that the largest anti-war movement in history was mobilized this past year and that global movements for justice are standing up against capitalism. Ingrid Chapman is one of the many younger generation radicals developing visionary politics and strategic practice to build our movements.
Capitalism is Legalized Robbery (tags)
An analysis of capitalism illustrating that not only are there periodic examples of large, conspicuous thefts by capitalists, but there also exists an everyday, subtle, disguised theft of the value created by the working class.
die capitalism live anarchy
The New Morality(TM) of Capitalism (tags)
During the Great Depression, Pres. Roosevelt used social programs (ex. The Hoover Dam) to employ miilions of Americans because continued despair would've led to the same Fascism that devoured post-WWI Germany. Today's right-wing pundits call such policies "immoral" and FDR a "Communist".
THE ANARCHIC REVOLUTION
leaderless from below
the death of capitalism
Are "anarcho"-capitalists really Anarchists? (tags)
Because "anarcho"-capitalists embrace capitalism and reject socialism, they cannot be considered anarchists or part of the anarchist tradition.
Anarchy in black and white (tags)
Inevitably, some black radical groups work on issues that many anarchists are opposed to. For instance, most anarchists are just as opposed to black capitalism as they are to white capitalism. Most anarcho-activists recognize the danger of entering different communities and evangelizing there. This is elitist and can also be interpreted as being racist, since so many anarchists are white.
Recall of Gov Davis Guaranteed on Oct 7 (tags)
With the California Supreme Court's rejection on 8/7/03 of all the lawsuits attacking the recall election of 10/7/03, the recall of the worst governor in California history, Gray Davis, and the effective demise of one capitalist party in California, the Democrats, is guaranteed.
Growing World Poverty and Conflict Shows the Barbarity of Capitalism (tags)
Down with Capitalism
Free-Market Capitalism and Ecological Disaster (tags)
The Free-Market libertarian argues that business leaders see and understand the effects of long-term environmental damage. But business leaders concentrate on short term profits, thus the planet continues its free-fall toward ecological disaster.
Are "anarcho"-capitalists really Anarchists? NO. They are really sham artists who are the lowest form of entrepreneur. They are worse than HONEST anarchists....if there is such a thing.
Democratic Party History: a Revealing Rap Sheet (tags)
A history of the Democratic Party's role in co-opting and diverting independent political movements, while advancing the agenda of the global capitalist police state. This and similar pieces can be found at
The Consumerist Manifesto. Book Review (tags)
"Trade is the functional equivalent to force", Bolz says self-assuredly. Whoever pursues trade and consumes doesn't wage wars apart from weapons and drug trade. Consumers as a rule are peace-loving beings. They don't hurl bombs.."
Russia after the War in Irag (tags)
Russia
Economic Fascism and Tax Slavery (tags)
"Words mean what I say they mean, Alice," said the Mad Hatter
EU-SUMMIT IN GREECE, JUNE 2003 (tags)
ON THE WAY TO THE EU-SUMMIT IN THESSALONIKI,GREECE, JUNE 2003
Libertarians mock the Left, May Day (tags)
The giveaway, and the clue to the real motive of today's left and their hangers-on, is that all their protests are against -- they are anti-capitalism, anti-free trade, anti-using the environment for man's benefit -- but they are not for anything.
Libertarians mock the Left, May Day (tags)
The giveaway, and the clue to the real motive of today's left and their hangers-on, is that all their protests are against -- they are anti-capitalism, anti-free trade, anti-using the environment for man's benefit -- but they are not for anything.
In the sudden aftermath of the war, folks might find the following uplifting. It's taken from a longer talk given by Steven Miller, a high school teacher, at a LRNA forum in San Francisco on April 18.
