Tag Archives: capitalism

Big! We really need to be talking about this and examining assumptions and presuppositions that act as hidden assumptions. Yanis is a systems thinker. The Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, Oxford University, kindly invited me to deliver the 2019 Taylor Lecture on 12th February 2019. I chose the topic of Realistic Utopias versus Dystopic Realities – my aim being to highlight the manner in which really-existing capitalism is marketed as a utopian science fiction that has nothing to...

More numbers sleight of hand. It should perhaps come as no surprise that, as capitalism has been called into question and socialism generated increasing interest during the past decade, capitalism’s defenders have resorted to a long historical view. Look, they say, how capitalist growth has decreased poverty and led to improvements in people’s lives around the globe. Just stick with it and all will eventually be well. That’s why, as Jason Hickel points out, the above infographic, based on...

A perennial question for Marxists is how to overturn capitalism. Will institutional changes that improve the lot of workers but fall short of ending capitalism immediately help or harm this cause? To the extent that social struggle is a learning-by-doing process, it may be that the securing of small gains can whet the appetite for more significant gains and that institutional reforms of a transformational nature can place revolution on a more secure footing if and when it does occur. But...

Capitalism is an economic system that favor capital (ownership) over labor (people) and land (the environment) because capital formulation generates growth and "a rising tide lifts all boats" (trickle down). Socialism is an economic system that favors labor (people) and land (the environment) over capital (ownership) because the economic system is the life-support system of society and needs to be subjected to the comprehensive needs of society, which are social and political in addition...

Nice find.The Case for Concerted ActionJason Hickel — A Letter To Steven Pinker (And Bill Gates For That Matter) About Global PovertyV. Ramanan

The image below summarizes Marx's works in a nutshell: his societal development model goes through several stages, from some early societies (e.g. slavery) to feudalism, to capitalism, to socialism, and finally to communism. At a very high level, this model is correct. Two "communists", Lenin and Mao, capitalized on this model more than anybody else. Both eventually failed for the same reason: They jumped from feudalism to socialism via a violent revolution that destroyed capitalism,...

This essay is based upon arguments made in Chapter 2 (“Some Theoretical Considerations”) of my book, Can the Working Class Change the World? Good article by Marxian Michael D. YatesI would say that if it has any failing, it understates the dystopian effect of "capitalism" as a system that favors capital (ownership) over labor (people) and land (the environment). That kind of system, which takes many forms, e.g., classical economic liberalism and contemporary neoliberalism, is is a recipe...

We need a revolution to cast off monopolies and restore entrepreneurial freedom. First of two excerpts from “The Myth of Capitalism.” Bloomberg OpinionCompetition Is Dying, and Taking Capitalism With It Jonathan Tepper See also a short review of The Myth of Capitalism A lot of times, when you read reviews about books on the economy, you end up wondering what the reviewer’s ‘priors’ are as people like to say in economics. You read the review and wonder where the biases of the reviewer...

Political organizing is hard — political education shouldn’t have to be. In the best tradition of socialist pedagogy, Catalyst and Jacobin are partnering up for a new series of pamphlets, called The ABCs of Capitalism. Each one is self-contained, and can be read on its own. But the series as a whole will be internally coherent and later pamphlets will build on the earlier ones....Pamphlet one: “Understanding Capitalism.” A forty-page text explaining clearly why capitalism isn’t just a...

Recent extreme volatility and sharp drops in US stock markets underscore the instability of capitalism yet again. As many commentators now note, another economic downturn looms. We know that all the reforms and regulations imposed in the wake of the Great Depression of the 1930s failed to prevent both smaller downturns between 1941 and 2008 and then another big crash in 2008. Capitalism’s instability has, for centuries, resisted all efforts to overcome it with or without government...