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‘Global Capitalism: A Monthly Update’ published on May 15, 2013
Economics Professor Richard Wolff publishes these monthly updates on developments relevant to capitalism around the world. His analysis is really on point. It’s long but it’s worth watching, listening to & learning from.
- Professor Wolff’s website
- Professor Wolff’s podcast
- Democracy at Work (an organization co-founded by Richard Wolff)
Anti-capitalist protesters are taking inspiration from Mexican revolutionaries ahead of the G8 summit
May 17, 2013
No one can accuse the anti-capitalist protesters planning to disrupt the runup to next month’s G8 meeting in Northern Ireland of not being thoroughly up to date. The online call has gone out for a carnival against capitalism – curiously illustrated by a century-old photo of Mexican revolutionaries in sombreros, sitting on horseback – in London on 11 June. It’s some way away from Fermanagh where the world leaders will actually be gathering, but that isn’t going to stop them: a map pointing out “the dens of the rich” in central London has helpfully been published to assist the anti-capitalist activists in finding their way around the capital. It includes Buckingham Palace, Fortnum & Mason, “supermarket of the ruling class”, Mahiki, “cocktail bar of the feral rich” and the headquarters of Vogue magazine on the map for telling women how to look and act.
Posted on The People’s Record Facebook page. Like our page for daily news. “Favorite” the page to get more than 10% of our posts in your feed (10% is the facebook default for likes, if you don’t favorite).
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I originally came across the article that posted these graphs from something we reblogged from anarcho-queer (you should follow anarcho-queer for daily news & information along the same lines as what we post. They post just-as, if-not more regularly than we do).
Article segment: Why the left must support Syria’s revolution
April 9, 2013
BEYOND THOSE who support the Syrian regime as a progressive opponent of imperialism, there are those who are justly suspicious of the motives of the U.S. and other powerful governments—and who fear that Syrians are doomed to a civil war between a bloodthirsty dictator and groups of intolerant little tyrants sustained by the U.S. and other powers.
What these pictures of the situation miss—intentionally or not—is the fact that Syria is in the grips of more than a civil war. What is taking place is a popular revolution, with an armed component. There are a wide variety of groups involved and at least as many strategies and ideas about what the struggle is about—including those that are not left wing and that will make accommodations with imperialism.
But the uprising is also a very dynamic process that has involved millions of people becoming active in public life for the first time. There are political advances and retreats, and moments of triumph and disappointment, just as there are military victories and defeats. But it would be wrong to reduce the Syrian Revolution to the question of the armed struggle and the role of imperialist powers in trying to shape and co-opt that armed struggle.
Take the role of women in the uprising—something that is not widely appreciated anywhere, and especially not in the mainstream media. Women have been very active participants and leaders from the beginning. They have played a role not just as victims and mothers and sisters of the martyrs and detainees, but also in demonstrations, on the front in field hospitals, in citizen reporting, and in the distribution of medicine and humanitarian supplies.
As a group of women activists in Aleppo wrote, “We will not wait until the regime falls for women to become active.” At the same time, they write, the “militarization of the revolution” has overshadowed the role of women—so in early March, the revolutionary local council of Aleppo was elected and didn’t include a single woman, despite some well-known female activists being nominated.
So there is—like everywhere in the world—some distance to go before women have equality in Syria. But the role they have played in the struggle so far—and will in the future—underlines how the uprising has opened up many different fronts in the battle against the Assad regime. As Ghayath Naisse said in an interview published by SocialistWorker.org:
The popular masses have invented many forms of struggles, including massive popular demonstrations that we saw in July of last year in Hama and Deir Ezzour; fast demonstrations (like flash mobs) that only last for several minutes; and demonstrations in neighborhoods with narrow streets in order to prevent the security forces from finding and cornering them, thus allowing protesters to disperse in narrow alleys when faced with repression.
Other actions include night demonstrations, releasing balloons carrying revolutionary slogans, dyeing the fountains red in major city squares, raising the flags of the revolution in streets and balconies, renaming streets with names of the revolution’s martyrs and, of course, a series of general strikes. The most recent one, in December 2012, was called the Strike of Dignity and lasted two days.
