Capitalism

Comics About The Commons: ‘Seeing Beyond The Map’

November 14, 2023 David Bollier. Educate! Capitalism, Colonialism, Comics, The Commons

In a novel popularization about commons, the Centre for Future Natures at the Institute of Development Studies in the UK, has published a compelling set of comics, "Seeing Beyond the Map." The two comics, presented in the style of an old-style pulp comic book, are an amusing educational experiment in alternative cartography. The stories unpack many mystifications about the commons, including the so-called "tragedy" parable, while offering a more accurate conceptual map and narrative of the commons. (You can download the 14-page PDF here.) In a blog post introducing the comics, Amber Huff, Principal Investigator at Future Natures, writes, "Maps tell stories about relationships.

The Illusion Of Green Capitalism

October 17, 2023 Charles Derber and Suren Moodliar, Scheer Post. Educate! Big Oil, Capitalism, climate crisis, Green Capitalism, green washing

Many Americans – even those who recognize capitalism’s destructive impacts – find the idea of discarding capitalism for a more just system unimaginable. Yes, capitalism is part of the problem. But, they think, realistically, the world is not going to invent anytime fast a visionary postcapitalist system. Meanwhile we barrel toward environmental destruction. If we’re going to be pragmatic, as millions of concerned Americans believe, we should listen to the growing number of capitalist leaders and companies who are taking climate change seriously and proposing their own solution: green capitalism.

Scientific Consensus On Post-Growth Over Green Growth

October 2, 2023 Teemu Koskimäki, Medium. Educate! Capitalism, climate crisis, Degrowth, Environment, Science

According to new research, a scientific consensus is forming for a new economic paradigm that looks beyond growth. This post presents proof and answers why green growth no longer seems viable. At present, there are two main strategy options for countries to achieve sustainability: green growth and post-growth. The green growth approach seeks more economic growth while decreasing environmental impacts at the same time. There is a good chance this is what your country currently tries to do. In contrast, the post-growth approach seeks to secure the well-being of people and nature regardless of economic growth. It seeks to create a prosperous future beyond growth.

The Anthropocene? No, We’re Actually Entering The Ecocene!

October 1, 2023 David Bollier. Educate! Anthropocene, Book Review, Capitalism, climate crisis, Ecocene, Environment, The Commons

We moderns are so self-important that we’ve even named a geological epoch after ourselves, the Anthropocene. Sure, human civilization has massively transformed and destabilized the planet’s ecosystems. But Anthropocene is ultimately a misleading moniker because it implies that we humans are the driving force on Earth. How self-regarding! As a parade of wildfires, floods, droughts, and extreme heat are showing, it’s Gaia who is calling the shots. She’s making her own fierce, non-negotiable demands on us. She’s bursting the frames of order that humans have long used to shape civilization, capitalism, the state, and culture.

Create A Schumacher Action Lab; Reconstitute The World

September 28, 2023 David Bollier. Strategize! Capitalism, climate crisis, Cooperatives, Degrowth, The Commons

In truth, our times don’t just require a new movement. They require a new type of movement, because the old movements and ideologies and organizations are not achieving what are needed. Too many of them are artifacts of an archaic, fading order of economics and political action. Think about it: It’s been more than three decades since we first learned that science had confirmed the reality of climate change. The 2008 financial meltdown – 15 years ago! -- revealed the arrogant power of global finance and capitalism – and yet the liberal state still has not significantly reformed those financial structures.

Poverty Is Growing In Puerto Rico Under US Colonialism

September 27, 2023 Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy. Educate! Capitalism, Colonialism, Poverty, Puerto Rico

Poverty in Puerto Rico, under US colonialism, is getting worse over time, not better. More than two-fifths of Puerto Ricans suffer from poverty, and nearly three-fifths of Puerto Rican children live in poor households. In 2022, the poverty rate in the colonized US “territory” grew from 40.5% to 41.7%, according to US Census Bureau data. A staggering 57.6% of Puerto Rican children live in poverty. And 38.8% of families are below the poverty line. Poverty has been growing in Puerto Rico even at a time when more people are working. The unemployment rate fell from 13.1% to 9.9% in 2022, while poverty got worse.

A Telling Tale Of Two Press Lords

September 25, 2023 Sam Pizzigati, Inequality.org. Educate! Capitalism, Fox news, Media, Plutocracy, Rupert Murdoch, Scripps

Murdoch has been wreaking all this damage ever since he inherited — way back in 1952 — his first media property, a daily Australian newspaper his daddy had owned. Over the years, especially those years since his Fox News became America’s premiere news network in 2001, no single individual anywhere on Earth has done more to make our world safe for grand fortunes. Could we realistically have expected anything even a bit more socially redeeming from a media mogul as powerful as Murdoch? Well, actually, history does offer up some models for media moguls interested in something besides maximizing their mega millions.

‘Silent Coup’: How Capitalism Defeated Decolonization

September 23, 2023 Chris Hedges, The Real News Network. Resistance Report Capitalism, Decolonization, History, Latin America, World Bank

The 20th Century saw a great global uprising against European imperialism as the former colonial countries shook off their shackles and rose up for independence. More than a half century later, global inequality is sharper than ever before. To understand the current predicament of the vast majority of the world’s people, we must understand the intervening decades. Matt Kennard and Claire Provost‘s book, Silent Coup: How Corporations Overthrew Democracy, looks inside the international architecture of global corporate governance that exists to flout and crush any attempts by the former colonial world to enact development on their own terms. Matt Kennard joins The Chris Hedges Report for a look at this intriguing and essential history.

