Capitalism

We have seen, then, that capitalism is no different from any other form of society insofar as wealth must be produced through the productive activities of human beings. This goes without saying, for without such wealth production no society (or the people living in it) could continue to exist for very long. The key difference...
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(SPGB election manifesto) These elections are taking place in the middle of the biggest economic and financial crisis since the 1930s. In a world that has the potential to produce enough food, clothes, housing and the other amenities of life for all, factories are closing down, workers are being laid off, unemployment is growing, houses...
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An interesting article in the Santa Fe Reader. From a liberal “radical”  on the consequences of income disparity… Bowles offers a key reason why this is so. “Inequality breeds conflict, and conflict breeds wasted resources,” he says. In short, in a very unequal society, the people at the top have to spend a lot of time and...
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People are angry at the banks. They blame them for causing the crisis. They blame them for having to be bailed out and then still paying their top people obscene bonuses. They see them as producing nothing, just making money out of shuffling money around. Some of these criticisms are justified. Some are not. Banks...
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Marx begins his examination of capitalism in Capital with the analysis of the commodity; and he succinctly explains the reason for his starting point in the first paragraph: “The wealth of societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails appears as an ‘immense collection of commodities’; the individual commodity appears as its elementary...
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This series of short articles will examine the first volume of Marx’s Capital from a “socialist perspective,” which is to say, with an eye to how an understanding of capitalism can contribute to our understanding of socialism. I should recognize the obvious fact, right away, that a worker hardly needs to read Capital to arrive...
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The earthquake in Haiti and similar misfortunes are presented as unavoidable natural disasters. To some extent, this is true. But it ignores the consequences of the deliberate pursuit of profit at the expense of environmental protection. It is not a coincidence that the number of victims of recent disasters such as the Asian tsunami...
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When we were children around about the time that we were tiring of Ludo and Snakes and Ladders we discovered the board game Monopoly. I can’t remember the details or the rules – something about cards that said such things as “Pass Go, collect £200″, “Go to jail”, “Get out of jail”. In real...
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Everyday taxicab rides may appear to be lacklustre experiences that are quickly forgotten. However, this might not always be the case. Sometimes our views of events may become clouded and we cannot see things for what they really are. However, after taking many cab-rides in an urban city, I began to see things in...
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