Capitalism: A Very Special Delirium (tags)
Capitalism: A Very Special Delirium an interview with Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in: "Chaosophy", ed. Sylvere Lothringer, Autonomedia/Semiotexte 1995 with permission by the publishers
test
Capitalism : A very special delusion~G. DeLeuze (tags)
Capitalism: A Very Special Delirium an interview with Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari
Revolution = Entrepreneurship (tags)
From the book "Renaissance: The Rebirth of Liberty in the Heart of Europe" by Vaclav Klaus 1997.
maybe more...
Capitalism is Legalized Robbery (tags)
Conspicuous and inconspicuous examples of theft by the capitalist system.
RTH=RAISE THE HEAD = NEW ANARCHY (tags)
THE NEW ANARCHIST
The Will to Paralysis: The Crisis of Shareholder Capitalism (tags)
Scapegoats or black sheep are used to evade the crisis of the system. Considering matters more exactly would be very appropriate. Are manifestations of corruption and tax evasion normal side-effects of a system fixated on money?
WHAT WILL WE DO AFTER THE WAR
No to Capitalist War, Yes to Anarchist Revolution! (tags)
The following is the text from a new poster from the Federation of Revolutionary Anarchist Collectives (FRAC). The poster is the first in a series and is in both english and spanish. This poster examines the root causes of the impending war, possible methods of resistance here in North America, and our vision of a free society.
ANARCHISTS OF THE WORLD UNITE (tags)
pave the way
IF WE DONT MAKE IT WHO WILL (tags)
DEMONSTRATION = POLICE CONTROL
Capitalism = Self-Destruct Anarchism = Self-Construct (tags)
APPROPRIATION
WAR IS PROFIT FOR THE RICH - HAPPY NEW WAR FROM A REBEL (tags)
WAR IS THE HEALTH FOR THE STATE TERROR IS HEALTH FOR CAPITALISM
NO POWER AT ALL - WE ARE READY FOR THE REVOLUTION (tags)
blow up a social relation by changing it
Unprincipled capitalism shouldn't be for export (tags)
The corporate scandals caused by a handful of U.S. companies have highlighted the importance of rigorously adhering to American principles and the rule of law.
RAISE THE CONSCIOUS
RAISE THE CONSCIOUS
RAISE THE CONSCIOUS
2003 YEARS OF CONTINUOUS SLAVERY & REVOLT (tags)
DOWN TO FEAR AND CAPITALISM
the fight is on
Prague Indymedia interview with Chumbawumba (tags)
Exclusive IMC Praha Interview with Alice from Chumbawumba! Ceske verze zde: http://prague.hacknet.tk/newswire/display/7330/index.php
STATE/PARTY/FASCISM/TERRORISM (tags)
HI REVOLUTIONARY MINORITY
THE FINAL STAGE OF CAPITALISM AND NATIONALISM IS NOW (tags)
HI ANARCHY
The Wilderness Lives: The End of Prehistory as a Beginning (tags)
"The status quo is limited and not lasting from eternity to eternity as the quasi-religious worship of capital asserts. This worship of capital handed over to its own destructive dynamic is still dominant but not unchallenged." H. Thielen lives in Brazil.
Papanastasiou: Who will do the dying? (tags)
Picture this: a searing, copper-coated hollow bullet slices the air with supersonic speed, striking and expanding in a human skull. The entry thud muffles an explosion of smashed bone and brain matter on the other side.
LESSONS FOR ANARCHISM COMING FROM ARGENTINA (tags)
It is remind that if the state and the institutions are denouncing situation for now in Argentina as anarchy, it is not anarchy in the country ! What is happening is a step toward the decay of power. In fact the chaos in argentina is caused by the state and capitalism, not by anarchists ideals.
Talking About Revolution (tags)
Here are excerpts from the debate on http://2changetheworld.info/ -- the online discussion site focused on the Draft Programme of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA and the strategy for revolution in the U.S.
The anti-war movement is at the crossroads. Will it become a revolutionary movement fighting to sweep away the capitalist system, or will it become a reformist movement merely seeking to pressure bourgeois politicians? Reformist misleaders will seek to distract and divert the movement from any truly effective action against the system, into impotent hand wringing and pleas for peace. It is vital that revolutionary leadership win out and oust the reformists, so as to guide the oppressed masses along the path to revolution.
