`We must choose socialism over capitalist barbarism’

"A crisis in capitalism is not the same as a crisis of capitalism. In the absence of subjects prepared to struggle to change the system, capitalism has a free hand to try to restructure itself. That is certainly what we see occurring as the G20 is invented to take the place of the G7; it’s a recognition that restructuring international ...
Posted on July 30 2010 Keep Reading...

The international significance of the Greek general strike

The Greek general strike and continuing mass protests against the European-IMF austerity package negotiated last week with Prime Minister George Papandreou, of the social-democratic PASOK party, are a sign of coming class struggles in Europe and around the world. There is bitter opposition among Greek workers to Papandreou’s policy. Hundreds of thousands of jobs are to be cut, workers will take ...
Posted on July 30 2010 Keep Reading...

Managing the Euro: Mission Impossible!

"It won't be possible to exit the crisis unless and untill a radical Left dares to take political initiative and build anti-oligarchic, alternative historic blocs.  Either Europe will be Left, or there will be no Europe. The European electoral Left rallying as it is now to the idea that "Europe as it exists is better than no Europe at all" ...
Posted on July 30 2010 Keep Reading...

Economic Recovery for the Few

The business and political leaders generated by the last 30 years of neoliberal capitalism simply assumed that they could impose the costs of their crisis on their countries' people.  That assumption is now being contested.  The European people are beginning to fight back. By Rick Wolff Where is this elusive recovery?  The banks, some say, have "recovered."  Yet they remain dependent ...
Posted on July 30 2010 Keep Reading...

Games big corporations play

Bhopal marked the horrific beginning of a new era. One that signalled the collapse of restraint on corporate power. Over 20,000 killed. Over half a million victims maimed, disabled or otherwise affected. Compensation of around Rs.12,414 per victim on average on the 1989 value of the rupee. ($470 million or Rs.713 crore. And that divided among 574,367 victims.) Over a ...
Posted on July 30 2010 Keep Reading...

No place for Washington in Colombia-Venezuela row

The US should keep its distance. This dispute highlights the importance of the institutional changes that the left-of-centre governments in Latin America are trying to make. The increasing importance of Unasur, displacing the OAS, has become vital to Latin American progress and stability. A process of South American diplomacy could resolve the Colombia-Venezuela dispute. In March ...
Posted on July 30 2010 Keep Reading...

Monopoly capital blocks policy of wage-led growth

We're at a point at which there is a convergence between, you know, I think, the short-term interests of a revival, of an economic revival, and the long-term transition to an egalitarian growth model that would benefit even very large sectors of the financial industry. we're at that point (not that everybody recognizes that yet)." Robert Pollin Interviewed by Paul Jay. Paul ...
Posted on July 30 2010 Keep Reading...

Howard Zinn: “The Bomb”

Zinn points out, with his trademark clarity, how the use of the word "we" blends governments together with peoples and serves to equate our own people with our military, while we demonize the people of other lands because of actions by their governments. by: David Swanson The late Howard Zinn's new book "The Bomb" is a brilliant little dissection of some of ...
Posted on July 30 2010 Keep Reading...

A Dual Task

The mess the economy is in flows not from excessive consumption but from capitalism's ruthless pursuit of unlimited wealth by any and all available means, whether or not these have anything to do with satisfying the needs of real human beings.  The only remedy for this situation is a truly revolutionary reconstruction of the whole socio-economic system. by Harry Magdoff and ...
Posted on July 30 2010 Keep Reading...

The Dialectic of Social Science

Seeing the root of the failure of the  approaches to the study of society in their implicit (or explicit) acceptance of the unreconciled antinomy of subject and object of knowledge. A genuine way out is attainable only through a radical dissolution of that antinomy itself by recognizing the dialectical unity of subject and object. As the key to the vexing ontological problem ...
Posted on July 30 2010 Keep Reading...