William Bowles – Essays
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Bewitched, Baffled and Bewildered By William Bowles
The problem they confront is that without an enemy in the form of socialism, they have no explanations, no excuses, no one to blame except individuals. Which is why the media have raised the spectre that once haunted Europe, dare we speak its name? Bolshevism and a pretty bastardized one at that, but one that… Continue reading
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Hidden histories confirmed: So much for the ‘Mother of Parliaments’
24 November 2008 — williambowles.info “This we do by rigging the parliament through official majorities, a restricted franchise and so forth” — From the minutes of the British Colonial Office, 14 December, 1959 Back in June of 2006 I wrote a piece, based on a story in the New African magazine on how the British… Continue reading
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Vanished – How the BBC disappears the news By William Bowles
The devil lives in the details when the BBC reports on the actions of the Israeli occupiers. Illegal becomes ‘not recognized’. And the illegal occupation of land gets transformed by the BBC into “efforts to settle the Israeli-occupied east of the city”. Continue reading
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Finding the words to say it By William Bowles
Palestinians have been reduced (Orientalized) to ‘terrorists’, ‘fanatics’ and faceless, nameless ‘victims’. Only the ideology of racism can explain this gigantic hole in our reality. Continue reading
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Keynes with a neo-liberal twist? By William Bowles
10 November 2008 “Just imagine saying, “production for use leads to stagnation; production for death leads to exchange value and profits.” Now don’t jump on me! Wait, I have to go into capital expansion and its being “the breath of capitalism” and, as yet, no forseeable future opportunities for capital reproduction to the magnitude needed… Continue reading
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The Election Results by Age, First Time and Race
5 November 2008 See William Bowles: ‘Obama and the Left’s Dilemma?’ Continue reading
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Economics 101 – Interesting times By William Bowles
24 October 2008 ‘May you live in interesting times’, traditional Chinese curse Being raised in a family of Reds has its pluses and its minuses, one of the minuses being a decidedly unworldly approach to economics. It was as if we already lived in a socialist world but of course nobody else did. The upshot… Continue reading
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The Capitalist Shakedown By William Bowles
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve started this essay on the Capitalist Shakedown that’s going on around us, totally disconnected from us even, due to some pretty nifty media work and, I might add, thirty years of revanchism on the part of our political masters to disconnect us all from the political process. Continue reading
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The media’s moola madness By William Bowles
22 September, 2008 What does it take for the corporate media to speak the truth about the economic meltdown? Take the BBC Website for example: It has a page titled ‘Q&A: Financial crisis and you’ where you would expect to find an explanation of this, the latest crisis of capital. Dream on folks, dream on.… Continue reading
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The end of (capitalist) history? By William Bowles
In a world of over-the-top production, with the world’s markets glutted with a never-stream of products, most of which sit unsold in shops and warehouses around the planet, a return to the ‘good old days’ of the Robber Barons was the only option left. Continue reading
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Climate Change: World War III by another name? By William Bowles
Forty-six years has passed since the publication of ‘Silent Spring’ and to put it mildly, things have gone from bad to disastrous. And even though now no rational mind can deny the disastrous impact of industrial capitalism on the planet and even though endless international conferences are convened in an attempt to reverse the process… Continue reading
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Is it the 1930s all over again? By William Bowles
The bottom line then is that the crisis of capital has only two outcomes: remove the competitors or, face the end of capitalism and build a socialist alternative. If the former, then general war (whatever its form, ie “endless war”) is the only conclusion, thereby consuming the over-accumulated capital, ‘taking out’ the major competitors and… Continue reading
The New Dark Age 