WTO Decision Making Group Coming To Chicago Nov. 7 & 8 (tags)
The ceo's are Coming!!!!
9/11 In Context: Plans and Counterplans (tags)
The Global Fascist Terror State has arrived, the fruit of decades of planning, propaganda and provocation. September 11 was its coming-out party, and for us, the last wake-up call.
THE ENEMY OF THE STATE AND THE DESTRUCTION OF CAPITALISM (tags)
LIGHT YEAR AHEAD
L@VE
COMMUNIST INDIVIDUALIST ANARCHISM / CIA (tags)
bricks and glass
2005 THEN START OF THE ANARCHIC SOCIETY 2005 THE START OF THE END OF CAPITALISM
Capitalism's Injustices (tags)
A discussion of the injustices of the capitalist system.
Capitalism, Fascism and World War 2 (tags)
The relationship of fascism and capitalism as illustrated by the events of World War 2
NAVIGATE THE REVOLUTION (tags)
THE COLLAPSE OF THE USA FORST
Direct Action Versus Electoralism (tags)
Anarchists engage in direct action as opposed to voting. This anti-electoralism (or anti-parliamentarianism) may seem strange and even perverse to many. After all, virtually the whole left believes in the importance of voting. In the US, liberals and state socialists have voted for the Democrats with a steadfastness that is almost religious, even as the Democrats have steadily moved to the right. In Western Europe, they have voted consistently for the Socialist or Labor Parties (social democrats), or Communist Parties, or, more recently, ex-Communist Parties.
Sacco-Vanzetti 75th Anniversary - A Call for Writings from Anarchists (tags)
August 23 marks the 75th anniversary of the judicial murders of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti
Breaking Free of the Protest Mentality (tags)
Protestors are in the classic role of "protestors", people with no real power over their lives so they must demand it from the ruling class. Demonstrations also point to a lack of creativity; the only thing we can come up with is playing the song and dance of our rulers. How much longer will these protests go on for? If we could only get a few more tens of thousands to protest, will we be successful in overthrowing capitalism, the state and wage-slavery? Why do the state, capitalism and wage-slavery exist, why do the governments of the U.S. and Israel do what they do, and what are we actually going to do about it?
Evo Morales, an Aymara Indian and a leader of the coca-growers union in Bolivia,....
On Open Source Code, Computers and the Revolution (tags)
The following are excerpts from the debate on http://2changetheworld.info – the website dedicated to a discussion of the Revolutionary Communist Party,USA’s Draft Programme and issues of revolutionary strategy.
update
"CAPITALIST" MOVEMENT OF RUSSIA AND RUSSIA COURSE TOWARDS CAPITALISM (tags)
Best reason not to believe in Russian capitalism is very simple; even Russia would be capitalistic, it still has the same government officials running the State than they had in Soviet Union.
how to fight the ISO, the republicans and the democrats all with one stone (tags)
add your suggestions
Walk For Capitalism, Washington DC (updated) (tags)
Those Silly Libertarians! - Walk For Capitalism, Washington DC Dec. 2nd, 2001
CALL TO PROTEST WALK FOR CAPITALISM - DEC 2 (tags)
We are calling for anti-capitalists to counter-protest this event. Capitalism is the root of terrorism. Bin Laden and the Taliban got their candy straight from the CIA and Wall Street. These international terrorists are funded by the U.S!
Lets play a game. Analyze the ISO all free thinkers (tags)
please understand
LEAFLET against their war, capitalism, and state (tags)
LEAFLET against their war, capitalism, and state
"The Fall of Communism & the Triumph of Capitalism" [excerpt] (tags)
the elite will have their war no matter how many red cross buildings & innocents must be bombed in the process, that much is clear. but historical precedent suggests the consequences may not be what they intend. as the former U.S.S.R. learned, the elite may soon find themselves among the "collateral damage" of their own violence.
