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,...
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The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission set up by the US government reported at the end of January. They concluded that the crisis of 2007 and 2008 was the result of “human action and inaction, not of Mother Nature or computer models gone haywire”, but “of human mistakes, misjudgments, and misdeeds” and so avoidable. Obviously,...
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Households face the most dramatic squeeze in living standards since the 1920s, Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England warned. Families will see their disposable income eaten up as they “pay the inevitable price” for the financial crisis. With wages failing to keep pace with rising inflation, workers’ take- home pay will...
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How should poverty be measured if at all? Part of the measure of statistics is that, however well-meant the goal, there are bound to be flaws and weaknesses. Any individual’s subjective assessment of their own poverty will likely be quite different from that of an objective report. Over the years different studies have listed...
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The heroic and inspiring struggles of China’s working class will only lay the ground for new and improved exploitation methods – unless, that is, the struggle turns political – and socialist. “I do the same thing every day,” said one employee at the Foxconn factory in Shenzhen, China, where more than ten workers have...
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What happens when you swap your wage-slavery for a rucksack? You get communism. That, at least, was the argument of Aditya Chakrabortty in a column for the Guardian (13 July), drawing on the arguments of the late Marxist philosopher GA Cohen. Camping and caravan trips last year were up 27 percent on the previous...
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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...
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In his famous novel The Grapes of Wrath (Chapter 25), John Steinbeck described how food was destroyed during the Great Depression: Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people come for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges if they could drive out and pick...
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World Bank claims that we are broadly on course to halve the proportion of people living below the $1 a day poverty line by 2015 are based on a seriously flawed measurement system, says a new report by the New Economics Foundation. The report claims the setting of the $1 dollar a day definition...
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A “world without money” describes one essential aspect of socialism. But to get a clearer idea of how society can function without money we need a better understanding of money and why it must exist under capitalism. It might seem odd to suggest that people don’t really understand money all that well, for it...
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