Capitalism

Not Just Rich People And Cafes: Toward A Socialist Understanding Of Gentrification

October 6, 2018 Yasmina Mrabet, Liberationschool.org Educate! Capitalism, Class Struggle, Gentrification

Gentrification is the systematic process of displacing poor people from a community and replacing them with more affluent people, all in the interest of profit. It has become a primary local policy of the representatives of the ruling class and is clearly carried out by the state. While it is clearly a policy, it is also an outcome of the capitalist approach to housing and development. Profit is king. People’s livelihoods and well-being are not considerations. A serious socialist program for housing must unequivocally reject the idea that gentrification is a process caused primarily by an influx of white wealthier people and fancy coffee shops. They more serve as symbols that gentrification won. By the time wealthy people and coffee shops show up, the behind-the-scenes work for gentrification has already taken place.

One Man Could End World Hunger, But He Won’t

October 4, 2018 Lee Camp, Truthdig.com Educate! Amazon, Capitalism, Jeff Bezos, Ruling Class

He’s achieved a net worth of more than $150 billion by selling everything that has ever existed … with free shipping. (It turns out the only thing stopping the human race from giving all our money to one man was that pesky $4.99 shipping fee.) But let me stop right here. Even the way we talk about economics is influenced by a capitalist culture that tells us amassing money is the answer to everything. Did you notice I said Bezos “achieved” a net worth of $150 billion, and that seems like a normal way to phrase it? However, would you say, “Jeffrey Dahmer achieved eating the hearts of 10 different people?” No, that would sound odd to you. Yet having $150 billion is nearly as sociopathic, and still we use terminology as if it’s GREAT!

In Yemen And Beyond, U.S. Arms Manufacturers Are Abetting Crimes Against Humanity

October 1, 2018 By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies, Fpif.org Educate! Capitalism, Military Industrial Complex, US Imperialism, Weapons Sales, Yemen

Our leading weapons dealers have developed a business model that feeds on war, terrorism, chaos, political instability, and human rights violations. The Saudi bombing of a school bus in Yemen on August 9, 2018 killed 44 children and wounded many more. The attack struck a nerve in the U.S., confronting the American public with the wanton brutality of the Saudi-led war on Yemen. When CNN revealed that the bomb used in the airstrike was made by U.S. weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin, the horror of the atrocity hit even closer to home for many Americans. But the killing and maiming of civilians with U.S.-made weapons in war zones around the world is an all too regular occurrence. U.S. forces are directly responsible for largely uncounted civilian casualties in all America’s wars, and the United States is also the world’s leading arms exporter.

Towards A New Internationalism

September 28, 2018 By Thomas Jeffrey Miley, Roarmag.org Strategize! Capitalism, Class Struggle, Internationalism

The tyranny of capitalist social-property relations, ever more consolidated across the globe, leads humanity to perpetual war and ecological catastrophe. The very future of life on the planet is under threat, the cancerous contradiction between the imperative for growth built into capitalism and the finitude of natural resources ever more manifest. The entrenched obstacles to collective rationality that we must successfully surmount if we are to avoid a brutal and tragic denouement are immense and global in scope. We desperately need a new revolutionary internationalism, capable of coordinating and connecting local struggles against global capitalism and against related, intersecting systems of domination — of ethnicity and race, of gender, over nature.

America Traded One Recession For A Far More Serious One

September 27, 2018 Michael E. Porter, Bostonglobe.com Educate! Capitalism, Crisis, Recession, United States

The headline economic indicators – GDP growth, the unemployment rate, the stock market — all say that the United States is in the midst of a sustained economic expansion that was slow to develop after the Great Recession. But a deeper look at US performance offers far less cause for celebration. America is mired in a social progress recession. Data from the Social Progress Index, the first ever rigorous measurement of social performance across a broad range of indicators and all major countries, reveals that the quality of life and opportunities for many Americans is lagging. The fact is that our country is failing on many of the things we hold most dear. And it’s getting worse. The Social Progress Index focuses exclusively on social outcomes (not spending or inputs), capturing key aspects of quality of life, including health, water and sanitation, personal safety, education, and environmental quality.