Canadians Against Capitalism (tags)
We must show our support for our Canadian brothers and sisters who are continuing the fight against global capitalism despite the current climate of government repression.
The Democratic Trickle-Down Theory of Capitalism is Actually A Dictatorship (tags)
The Trickle-Down Theory of Capitalism is Actually A Dictatorship of Capitalism for the "Super Rich". (Good capitalism is a "trickle up" theory for the "Super Rich".). The Trickle-Down of Patriotism, Nationalism, and Capitalism. Corporations get billions for "Bailouts", Employee's get pink slips..... USA trickle-down theory, and practice; In a capitalist stock market. A PEACEFUL WORLDWIDE HUMANITARIAN PROTEST AGAINST WAR AND U.S. NATIONALISTIC ECONOMIC AND GOVERNMENTAL WAR POLICY.
The "Democratic" Trickle-Down Theory of Capitalism is Actually A "Dictatorship" (tags)
The Trickle-Down Theory of Capitalism is Actually A Dictatorship of Capitalism for the "Super Rich". (Good capitalism is a "trickle up" theory for the "Super Rich".). The Trickle-Down of Patriotism, Nationalism, and Capitalism. Corporations get billions for "Bailouts", Employee's get pink slips..... USA trickle-down theory, and practice; In a capitalist stock market. A PEACEFUL WORLDWIDE HUMANITARIAN PROTEST AGAINST WAR AND U.S. NATIONALISTIC ECONOMIC AND GOVERNMENTAL WAR POLICY.
The origins and variants of fascism (tags)
Long before it became possible to speak of fascism Marxists considered the question of what new political features would be associated with the transition of free competition capitalism to monopoly capitalism. The question was — what political changes would take place when the economic basis of bourgeois society changed?
Things go Boom
Global protest is a force for good (tags)
The G8 leaders must listen, then act
GENOA SOLIDARITY DEMO IN BUENOS AIRES ARGENTINA (tags)
solidarity action in buenos aires
Is Dancing Terrorism?.... the FBI says so.... (tags)
FBI brands Reclaim the Streets as "terrorists" - what the fuck have they been smoking?! In another sign that the growing anti-capitalist, anarchist, anti-car movement is gaining effectiveness, the FBI recently listed Reclaim the Streets amongst the "Threats of Terrorism to the United States."
American Capitalism Beats American Democracy Again
January 20th Revolutionary Anti-Authoritarian Bloc, Update (tags)
A CALL FOR A UNITED REVOLUTIONARY PRESENCE AT THE PRESIDENTIAL INAUGURATION WE ALREADY KNOW WHO WON… CAPITALISM AND THE RULING CLASS TAKE TO THE STREETS OF WASHINGTON AGAINST CAPITALISM, AGAINST THE STATE, AND AGAINST THE DEATH MACHINE OF GLOBALIZATION CLASS WAR NOW...FOR A CLASSLESS, STATELESS SOCIETY SATURDAY, JANUARY 20, 2001. WASHINGTON D.C. 10 A.M, PENNSYLVANIA AVE. AND 14TH ST NW
Y2K+1 (New Years) Anti-Corruption Protest (tags)
The upcoming Y2k+1 Anti-Corruption Protest (from Dec. 30, 2000 to Jan. 2, 2001) will be taking place worldwide with people organizing locally and networking internationally. There is still time to get more people involved to make this a succesfull event!
1st Anniversary of Victory in Seattle Commerated By NJ Anarchists (tags)
NJ anarchists hung black banners of negation across the city of New Brunswick, New Jersey to commerate the victory in Seattle one year ago.
"Billionaires for co-optation" is a new grass-roots organization devoted to co-optation of opposition and perpetuation of capitalism.
Censorship "for the good cause" (tags)
Censorship "for the good cause" by pro-nader soldiers on IMC Seattle. From republicrats to greenocrats... just a matter of time. No more state capitalism, no more private capitalism: direct action.