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	<title>World Socialist Party (US) &#187; Capitalism</title>
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	<copyright>Copyright &#xA9; World Socialist Party (US) 2010 </copyright>
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		<title>World Socialist Party (US)</title>
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	<itunes:author>World Socialist Party (US)</itunes:author>
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		<itunes:name>World Socialist Party (US)</itunes:name>
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		<item>
		<title>Income vs Productivity</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2012/03/income-vs-productivity/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2012/03/income-vs-productivity/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 17 Mar 2012 21:37:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Friend of WSP</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Capitalism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Theory]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://wspus.org/?p=2524</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The top graph is taken from &#8220;Left Business Observer&#8221; .  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&#8217;re becoming ever more productive as a class. Aside from our rulers&#8217; increasing income, a lot of the wealth we produce goes into expenditures for capital equipment and a major chunk is devoted to military killing efficiency too. ;p  Atom bombs and funny little armoured vehicles which get blown up by roadside bombs, night vision goggles and so on&#8230;.. As a friend of mine quipped, &#8220;With the rising ratio of constant capital [machines, supplies] over variable capital [wages], expressed as &#8216;C/V,&#8217; more wealth must be transformed into constant capital to keep up with competition (i.e. make workers more productive of wealth thus, cheapening the commodities representing that wealth on the [...]


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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Are &#8216;Living Wage&#8217; Campaigns Effective?</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2012/03/2483/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2012/03/2483/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 04 Mar 2012 04:27:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>SPGB</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Capitalism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Labor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marxism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Theory]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://wspus.org/?p=2483</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[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 support for our analysis and it is worth extensively quoting from it. &#8220;&#8230;20 years ago a “living wage” campaign by pastors and union organizers in Baltimore caught the attention of activists around the country. It looked like a way to address the fact that so many people were working but were still poor. Living wage activists have accomplished a lot since then, winning more than 125 living wage ordinances in cities and counties, three city minimum wages, and state and federal minimum wage increases. Eight states have indexed their minimum wage to inflation because of activist pressure, and campaigns to raise [...]


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		</item>
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		<title>Pigs, fat cats or scapegoats?</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2012/03/pigs-fat-cats-or-scapegoats/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2012/03/pigs-fat-cats-or-scapegoats/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 03 Mar 2012 04:24:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>SPGB</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Capitalism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Class]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Economics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Theory]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://wspus.org/?p=2480</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[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 &#8220;wealth&#8221; into Britain, and pay a considerable amount of tax on it. Some even describe themselves as &#8220;wealth creators&#8221;. This is absurd. What banks do is compete for a share of the pool of wealth already created by the productive sections of the world’s working class, wealth which is extracted from them as surplus value. They can be more or less successful in doing this. Banks situated in Britain can channel some of the world&#8217;s surplus value this way which might otherwise have gone elsewhere, but this is capturing surplus value rather than creating wealth. In this way, banks do bring profits to Britain and the taxes they pay on it help finance the capitalist state. It&#8217;s an argument that carries some weight with [...]


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		<title>On the Crisis: Paul Mattick</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2012/02/on-the-crisis-paul-mattick/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2012/02/on-the-crisis-paul-mattick/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 24 Feb 2012 03:04:27 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>SPGB</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Capitalism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Crisis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Economics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Theory]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://wspus.org/?p=2391</guid>
		<description><![CDATA["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 profit to fall over the long term is the only convincing account of the business cycle that there is."


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		<title>Manufacturing the News</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2011/11/manufacturing-the-news/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2011/11/manufacturing-the-news/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 26 Nov 2011 01:28:48 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Joe Hopkins</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Capitalism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Class]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Theory]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[World Socialist Perspective]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[News manufacturing report media organized shapes status quo]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://wspus.org/?p=2299</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[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): &#8220;Our picture of how the world works is integrally tied to how we work in the world. By acting in accordance with our conception of the way things are, we concertedly make them the way they are, whether we are treating pieces of paper as money, conducting a routine conversation, or electing a president&#8221; (p. 3). The research setting &#8220;At the time of the study (1973-74), the Purissima (California) Record held a virtual monopoly over news consumption in both the city of Purissima (population 75,000) and its metropolitan environs (population 150,000). The paper&#8217;s daily circulation of 45,000 approximated the number of households in the metropolitan area&#8230; Its news department consisted of 57 full-time reporters, editors, and photographers&#8211;at least four times the news gathering resources of [...]