New Research: Amazon’s Monopoly Tollbooth In 2023

September 23, 2023 Stacy Mitchell, Institute for Local Self-Reliance. Educate! Amazon, Capitalism, Exploitation, Monopoly

Amazon’s dominance of online retail means that businesses that make or sell products have little choice but to rely on its site to reach customers. Amazon exploits its power as a gatekeeper to pocket a growing cut of the revenue earned by these businesses. It does this by imposing ever-larger fees on them. In effect, Amazon controls a monopoly tollbooth that sits between businesses and the online market. Over the last few years, it has sharply raised the price of passing through it. In the first half of 2023, using a variety of fees, Amazon took 45 percent of sellers’ revenue in the U.S. That’s up from 35 percent in 2020, and 19 percent in 2014. These exorbitant fees make it nearly impossible for small businesses and other sellers to sustain a viable business online. Most fail.

Is Intellectual Property Turning Into A Knowledge Monopoly?

September 21, 2023 Prabir Purkayastha, Orinoco Tribune. Educate! Capitalism, Corporations, Intellectual Property, Monopoly, Privatization, Technology

The twentieth century saw the emergence of public funded universities and technical institutions, while technology development was concentrated in the R&D laboratories of large corporations. The age of the lone inventor Edison, Siemens, Westinghouse, Graham Bell had ended with the nineteenth century. The twentieth century was more about industry-based R&D laboratories, where corporations gathered together leading scientists and technologists to create the technologies of the future. In this phase, capital was still expanding production. Even though finance capital was already dominant over productive capital, the major capitalist countries still had a strong manufacturing base.

The Housing Crisis And Migrant Crisis Are Crises Of Capitalism

September 20, 2023 Mike Pappas, Left Voice. Educate! Capitalism, Housing, Housing Crisis, Migrants

New York City mayor Eric Adams declared in August that there is “no room” in the city for hundreds of migrants being forced to sleep on the street because shelters are already crowded and in disrepair. The mayor initially encouraged those seeking shelter to “consider another city” as they struggled to survive. Adams announced plans to house as many as 2,000 in a tent complex on Randalls Island and later designated space on an airfield to house asylum seekers. These spaces are identified, as the claim goes, that the city simply doesn’t have housing space for those seeking asylum, especially because it is already difficult enough for residents to find adequate, affordable housing.

The Pyramid Scheme That Is Racial Capitalism

September 16, 2023 Jon Jeter, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Black America, Capitalism, Inequality, Racism

On August 26, a lone white gunman, 21-year-old Ryan Christopher Palmeter, fired 11 rounds from his semi-automatic weapon into the windshield of a car parked outside a Jacksonville Dollar General, killing the African American driver. Then he walked into the discount store, and fatally shot two other African Americans before turning the gun on himself. Palmeter left behind a manifesto indicating his displeasure with African Americans, reminiscent of another 21-year-old white gunman, Dylan Roof, who eight years earlier sat outside the Emanuel AME church in Charleston, South Carolina. Finishing off a bottle of Smirnoff’s Ice, he pulled a Glock handgun from his waistband, walked into the church and opened fire, killing a pastor and eight of his parishioners, all of them Black.

The Polycrisis Is The Singular Dilemma Of Humanity Called Capitalism

September 15, 2023 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Educate! Capitalism, Class Struggle, Polycrisis, Socialism

Dilemmas of humanity abound. There is little need to look at statistical data to know that we are in a spiral of crises, from the environmental and climate crisis to the crises of poverty and hunger. In 1993, the philosophers Edgar Morin and Anne-Brigitte Kern used the term ‘polycrisis’ in their book Terre-Patrie (‘Homeland Earth’). Morin and Kern argued that ‘there is no single vital problem, but many vital problems, and it is this complex intersolidarity of problems, antagonisms, crises, uncontrolled processes, and the general crisis of the planet that continues the number one vital problem’.

Capitalist Urbanization, Climate Change, And The Need For Sponge Cities

September 15, 2023 Tina Landis, Friends of Socialist China. Create! Capitalism, China, climate crisis, Sponge cities, Urbanization

In this fascinating article, first published in Liberation School, environmentalist and author Tina Landis explains the concept of sponge cities: what they are, why they are needed, and China’s leading role in developing them. Tina observes that “the majority of the world’s cities today were built for profit and speculation in mind, with little to no consideration given to negative impacts on either ecology or humanity.” “Vast hardscapes—sidewalks, roads, parking lots, buildings—and gray infrastructure that channels water away as it falls, places these urban centers at odds with biodiversity and the natural cycling of water through the landscape. Green spaces that are created within urban environments are often highly managed areas separate from the rest of the city, filled with non-native ornamental plants and thirsty grasses that require intensive irrigation, synthetic fertilizers, and pesticides, while providing little to no benefit to native species of birds, insects, and others.”

Why Democracy Is Not Possible Under Capitalism

September 14, 2023 People's Dispatch. Strategize! Atlanta, Capitalism, Democracy, Plutocracy, Socialism

In Atlanta, residents are using the existing democratic systems under capitalism to fight the construction of a multi-million dollar training ground for militarized police repression, and finding those systems lacking. Meanwhile, in socialist Cuba, the people and the government collaborated on formulating the world’s most progressive family code. Is it possible to have democracy under a capitalist system? Under a different economic system, such as socialism, what would democracy look like? Mariah Parker, Stop Cop City activist, labor organizer with the Union of Southern Service Workers, and rapper, spoke to over 300 attendees of the Dilemmas of Humanity: A Socialist Horizon conference in Atlanta on September 2, as part of a panel discussion on Socialism and Democracy.

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