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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It’s exploitation that causes workers’ problems. On an ultra-simplistic level we could say that capitalism in the persona of capitalists uses capital (in its basic form, money) to make a profit. By utilising capital in the form of property, equipment, machinery, investment or speculation the capitalist needs to employ members of the working class in order to increase the original capital for the benefit of the capitalist. This can only be done if the workers agree knowingly or unknowingly to their own exploitation. Why exploitation? In the monetary world society we live in everyone has a need for money...
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by Adam Buick, in Critique (Glasgow) . – 1975 (5) : pp. 59-70 Critique has recently published the translation of an article by Ernest Mandel, in which he develops his now familiar theme that, in the course of social evolution, there intervenes – and must intervene – between capitalism and socialism a transitional “society” with its own social base, relations of production, etc. This is a point of view worth discussing but, despite the Marxist terminology in which it is expressed, it is in fact not a view held by Marx himself. As the present article will try...
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A tree surgeon reflects on why no business can give due regard to the needs of workers and the environment I am, I suppose, a businessman; not, I should say, from choice but more from the need to follow a prescribed and necessary course; necessary, because, were one not to, inevitably the business would fail and fall by the wayside. I say businessman, now, but thirty years ago I would have called myself a ‘tree surgeon’, or ‘woodman’ without the slightest feeling of inadequacy or embarrassment. Admittedly the term ‘tree surgeon’ does sound rather more grand than the reality...
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If you want to know the truth, you cannot rely on newspapers. We have that on good authority – in fact, on the authority of the more honest newspapers. (The more honest papers are those that are read mainly by capitalists who need reliable information about the world in order to make investment decisions, as opposed to those that are read mainly by workers.) In a startlingly frank appraisal of the history and practice of the public relations (PR) industry, The Economist (18 December 2010) admits that PR was invented in the early 20th century to counter working-class struggles,...
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In a Russian-language document now circulating on the internet, Yevgeny Volobuyev, a member of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) in St. Petersburg, “sounds the tocsin to warn of the danger of the CPRF finally turning into a fascist party”. Volobuyev explains that Russian fascists have been arguing for a long time on their websites about “what to do with the CPRF”. Some said that they should just put communists “up against the wall”, but others argued that they should first join the CPRF and take over its structures. In recent years, with openly fascist organizations like...
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“The law in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.“
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“poverty status at birth is linked to worse adult outcomes” An estimated 14.1 million Americans under age 18 are poor. The longer a child is poor, the worse his or her adult outcomes. Childhood poverty rates, according to the U.S. Census Bureau says the report, have ranged between 15 and 23% over the past four decades. Children who are born into poverty have much higher rates of economic and educational difficulties in their adult years. According to a study from the Urban Institute “Childhood Poverty Persistence…” by Ratcliffe and McKernan, 49% of American babies born into poor families will...
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hosted on the archive.org website. if you click on link below you can find options for downloading….
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