The top graph is taken from “Left Business Observer” . Real income is adjusted for inflation. So, the working class, or 95% of the population, the part who actually produce the wealth of the USA have had their wages/income flattened since 1967 whereas the top 5%, the bourgeoisie or capitalist class have seen their real incomes increase quite a bit. The second graph shows the real productivity increases of the working class over the years since the 1940s. Note how productive of wealth you and your fellow workers are and how you’re becoming ever more productive as a class. Aside...
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The World Socialist Party is frequently lambasted for its opposition to reformism. The workers clamor for something concrete now, it is claimed , not abstract socialist principles. They demand immediate improvements that can be obtained by campaigns for legislation it is argued. The World Socialist Party case that although some reforms may be of material benefit to the working class, advocating party policy to struggle for particular reforms hinders the struggle for socialism and diverts our energies into what often results in dead-ends. We found this article by Stephanie Luce on the Labor Notes website particularly relevant in that it offers some...
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Bankers are unpopular. Not the ordinary bank teller or the back-up IT staff, but the directors and top managers who award themselves huge salaries and big bonuses. They are so unpopular, in fact, that the chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland, Stephen Hester, has been forced to give up a bonus of nearly £1m while his predecessor, Sir Fred Goodwin, has been stripped of his knighthood. The banks defend themselves by arguing that they bring “wealth” into Britain, and pay a considerable amount of tax on it. Some even describe themselves as “wealth creators”. This is absurd. What...
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"This is not to say that Marx's ideas can't be measured against experience. His predictions need to be compared with the history of capitalism over the last 200 years. From this perspective, Marx's ideas come off very well, as the main tendencies he predicted for capitalism – towards the supplanting of human labour by machinery, the concentration and centralisation of capital, the spread of wage labour, the tendency towards widescale unemployment, and above all the recurrence of periods of depression – have been realised. In fact, I would say that Marx's theory of the tendency of the rate of...
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Mark Fishman, associate professor of sociology at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, investigated routine news production by examining the work practices of reporters and other news workers. His research findings were published by the University of Texas Press in 1980 in a book entitled Manufacturing the News. At the beginning of his book, Fishman touches on the practical mode of social reproduction by quoting from W. I. Thomas, The Child in America (1928): “Our picture of how the world works is integrally tied to how we work in the world. By acting in accordance with our conception...
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Business As Usual: The Economic Crisis And The Failure Of Capitalism by Paul Mattick. Reacktion Books: 2011. Just yesterday, we were all supposed to believe that the globalisation of capitalism and free markets was the route to freedom, peace and prosperity for all. Then, with barely an explanation, and somewhat out of the blue, the story changed. Now we are to believe that, due to circumstances beyond anyone’s control, prosperity will have to give way to austerity. The good times are over. It is characteristic of crises that the stories we are expected to believe suddenly change. But how...
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From MarketWatch.com Tiffany & Co says sales at its flagship New York store jumped 26% in the first quarter. International luxury goods giant Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy whose brands range from Fendi to Givenchy to Moet & Chandon Champagne, plus, of course, Vuitton bags says U.S. sales boomed 20% in the first quarter, including a remarkable 58% boost for sales of jewelry and expensive watches like Tag Heuer. the Swiss watch federation says exports of luxury watches (those $2,000 “timepieces”) to the U.S. rose 12% in May and are now ahead 9% for the year. Super-luxury goods purveyor Richemont...
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In May 2010, the Coalition government in the UK announced cuts of £6.2 billion in an attempt to begin to reduce the budget deficit of £156 billion for 2009/2010. These cuts will very noticeably affect people’s lives. For example, it was reported that £780 million would be cut on transport, £836 million on communities and local government and £325 million on education. Devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will have to cut back £704 million. Local authorities will be expected to reduce expenditure by £1.165 billion. Many more expenditure reductions were announced in the June emergency budget....
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Amusing video from the Australian National Miners Union…
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Read any newspaper, listen to any radio bulletin, watch any TV news broadcast, and there will be some instance of Capitalist Money Madness – detrimental, shocking or unbelievable thinking and behaviour influenced by money. Trains have been derailed because saving money came before rigorous track maintenance; cows have been ground up and fed to other cows in pursuit of greater profits; companies have been allowed to patent thousands of our own genes in a commodification of humankind’s DNA; there has been widespread use of toxic chemicals in fuel, household furnishings, deodorants, plastics used for food storage etc resulting in...
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