Adam Buick and John Crump, The Alternative to Capitalism (Theory and Practice, 2013) This short paperback is a concise introduction to basic Marxian concepts concerning the current system of society – world capitalism – and the alternative to it – world socialism. The texts are carefully written to be fully accessible to readers with no previous knowledge of Marx’s ideas. Apart from the preface, the book consists of three chapters reproduced from two other books that were published in the 1980s and are now unfortunately out of print.* Although there is a note of this fact on the page...
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The work of Richard Wolff and Stephen Resnick contains some insights for socialists but it is not Marxian economics and is not socialist. The late twentieth-century saw the demise of many governments that viewed themselves as heirs of the ideas of Karl Marx. The failure of these regimes was seen by their opponents as the triumph of capitalism and the death of socialism. With the rise of neoliberal economics in advanced industrial countries the future of the left did indeed seem bleak. The legacy of Karl Marx and Marxian socialism, however, was far from dead. As the current global...
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“I treat the ridiculous seriously when I treat it with ridicule.” Marx explained in “On Freedom of the Press and Censorship.” Born on 5 May 1818, Karl Marx died 14th March 1883 after a long illness, his end undoubtedly being hastened by the death of his wife in 1881 and his favourite daughter, Jenny, in 1882. Marx devoted the best years of his life in the struggle for socialism and the fruits of his labours are a legacy of inestimable value to the working class. There were less than a dozen mourners for his funeral at Highgate Cemetry. You...
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Five years ago, we reminded readers of this column that ‘nuclear weapons are still there’ (Socialist Standard, February 2008). True, many fewer of them than at the height of the Cold War. But more than enough to turn the surface of our planet into a radioactive wasteland and still have plenty left over. In a recent book entitled The Second Nuclear Age (Henry Holt & Co., 2012), the prominent American nuclear strategist Paul Bracken argues that nuclear weapons are now regaining their relevance to statecraft. They are making a comeback. The risk of nuclear war is significantly higher now...
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When European Central Bank president Mario Draghi recently told German tabloid Bild ”The worst is over,” he was talking about government budgets and European banks’ balance sheets. It is a completely different story for workers through-out Europe who are finding their trade union rights undermined, their wages squeezed, their retirement age raised and their pensions cut while the employers are granted more and increasing power. 27 European Union members are implementing austerity measures to the tune of about 450 billion euros. Such austerity measures have been portrayed as a necessary part of bringing national debts under control and making European businesses competitive, but...
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The top graph is taken from “Left Business Observer” . 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’re becoming ever more productive as a class. Aside...
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PROFIT HOTEL (dirty gossip about the capitalist mode of production!)
The dismal art? After the socialist revolution, will economics be demoted to an art form? Is economics even “soft science”? There is one small problem … A recent article in Science News notes: Annual forecasts of currency values from December 2001 to December 2010, which guided banks’ investment decisions, missed the mark nine out of 10 times, says psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. Banks incorrectly foretold the fates of the dollar and the euro in the years leading up to, during and after the recent financial crisis. [Bruce Bower, “Banks confuse...
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