Tag Archives: capitalism

Mariana Mazzucato’s new book is a detailed exposé of the parasitic character of modern capitalism, drawing on Karl Marx’s theory of the source of value creation. But understanding the law of value is only a first step to providing an alternative to a system that cannot overcome its inevitable tendency for periodic crises and which needs to be overthrown, argues Peter Taaffe. Socialism TodayParasitic capitalism exposed Peter Taaff | general secretary of the Socialist Party of England and...

There. Someone finally said it.Grasping Reality Caitlin Rosenthal : How Slavery Inspired Modern Business Management Brad DeLong | Professor of Economics, UCAL BerkeleySee also from BDL Economist : Why is macroeconomics so hard to teach?

Because "shareholder value." [Nirmal Mulye, chief executive of Nostrum Laboratories,] told FT he agreed with Martin "Pharma Bro" Shkreli raising the price of AIDS and cancer drug Daraprim in 2015 from $13.50 to $750 per tablet, saying he was "within his rights because he had to reward his shareholders." We live in a "capitalist economy and if you can't make money you can't stay in business," Mulye said. "We have to make money when we can. Appropriately, nirman means "no mind."The Week...

Weekend thinking.Thoughts On EconomicsA Semi-Idyllic Golden AgeRobert Vienneau

The takeaway: The appropriate modes of economic organization vary from country to country. In saying this, I’m following Edmund Burke, who wrote: Circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing colour and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind. The answer might lie in a distinction made by Burke as described (pdf) by Jesse [Norman]....

MR Online Imperialism in the 21st Century — Global Value Chains and International Labour Arbitrage Dev Nathan Originally published: Economic & Political Weekly (Vol. 53, Issue No. 32, August 11, 2018)

But here’s a simple fact which ought to illustrate, in a sense, the question you’ve asked: This is an extremely undemocratic arrangement. What do I mean? Well, the number of people that make all the key decisions in American corporations, and by that I mean deciding what to produce, deciding how, deciding what technology to use, deciding the physical geographic location—will it be produced in Cincinnati or in Shanghai, etc.—and finally, what to do with the profits that the labor of all the...

There are so many people out there who genuinely believe that financial plutocrats like Soros are communists, and that Wall Street-sponsored Hillary Clinton is a socialist. Many American self-proclaimed right-wingers seriously assert that the German Nazis were all socialists, simply because “Nazi” is short for ”Nationalsozialismus”, which translates as “National Socialism”. Therefore, they make a conclusion that the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were ideologically the same. Sadly, this is...

Good read. Relatively short and on point.RedFlagSocialism is back, with good reason Daniel Taylor  

...there is, if you like, a third way between utopian communism on the one hand and technocratic tweaks on the other. It begins from the idea that ten years of stagnant productivity might mean we are now at the phase of capitalism that Marx foresaw: At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property relations within the...