Capitalism
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The dialectics of economic warfare
It was in 2004 when the war in Iraq was at its peak, that the renown political scientist Emanuel Wallerstein announced at the World Social Forum in Mumbai, India, a public discussion under the surprising title: „Is the neoliberal transformation dead?“ We, the members o f the International Council of the WSF were shocked, because… Continue reading
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Academic Buffoons are Public Enemy No. 1: The Worst Corruption of All By Phil Butler
If you were to search for a poster boy for the failed supercapitalism of the west, Atlantic Council Senior Fellow Anders Åslund fits the bill like no one else. Anytime the liberal world order needs to take a poke at Russia’s Putin, they call up the Swedish economist like a really weasely Captain America. But,… Continue reading
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David Harvey: The Persistence of Neoliberalism Despite its Loss of Legitimacy (1/2)
Neoliberalism continues in national and transnational institutions, even though it has lost legitimacy as an ideology and has even penetrated progressive thinking, argues Prof. David Harvey Continue reading
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Greece: completing the vicious circle
So the full circle is completed. The corrupt pro-business conservative New Democracy party in Greece that was ousted by the anti-capitalist Syriza party in 2015 has been returned to office in yesterday’s general election, with an outright majority over all other parties. Continue reading
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Giant US healthcare corporations fear hostile takeover by high-tech companies By Benjamin Mateus
UnitedHealth Group Inc. brought a lawsuit earlier this year against a former information technology executive, David Smith, accusing him of stealing trade secrets and taking them to his new employer. This was the still unnamed joint venture known as ABC, a healthcare initiative that was launched in 2018 by Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase… Continue reading
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The super-rich are damaging the environment
In this opinion piece, Oxford University’s Danny Dorling argues that the world’s richest 1% are disproportionately damaging the environment. Continue reading
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UK Border Regime updates special – Couriers win! – Summer School selling fast – Water bosses’ payouts – Priory Group makes millions
6 July 2019 — Corporate Watch First, some good news. At the end of last year we revealed the huge amounts pathology company The Doctors Laboratory (TDL) was paying to its directors and shareholders – while denying couriers the better pay they were demanding. Since then, six months of campaigning and threats of strike action by the… Continue reading
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Who has the power to restore nature? By Chris Williams
The UK’s 25 year environment plan — to lead the world in the ‘natural capital approach’ — contains many bold statements about the capacity of this approach to produce positive change for nature. One aim is for an ‘overall improvement’ in the health of the environment and to improve environmental decisions by ‘emphasising the value of the benefits the… Continue reading
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Book Review: Private Island: Why Britain Now Belongs to Someone Else By Bryant Brown
In the nineteen seventies multinational corporations were buying all the Canadian businesses they could so the Pierre Trudeau government established the Foreign Investment Review Agency to try to control it. In Ontario we were seeing celebrities like Goldie Hawn buying up the best vacation properties in the lake district north of Toronto. Continue reading
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From the Green Revolution to GMOs: Toxic Agriculture Is the Problem Not the Solution By Colin Todhunter
Why did the European Food Safety Authority claim that glyphosate was not ecotoxic? This is the question environmentalist Dr Rosemary Mason poses in her new 23-page report which can be accessed in full here. Continue reading
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Climate change, dust bowls, fishery collapse: metabolic rifts of capitalism and the need for socialism
Humankind and the environment are hurtling toward unprecedented ecological crises. Global warming, sea level rise, and weather extremes due to carbon emissions are catastrophic enough, but they will mix and combine with ocean acidification, air and chemical pollution, water shortages, deforestation, fishery collapse, soil erosion, and mass extinction, throwing both nature and society off a… Continue reading
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Michael Hudson, David Harvey and Bertell Ollman: Three Marxist Takes On Climate Change, Left Forum 2019
Climate change is the main subject of the day, and rightly so. What do Marxists have to say that may be helpful in understanding it and hopefully (and it’s only a possibility) stopping it? Or, What is the relation between climate change and class struggle? Continue reading
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97% Owned (Money Documentary) | History Documentary | Reel Truth History
When money drives almost all activity on the planet, it’s essential that we understand it. Yet simple questions often get overlooked – questions like: Where does money come from? Who creates it? Who decides how it gets used? And what does that mean for the millions of ordinary people who suffer when money and finance… Continue reading
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MODERN MONETARY THEORY or MAINSTREAM MONETARY THEORY?
The discussion on how to respond to the deepening Crash of 2019 is focusing minds. It is recognised that interest rate manipulation and regular quantitative easing will not suffice to bring the global economy back into growth, especially now that international trade is so fractured. Increasingly main-stream economists are dabbling with the direct injection of… Continue reading
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Capitalism vs. The World by James Rothenberg
It will take a new way of thinking to address existential threats, and it must involve the many over the few. People do not wish to fight in wars, thirst for water, starve for food, breathe dirty air, or withstand the elements for lack of shelter. People of any one country have to see in… Continue reading
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Facing up to Libra by michael roberts
Libra is the name that Facebook, the global social network company, is calling its planned international digital currency. What is Facebook’s purpose with this planned new currency? Continue reading
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The $5,000,000,000,000,000 Question? By William Bowles
Apparently, if we add up all the ‘values’ that make up Planet Earth, we arrive at the figure of $5 quadrillion [1]! We’ve reduced the irreducible to the level of an accountant’s spreadsheet. Yet, it’s exactly this kind of thinking that’s created the disaster that, forget 10 years, it’s already with us and it’s been… Continue reading
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The Monkey’s Face. The Climate Crisis is Destroying “Real Environmentalism” By John Steppling
27 June 2019 — Greanville Post “The more reified the world becomes, the thicker the veil cast upon nature, the more the thinking weaving that veil in its turn claims ideologically to be nature, primordial experience.” — Theodor Adorno (Critical Models) “Nature contains, though often unnoticed, an extraordinary amount of human history.” — Raymond Williams… Continue reading
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THE “NEW READING OF MARX” (NRM). More irrelevant than immaterial
26 June 2019 — theplanningmotive.com This thesis is about measuring intangible and creative labours. immaterial-production-2-pdf.pdf Continue reading
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UK: Department of Work and Pensions “followed policy” denying benefits to dying Liverpool man By Dennis Moore
An internal review by the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) following the horrific death of Stephen Smith is an insult to a man who was forced to endure terrible hardship fighting for the welfare benefits to which he was entitled. Continue reading