The Establishment’s ‘Fear’ Is Different From Yours

September 27, 2018 Paul Street, Truthdig.com Educate! Capitalism, Inter-Imperialist Rivalry, Ruling Class

The instantly famous Anonymous New York Times Op-Ed (ATOE), published Sept. 5, in which a senior Trump administration official complained about the brutish awfulness and incompetence of Donald Trump and claimed to be working with other White House officials to check Trump’s worst impulses, has evoked a range of responses on so-called social media. “The author is Mike Pence,” a first correspondent wrote to me, because the editorial’s anonymous author (hereafter “AA”) used the word “lodestar,” an unusual word that Pence has used many times in the past. No—too easy. The word choice seems calculated to throw people off. Pence, Trump’s presidential heir apparent in the case of constitutional removal, is like the first suspect in every murder mystery. He’s the person who initially seems to make sense as the culprit and then fades as the investigation gets more serious.

Trump Delivers Fascistic Tirade At The United Nations

September 27, 2018 Bill Van Auken, Wsws.org Educate! Capitalism, Donald Trump, United Nations

In his second appearance before the United Nations General Assembly Tuesday, US President Donald Trump delivered a fascistic tirade, threatening military aggression and all-out trade war, while invoking retrograde nationalism, “sovereignty” and “patriotism” as the only way forward in confronting the immense problems confronting humanity. A year ago, the American president shocked the world body by announcing from the podium that he was “ready, willing and able” to “totally destroy” North Korea and its 25 million people, while referring to the country’s leader Kim Jong-un by the imbecilic nickname of “Rocket Man.” This time around, the reaction to his megalomaniac remarks was somewhat different and, in its own way, expressed the deep-going breakdown of the global capitalist order.

American Anomie

September 26, 2018 Chris Hedges, Truthdig.com Educate! Capitalism, Ideology, mental health, Psychology

The French sociologist Emile Durkheim in his classic book “On Suicide” examined the disintegration of social bonds that drive individuals and societies to personal and collective acts of self-destruction. He found that when social bonds are strong, individuals achieve a healthy balance between individual initiative and communal solidarity, which he called a “life-sustaining equilibrium.” These individuals and communities have the lowest rates of suicide. The individuals and societies most susceptible to self-destruction, he wrote, are those for whom these bonds, this equilibrium, have been shattered. Societies are held together by a web of social bonds that give individuals a sense of being part of a collective and engaged in a project larger than the self.

Tensions Grow As China, Russia And Iran Lead The Way Towards A New Multipolar World Order

September 26, 2018 Federico Pieraccini, Strategic-culture.org Educate! Capitalism, China, Inter-Imperialist Rivalry, Iran, Russia, United States

With the province of Idlib ever closer to being liberated from terrorists by the Syrian Arab Army (SAA), the tensions between the US and Syria (and Syria’s allies) are rising. Every significant military campaign by the SAA seems to be accompanied by the usual alarms and false reports emanating from the Western media and governments warning of an imminent (staged) use of chemical weapons by the SAA. Tensions are rising as several American voices, including that of the President, have expressed the desire to strike Syria over any alleged use of chemical weapons, without even waiting for any independent verification. Threats by the US, the UK and France to bomb Russian troops in Syria are voiced everyday on Western media. The insanity is reaching disturbing levels.

Get Ready For Another Crash

September 26, 2018 By John Feffer, Inequality.org Educate! Capitalism, Crisis, Deregulation, New Economy, Uneven Development

You might remember that phrase from the 1990s. Alan Greenspan, the head of the Federal Reserve at the time, was describing how the tech boom was creating a bubble by generating enthusiasm way out of proportion to the actual value of the new companies. Such an unwarranted economic boom was hardly something new, so it was easy to predict what would happen next. Periods of irrational exuberance — whether the dot-com expansion, Dutch tulipmania in the 17th century, or the housing bubble in America of the 2000s — have always led to a sudden crash and a serious hangover. And now, here we go again. Trump, always exuberant when talking about himself and his putative accomplishments, loves to boast about how well the American economy is chugging along.