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		</item>
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		<title>Crisis: the stories so far</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2011/06/crisis-the-stories-so-far/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2011/06/crisis-the-stories-so-far/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 04 Jun 2011 05:14:45 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>SPGB</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Books]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Capitalism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Crisis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Economics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://wspus.org/?p=2283</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[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 can we understand the change? And might there not be better stories than the rather grim and gloomy one we’ve been ordered to swallow? Paul Mattick Jnr’s short book is just such an alternative. For him the crisis signals the complete bankruptcy and destruction of mainstream economics. Why crisis is impossible Why did the crisis appear as a bolt out of the blue? Why was it not expected or anticipated by any economist or mainstream commentator? In short, because there is no place in the standard economic story for crisis, any more than there’s a place for wizards and interstellar travel [...]


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		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Life is sweet for the rich</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2010/07/life-is-sweet-for-the-rich/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2010/07/life-is-sweet-for-the-rich/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 20 Jul 2010 20:38:39 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Suzy</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Capitalism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Class]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Economics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Work]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://wspus.org/?p=1609</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[From MarketWatch.com Tiffany &#38; 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 &#38; 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 &#8220;timepieces&#8221;) to the U.S. rose 12% in May and are now ahead 9% for the year. Super-luxury goods purveyor Richemont which owns such brands as Cartier, Dunhill, and Van Cleef &#38; Arpels says U.S. sales are up. The Sunseeker Club in New York, America&#8217;s biggest dealership in the multi-million dollar British luxury power boats say business is strong again. Those who have the money to spend, they say, are spending it. The truth is, this is a great time in which to be rich. According to consultants Cap Gemini, the wealthy saw their net worth bounce back sharply last year. And while those with $1 million or more did pretty well, the real story was the boom among the ultra rich: [...]


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		<item>
		<title>They Say: “We Can’t Afford it.”</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2010/07/they-say-%e2%80%9cwe-can%e2%80%99t-afford-it-%e2%80%9d/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2010/07/they-say-%e2%80%9cwe-can%e2%80%99t-afford-it-%e2%80%9d/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 05 Jul 2010 06:30:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>FN Brill</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Capitalism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://wspus.org/?p=1574</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[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. It is vital to realise that this economic crisis is just the latest in a series of slumps which are quite natural to the capitalist system. In the past, supporters of this system have quite mistakenly believed that politicians would be able to rid society of the detrimental effects of the trade cycle. Gordon Brown is particularly infamous for his claims to have “abolished boom and bust”. Past slumps have, of course included the Great Depression of the early 1930s, and recessions of the mid 1970s, the early 1980s and 1990s. Reforms = Continuation of Capitalism When confronted with the case [...]


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		<item>
		<title>going to ruin us&#8230;</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2010/06/going-to-ruin-us/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2010/06/going-to-ruin-us/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 08 Jun 2010 06:03:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>FN Brill</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Capitalism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://wspus.org/?p=1556</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Amusing video from the Australian National Miners Union&#8230; No related posts.


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		<item>
		<title>Capitalist money madness</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2010/05/capitalist-money-madness/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2010/05/capitalist-money-madness/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 10 May 2010 04:48:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>SPGB</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Capitalism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://wspus.org/?p=1540</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[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 an increase in previously rare cancers and an asthma epidemic in children; and more recently, global capitalism has descended into economic chaos which will cause additional untold misery for decades to come. Along with such ‘big’ news stories, there is a never-ending news stream of robberies, burglaries, murders, muggings, scams and scandals involving money in some way or other. Nothing new, of course. Money has been causing misery and deaths ever since its introduction thousands of years ago. Some time around 30 A.D. a Mr J. Iscariot betrayed a subversive called Jeshua of Nazareth for thirty pieces of silver, whereas more [...]


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