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It’s International Workers Day, still celebrated as the May Day public holiday here in Queensland, at least when the Labor party is in office. So, it’s a good day for me to set out some tentative thoughts on work and its future. Via Matt McManus, I found this quote from Marx ‘Fragment on Machines”. The hand tool makes the worker independent — posits him as proprietor. Machinery — as fixed capital -posits him as dependent, posits him as appropriated Reading this, it struck...

At Thursday’s Supreme Court hearing on Trump’s immunity claim, Justice Alito worried that prosecuting former presidents would create an incentive for incumbent presidents to subvert democracy to remain in office and avoid prosecution (Transcript, p. 110-11): JUSTICE ALITO: All right.  Let me end –end with just a question about what is required for the functioning of a stable democratic society, which is something that we all want.  I’m sure you...

You gotta be old enough to remember what took place in the sixties and into the seventies with regard to protesting. In 1970 when I was bathing in and drinking the Camp Lejeune water, we were selected to be trained in riot control. JIC the protestors, the student protesters were a bit rambunctious in Washington D.C. All the better we were not called out. Still the same fears we are seeing today on college campuses. Similar right-wing dialogue by...

from Lars Syll In mainstream economics, there’s — still — a lot of talk about ‘economic laws.’ The crux of these laws — and regularities — that allegedly exist in economics, is that they only hold ceteris paribus. That fundamentally means that these laws/regularities only hold when the right conditions are at hand for giving rise to them. Unfortunately, from an empirical point of view, those conditions are only at hand in artificially closed nomological models purposely designed to give...

Anzac Day (the anniversary of the disastrous Gallipoli landings in 1915) is always a sad day, but even more so this year, with the horrors unfolding before us in Gaza. The carve-up of the Ottoman Empire by the British and French, of which the Gallipoli campaign was part is the direct cause of the current catastrophe. As well as grabbing colonial possessions for themselves, the Allies made promises to Jews (seeking a homeland) and Arabs (seeking independence from Turkey) which could...

from Crelis Rammelt and current issue of RWER Our presumed dominion over nature is an illusion. No matter how clever technological innovations may seem, they remain subject to the laws of thermodynamics. Consequently, a growth-centered capitalist economy finds itself trapped in futile attempts to completely decouple itself from nature – aiming for a 100% circular, service-oriented and zero-waste existence. This obsession stems from an incapacity to imagine an economy that does not grow,...

Οι καταστροφικές επιπτώσεις της ΕΕ στην Ελλάδα και τους εργαζόμενους Στ. Μαυρουδέας Η προδιαγραμμένη κωλοτούμπα του ΣΥΡΙΖΑ το 2015 – για την οποία ευθύνονται όλα τα τμήματα του σημερινού μετα-συριζαϊκού παλίμψηστου, διαφωνήσαντα και μη – έχει επιβάλλει σιγή ιχθύος στην επίσημη δημόσια συζήτησης σχετικά με τον ρόλο και της επιπτώσεις της ΕΕ στη χώρα μας. Σε αυτή την σιγή συμβάλλουν και οι δυνάμεις του αριστερού κοινοβουλευτικού φάσματος, με το ΚΚΕ να υποβαθμίζει το ζήτημα και να...

Η φοιτητική παράταξη Παντειέρα-Attack του Παντείου Πανεπιστημίου διοργανώνει εκδήλωση με θέμα «Κοινωνικές επιστήμες: είδος υπό εξαφάνιση;» την Τρίτη, 23/4/2024, 5.30μμ στον κήπο του Παντείου. Ομιλητές: Καλούσης Ακρίτας (καθηγητής Κοινωνιολογίας σε ΓΕΛ) Μαυρουδέας Σταύρος (καθηγητής Πολιτικής Οικονομίας του Παντείου Πανεπιστημίου)...

Robert Farley has replied to my recent post on the obsolescence of naval power. Unlike our previous exchange, a pile-on where I was (as he points out) in a minority of one, Robert’s tone is mostly civil this time, and I intend to reciprocate. Our disagreements have narrowed a fair way. On many points, it’s a matter of whether the glass is half-full or half-empty. For example, Farley observes that despite Houthi attacks, 2 million tonnes of shipping per day is passing through the...

from Lars Syll No sooner had I finished my comment on the irrelevancy of economics but I had confirmation — albeit unwittingly — in this morning’s Financial Times.  There on the editorial page was a short column by Soumaya Keynes talking about the rise of Hank. For those of you not on the cutting edge, “Hank” stands for Heterogeneous Agent New Keynesian, as in a complicated model of the economy. Hank is a whole new way of looking at model economies, with the really big breakthrough being...