Tag Archives: capitalism

One of the Anonymati [Anonymouses? Anonymice?] asks that I write a critique of the oh so sober, serious analysis of socialism, complete with charts and graphs, produced by the President’s Council of Economic Advisors....I have read the Executive Summary of the report and scanned through the report itself, but I do not intend to take issue with it, and my reason for not doing so is the real subject of this post. Let me begin by reminding you that Karl Marx, who wrote 5000 pages, more or...

The Trump White House research team have issued a very strange report. It’s called “The Opportunity Costs of Socialism,”. It purports to prove that ‘socialism’ and ‘socialist’ policies would be damaging to Americans because the ‘opportunity costs’ of socialism compared to capitalism are so much higher. What is strange and rather amusing is that the White House advisers to Trump deem it necessary to explain to Americans the failures of ‘socialism’ in 2018. But when you delve into the...

Michael Calderbank speaks to Marxist economist Costas Lapavitsas ahead of the publication of his provocative new book The Left Case Against the EUCostas Lapavitsas  The book is obviously a critique of the EU as it stands. It’s an assessment of where the union is, what it has become, and its likely direction. It is an attempt to say that the left should have nothing to do with defending this set of institutions. It should assume a critical, rejectionist position. I am asserting that this is...

I believe that these corrosive moral claims derive from a fundamentally flawed understanding of how market capitalism works, grounded in the dubious assumption that human beings are “homo economicus”: perfectly selfish, perfectly rational, and relentlessly self-maximizing. It is this behavioral model upon which all the other models of orthodox economics are built. And it is nonsense. The last 40 years of research across multiple scientific disciplines has proven, with certainty, that homo...

The premise and promise of capitalism, going back to Adam Smith, have been that global wealth would increase and serve as a benefit to all of humanity.2 However, the experience of recent decades has challenged those claims: while global wealth has indeed grown, most of the increase has been captured by a small group at the top. This has continued into the“recovery” in the United States and globally. The result is that an obscenely unequal distribution of the world’s wealth has become even...

Energy economics — by physicists. Hurry up with the cold fusion. Independent (UK)This is how UN scientists are preparing for the end of capitalism Nafeez Ahmed

In May of 1949, the first issue of Monthly Review came off the press, with a circulation of 450 copies. It featured an essay by none other than Albert Einstein titled, “Why Socialism?” Why so famous a scientist speaking to so few people, and then out of his field of expertise?…. Actually, it doesn't take an Einstein to answer the question, Why socialism? But Einstein did anyway, in case some didn't get it yet.Counterpunch Why Not Socialism? James Rothenberg

We need to challenge the logic of capital. Elizabeth Warren’s Accountable Capitalism Act only further entrenches it.... JacobinAccountable Capitalism or Democratic Socialism? Stephen Maher | PhD candidate at York University in Toronto

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?