A demagogue, H.L. Mencken once said, is someone “who will preach doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.” This is a pretty good description of the US presidential candidates in action at their late-summer conventions. Although, to be fair to those who listened to the convention speeches, it...
Read More »
MS
Conventional Logic
Cloudy View from the Summit
Last month’s G8 Summit in the far north of Japan was typical of meetings of the heads of state these days. Held in a remote location, well out of sight and sound of protest marches, and protected by an army of police, the meeting was carefully choreographed to convey an impression of competence and...
Read More »
Labor Theory of Value
The article below is one part of my introduction to a book I have translated entitled Marx’s Theory of the Genesis of Money by the Japanese Marxist economist Samezo Kuruma. My discussion of the labor theory of value below is part of my overview of Kuruma’s book so it might be a bit difficult...
Read More »
Bubble Troubles
The hangover The intoxicating US housing boom has come to an end. Now the economic hangover has arrived. What is likely, at the very least, is a prolonged crisis of the credit system. And as credit greases the wheels of capitalism this is no laughing matter for the capitalist class. The Federal Reserve has...
Read More »
Work as it is (and could be)
“That would never work!” A typical response, I imagine, to the description of a socialist society, where people work because they want to, on a voluntary basis. Such a society would not work, we are told, because no one in it would do any work. However, that view of work as, well, work...
Read More »
Religion or capitalism: Which is the root of evil?
Atheism—thank god—is gaining in popularity and in converts. Books by atheists have been appearing on non-fiction bestseller lists, such as Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion and Sam Harris’s The End of Faith. Even Christopher Hitchens, who has been cheering on the US imperialist crusade with his Christian comrades in the 101st Keyboard Brigade, has...
Read More »
One-party rule in Japan at an end?
The Liberal Democratic Party, led by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, lost the majority it had held in the upper house (along with its coalition partner the New Komei Party), so that now it is controlled by the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). Many within the LDP have called for Abe to resign, which is...
Read More »
Meat the Press
It’s a familiar sight on the TV news in Japan. Four somber looking men are seated at a flimsy foldout table in the front of a non-descript conference room bathed in fluorescent light. The culprits—for these men look guilty of something—issue a statement and answer questions. And at some point they all stand up....
Read More »
Anti-war Libertarians
The US anarcho-capitalist Libertarians are wrong to think that capitalism could exist without a state or that its competitive struggle for profits does not lead to wars. The anti-war movement in the United States may be underwhelming at the moment, but clearly anti-war sentiment today, four years after Bush declared the mission accomplished, is...
Read More »
Terrorism: A Means to a Dead End
Terrorism is now associated with Islamic extremists, but in the early 1970s there were terrorist groups on the “far-left.” This article looks at the half-baked “socialist” notions from the New Left that these terrorists took and then burned to a crisp. Far-left terrorist groups, such as the Weathermen in the United States and the...
Read More »
RSS
