Tag Archives: socialism

In an interview with ProMarket, Glen Weyl, co-author of the wildly ambitious (and wildly controversial) new book Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society, talks about antitrust, data as labor, and why he thinks the free market system is not actually free. “The entire business community has been speaking with one voice in the common interest of capital as a class,” he says.... A different take on "socialism" and how to implement it using markets in addition to...

Socialism is much more than public ownership of productive enterprises. Still, if there is one policy that clearly distinguishes socialists from their (or rather our) opponents, it is support for public enterprise as a way of organizing large-scale production, and, in particular, as the preferred model for industries characterized by natural monopoly or other major market failures. The opposite view, dominant since the 1970s, is the market liberal framework that favors comprehensive private...

So, I’ve changed the description of this blog’s perspective to socialist. I haven’t however, adopted the formulation “democratic socialist” which was used, in the 20th century, to emphasise a rejection of the Stalinist claim to have produced “actually existing socialism” in the Soviet Union and elsewhere. That’s no longer necessary. As has been true for most of the history of the modern world, the only serious threat to democracy is now coming from the right. So, it’s important to defend...

Putin is taking a new tack politically positioning himself way from the unpopular liberals and toward the socialists. His most serious competition is from Communist Party candidate Pavel Grudinin. who is widely expected to place second. This is bad news for Western liberals looking for liberal populist regime change in Russia. Now they are looking at a return to socialist rule as the alternative to Putin. For Russ Putin's 2018 Election Campaign: A New Beginning?Eduard Popov -...

Data show rising dissatisfaction with economic status quo. The millennial generation is the largest demographically, and it is poised to begin taking over power as the boomers start fading. AlterNet Millennials and Capitalism Just Don't Mix Emily C. Bell

[Noah] Smith is keen to refute the ‘mixed economy’, anti free trade ideas that have been sneaking into mainstream economics since the Great Recession, namely that ‘neo-liberalism’ and free markets are bad for living standards. Instead, a little dose of protectionism on trade (Rodrik) and state intervention and regulation (Kwak) helps capitalism to work better. But no, says Smith. Neoliberalism works better. He cites China’s growth phenomenon as his main example! In China, “the shift...

Bernie appears to have had an impact. To obtain this information, the research and data firm YouGov surveyed 23,000 people aged 16 and over. Two of the survey’s findings included that 59 percent of total Americans would rather live in a capitalist country, with 34 percent preferring a socialist nation.When focusing on millennials, the survey revealed 44 percent of those surveyed would rather live in a socialist nation, compared to 42 percent who would prefer a capitalist country. The...

Technological innovation increases productivity, decreasing the need for human work and increasing the opportunity for leisure. It's a distribution issue. The problem is that under capitalism, gains are capitalized and losses are socialized. Under socialism, gains are socialized and losses are minimized. Who is going to win this race, those aiming at the top or those racing to the bottom?NEOTechnology & The Marxism of Jack Ma Caleb Maupin

And American imperialism is scared. U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has described the plan as an “attack” on “American genius.” In an excellent new book, The US vs China: Asia’s new cold war?, Jude Woodward, a regular visitor and lecturer in China, shows the desperate measures that the US is taking to try to isolate China, block its economic progress and surround it militarily. But she also shows this policy is failing. China is not accepting control by foreign multi-nationals; it is...

Exposing faked news about Venezuela, although it is also about Latin America as a whole and the US attempt to control the region to advance the interests of the US. Dennis Bernstein: You just got back from Venezuela. Why were you there? Daniel Kovalik: I was invited as an election observer for the regional elections that took place on October 15. Dennis Bernstein: Jimmy Carter has said that these elections in Venezuela were some of the fairest in the world. Daniel Kovalik: Yes, he said...