How there can be two right wings
In my last diary I received this curious comment:I usually think of left and right (0+ / 0-) as relative terms that describe a political position within a spectrum based on the context of the time or...
View ArticleCan we solve the climate crisis under capitalism?
(crossposted at Firedoglake)Can we solve the climate crisis while the capitalists roam the Earth, terminating ecosystems here and there? Christian Parenti, in full knowledge of the system and its...
View ArticleNeoliberals: Where Did They Come From?
Political labels can be very difficult to define in a manner that is clear and consistent. For most of the 20th C US politics was cast in the frame of conservatives vs liberals. However, it seems to me...
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ACM: The Media Landscape After the Culture War
Every war seems permanent as does every revolution until it ends which requires much in the way of interpreting rather than explaining the victory to the vanquished, even in mediated spaces that can...
View ArticleAnother plea for postcapitalism: Richard Smith in Truthout
The next individual to step forward to promote postcapitalism is an economic historian, Richard Smith. His piece in Wednesday's Truthout is called "Beyond Growth or Beyond Capitalism?" The question...
View ArticleBook review: Does Capitalism Have A Future?
Book review: Wallerstein, Immanuel et al. Does Capitalism Have A Future? Oxford: Oxford UP, 2013. (crossposted to Firedoglake and to VOTS) This book is a "response" anthology, with the lead author...
View ArticleWhat's a Human Being "Worth"? The Moral and Economic Crisis of the 21st Century
Peter Schiff, the CEO of Euro Pacific Capital, recently summed up the conservative position about the value of human life:I'm not going to say that we're all created equal... you're worth what you're...
View ArticleBook review: The Political Economy of Global Warming
(also available at Firedoglake.com)Book review: Weston, Del. The Political Economy of Global Warming: The terminal crisis. London and New York: Routledge, 2014. Print. (Del Weston (1950-2012) was a...
View ArticleThe Illuminati are amateurs
It's time we all apologized to our neighborhood conspiracy theorists. They were right all along. Everything in the world really is being controlled and manipulated. They just blamed the wrong...
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ACM: The Power of the Flea Market
Flea markets, Free market: not so much a pun as a reality, that informal economies flourish with the inevitable rise and subsequent failure of so-called free-markets, first as deregulated, then as...
View ArticleBook review: Capitalism and climate change
(crossposted at FDL and at VOTS)Book review: Koch, Max. Capitalism and Climate Change: Theoretical Discussion, Historical Development and Policy Responses. Houndmills, Basingstroke, Hampshire UK:...
View ArticleThe society of money
The society of money: its utopian vision and grim realityThat which is for me through the medium of money – that for which I can pay (i.e., which money can buy) – that am I myself, the possessor of the...
View ArticleOn the Need for a New Economic Paradigm
Those of you Kossacks who might have had occasion to read any of my comments over the last year know that I frequently speak of the need for a new economic paradigm. The release of the latest IPCC...
View ArticleClear and magical thinking
Certainly there's got to be a lot of thinking going on. Human beings are the most versatile species to ever appear on planet Earth, and one of the foundations of our versatility as a species is our...
View ArticleCapitalism will last forever or maybe not
The topic of capitalism's eventual death has been around for more than 150 years now. At one early point (1847) in his career as a writer, Karl Marx (with his friend Friedrich Engels) thought the...
View ArticlePromoting an effective discussion: Capitalism causes climate change
(crossposted at Humanitarian Left and at Firedoglake)When I see headlines like this on my Facebook feed:"Even if a small fraction of the Arctic carbon were released to the atmosphere, we're fucked," he...
View ArticleWill alternative energy save capitalism?
(Crossposted to Humanitarian Left and Firedoglake)Every time I publish a diary like this one ("Promoting an Effective Discussion: Capitalism Causes Climate Change," 8/3/14), I get responses from...
View ArticlePower to the people. Tomorrow we change the world!
I can't be there. I remember all the Marches of the sixties and seventies I was at. My spirit will be there. As I approach the end of my time here I am more and more concerned about what we are...
View ArticlePostcapitalist economic imagination
What will come after capitalism? When the Roman Empire collapsed in the west in the 5th century after Christ (going by Dionysius Exiguus's calendar), very little in the way of imagination was put...
View ArticleOf radicals and mass movements
This essay was prompted by two recent pieces. Perhaps this essay would be better off if it were published in some of the places where the pieces were published: ZNet, or Jacobin. I'm more used to...
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