The Neoliberal Order Is Dying. Time To Wake Up

September 22, 2018 Jonathan Cook, Informationclearinghouse.info Educate! Capitalism, Ideology

September 20, 2018 "Information Clearing House" - In my last blog post I argued that power in our societies resides in structure, ideology and narratives – supporting what we might loosely term our current “neoliberal order” – rather than in individuals. Significantly, our political and media classes, who are of course deeply embedded in this neoliberal structure, are key promoters of the very opposite idea: that individuals or like-minded groups of people hold power; that they should, at least in theory, be held accountable for the use and misuse of that power; and that meaningful change involves replacing these individuals rather than fundamentally altering the power-structure they operate within. In other words, our political and media debates reduce to who should be held to account for problems in the economy, the health and education systems, or the conduct of a war.

On the 10th Anniversary Of Lehman Brothers 2008: Can ‘IT’ Happen Again?

September 21, 2018 Jack Rasmus, Counterpunch.org Educate! 2008 crash, Capitalism, Crisis

This past weekend, September 15-16, marked the 10th anniversary of the Lehman Brothers Investment bank collapse and the subsequent generalized financial system crash that followed. Business and mainstream media flooded the airwaves and print publications with recounts and assessments of the events of ten years past. Most promoted the theme about how the Federal Reserve central bank and the US Treasury rescued us all from another 1930s-like depression. The corollary message is that ‘IT’ can’t happen today because of the various reforms instituted in the wake of the crash that now prevent the repeat of something similar like 2008. Buried in the reviews of 2008 events is the sticky question of whether the investment bank, Lehman Brothers, should have been allowed to fail—as the US Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson, and the chair of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, decided to allow.

The Capitalist Manifesto: Let Poor People Die

September 20, 2018 Paul Buchheit, Nationofchange.org Educate! Capitalism, Inequality

The original Capitalist Manifesto was a 1958 book by economist Louis O. Kelso and philosopher Mortimer J. Adler. In their view of a properly conducted democratic capitalist society, a sort of modern-day Homestead Act was envisioned, in which all Americans would participate in the “capitalist revolution” of growing stock portfolios. This would be possible because of great technologies (energy in the 1950s, AI now) that would allow all of us, in Aristotelian and Jeffersonian property-owning ways, to become ‘free’ to pursue the arts & sciences and to enjoy more leisure time. Today, this form of democratic capitalism could be realized through the Employee Stock Ownership Plan promoted by the “Just Third Way” movement.

The EU Needs A Stability And Wellbeing Pact, Not More Growth

September 20, 2018 Staff, Theguardian.com Create! Capitalism, European Union (EU)

This week, scientists, politicians, and policymakers are gathering in Brussels for a landmark conference. The aim of this event, organised by members of the European parliament from five different political groups, alongside trade unions and NGOs, is to explore possibilities for a “post-growth economy” in Europe. For the past seven decades, GDP growth has stood as the primary economic objective of European nations. But as our economies have grown, so has our negative impact on the environment. We are now exceeding the safe operating space for humanity on this planet, and there is no sign that economic activity is being decoupled from resource use or pollution at anything like the scale required.

The Elite World Order In Jitters

September 17, 2018 Robert Hunziker, Counterpunch.org Educate! Capitalism, Ruling Class

Meantime, and along the way according to Phillips, wealth concentration has gone ballistic like a moonshot! In January 2016 only 62 people held as much wealth as one-half of the entire world, but within one year, by 2018, that figure narrowed to 8 people with as much wealth as one-half of the entire world. Stop and think about the implications. Is something about that awry, amiss, or maybe nonsensical? “Wealth concentration is happening so rapidly that it is feasible that someday soon one man will hold more wealth than half the humans in the world.” (p. 21) Wow-Wow! Is capitalism starting to “stink up the place” with wealth cumulation madness? Can the world community live with this or will there be an uprising as the elite’s bold rapaciousness increasingly turns into a public image of the Wicked Witch of the East?

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