One of the more memorable jokes in Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was the one about the supercomputer which, on being asked the meaning of life, supplied the answer ‘42’. One of capitalism’s most profound illogicalities is its constant need to render unquantifiable things – like knowledge – in monetary terms so that its beancounters can do their sums properly. It’s the same joke, only accountants don’t get the laughs. NASA is pulling out of its agreement with the European Space Agency over the planned ExoMars Rover programme, citing lack of funds. It has already ceased supplying...
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Note. You can listen to this brilliant song by Buffy Sainte Marie at http://www.buffysaintemarie.co.uk or on YouTube. “Keshagesh” is a Cree word roughly equivalent to “greedy guts.” Socialists will identify “Keshagesh” or “Mr. Greed” with the world’s capitalist class, or with capital as the endlessly expanding and all-devouring force of production for profit. I never saw so many business suits. Never knew a dollar sign that looked so cute. Never knew a junkie with a money Jones: He’s singing, “Who’s selling Park Place? Who’s buying Boardwalk?” These old men they make their dirty deals. Go in the back room and...
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The film The Iron Lady is a paean to a personality rather than a political documentary, and must be judged as such. The personal is political, however, and therefore anyone who lived through what happened in Britain in the 1980s will have some reaction to the politics of this film. Meryl Streep’s acting, as ever, is extraordinary and this is by far the most remarkable thing about this film. Most of the action effectively takes place inside Thatcher’s head, as her senile dementia filters a mish-mash of memories, regrets, resentments and pride over the course of her career. This allows...
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It’s almost taken for granted that television doesn’t accurately reflect how we live, but it’s not always easy to articulate how it distorts the real world. Class Dismissed: How TV Frames The Working Class is a useful examination of the ways the goggle-box deceives us. The film was made in 2005 by Pepi Leistyna of the University of Massachusetts-Boston, and is easy enough to find on the internet. It only discusses American television, but the trends are recogn
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Recently the media has focused extensively on Toronto Mayor, Rob Ford’s proposed cuts to the student nutrition programs. At the time of writing, it seems as if Ford has been forced to back off owing to the howl of outrage this proposal produced. A ten per cent cut would mean 58 of its 669 programs would be closed, affecting about fourteen thousand children. The city is considering cutting $380 000 from its annul $3.8 million contribution to nutrition programs which cost a total of $12 million to run, the rest coming from the province and donations. To put it...
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“It was a machine like no other.” With this sentence Franz Kafka opens his metaphorically true story In the Penal Colony. The “machine” is a device that tatoos social imperatives into the skin of those perceived as violating them. The Pioneer (the protagonist of the story, acting in the capacity of a sociologist) shows up in the penal colony just in time to witness the tatooing of a miscreant. The soldier who is duty-bound to administer the tatoo is checking and preparing the machine for operation. He personally is opposed to use of the machine, but he has his...
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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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This was article written by Adam Buick for the journal Radical Philosophy 10. Spring 1975 . JOSEPH DIETZGEN is indeed a neglected philosopher. How many people know that he was the man Marx introduced to the 1872 Congress of the First International as ‘our philosopher’? Or that it was Dietzgen, not Plekhanov, who first coined the phrase ‘dialectical materialism’? Or that for the first thirty or so years of this century Dietzgen’s Philosophical Essays were to he found on the bookshelves of any working class militant with Marxist pretensions? Who, then, was Dietzgen? What were his views? And, indeed,...
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Jomo Kwame Sundaram , United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development writes :- “Lack of food is rarely the reason that people go hungry. The world today produces enough food to feed everyone. The problem is that more and more people simply cannot afford to buy the food they need. Even before the recent food-price increases, a billion people were suffering from chronic hunger, while another two billion were experiencing malnutrition, bringing the total number of food-insecure people to around three billion, or almost half the world’s population. Global food prices are at the highest level since the United...
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“…I’m 94 years old now and I’m afraid my disposition is the same as it was 74 years ago, THIS SHIT’S GOT TO GO!” And so begins Zeitgeist: Moving Forward the third film in a series of independently produced and distributed films by Peter Joseph. For those unfamiliar with these films, which have enjoyed considerable success on the internet, perhaps a quick recap will be useful. In 2007, following on from a live music and visual production, the film Zeitgeist was released on the internet. The content of the film was concerned with religion, 9/11 conspiracy theories, and fractional...
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