Every Friday, the masses raise their slogans, most of them united, in response to specific situations or to express their opinion regarding any matter of concern to the revolution. These are also a means to form a common mass consciousness and to generalize revolutionary experiences.
—
I WANT to leave the last word to a brave revolutionary, leftist writer Nahed Badawiyya, speaking from inside Syria:
The Arab Revolutions have come to put an end to the traditional left, and especially the traditional Communist Parties, which have been ineffective for a long time. They have become conservative, reactionary structures, devoid of members. In Syria, these Communist Parties gravitated towards the murderous regime and become accomplices to its crimes.
Therefore, much of their base, especially the youth, abandoned them and took to the streets to join their generation in protest. You will notice this phenomenon in all the traditional political movements in Syria. The youths of the Palestinian, Arab and Kurdish political movements have all separated from their leadership and joined the revolution. In all these political movements, the party leaderships were an obstacle and a brake on the revolutionary Syrian youth. At the same time, however, new Leftist youth formations emerged from within the revolution giving voice to its essence. I hope they grow and proliferate.
Full article here in which Yusef Khalil answers the objections of those on the left who reject the Syrian uprising against dictatorship—and demands to know which side they’re on.
As Sherry Wolf put it on her Facebook: “Don’t reduce the Syrian Revolution to the question of the armed struggle and the role of imperialist powers in trying to shape and co-opt that armed struggle. Read this thoughtful and nuanced piece by Yusef Khalil. If you want to comment, please read the article. For some reason the Syrian Revolution inspires radicals to talk out of their ass.”
This picture is so interesting: he’s being flanked by identical twins, the two people on the left seem to be looking either at him or past him with something akin to skepticism, and the sign is really poignant & right on!
(Source: anonopsmob, via pragnacious)
A few screenshots from some of the better portions of Richard Wolff’s q&a today on the Moyer’s & Company website (full-length record here).
Bank of Cyprus to cut 30% off deposits over €100,000
March 25, 2013
Depositors in the Bank of Cyprus, the biggest bank on the island, will reportedly lose 30 percent on their holdings above 100,000 euros, the chairman of the Cypriot parliamentary finance committee said on Monday.
“I haven’t heard a formal announcement about the haircut, but this is the figure I heard,” Irish radio quotes Nicholas Papadopoulos as saying.
At dawn on Monday, Cyprus and the troika of international backers reached agreement on a €10bn bailout plan, aimed at preventing the bankruptcy of the island’s financial system and the country’s exit from the Eurozone. Under the plan the depositors in Bank of Cyprus will be compensated with equity in the bank, while Laiki Bank, which is the island’s second largest financial institution, will be closed down.
Those with deposits under 100,000 euros in both banks will continue to enjoy the protection of the state’s guarantees, after an earlier proposal to impose a 6.75% tax on them provoked anger.
Banks are due to reopen on Tuesday, however, withdrawal limits will be imposed to avoid a run of capital.
Sorry…but without elaboration, I don’t really know at all what you’re saying about the ‘law of commons’. I think in order to identify a solution, we have to pin-point the source of the problem. As I see it, the problem is a ‘private’ sector. Meaning, collaboratively run enterprises/spheres-of-society (not talking about your private home, but the actual wealth-producing entities in society) in which democracy is not only not-required, it is rarely thought about as a possibility.
So I think we need a system that doesn’t have a segment of society immune to democracy, a system that doesn’t prioritize profit accumulation over human interest. I could imagine a number of acceptable scenarios to get rid of the private sector.
Where I’m at right now, what I imagine that could deliver the best possible results with the least blood-shed & social turmoil would be a shift toward democratic workplaces, an eventual union of those democratic workplaces, and eventually using that union (or those many democratic-workplace unions) to abolish structures in society that are not democratic.
This, I think, would be beneficial to the social consciousness, personal fulfillment, and intellectual/mental-stimulation of all people in society (all of whom would be part of the decision-making-process about what to produce, how to produce, etc at their jobs), and it would be a buffer against a lot of the problematic aspects of globalized capitalism, now in its grotesque monopoly-accumulation stage.
But this isn’t the only potential solution and it may not be the one that ends up being most-appealing to most people. Maybe something like an actually international Trotskyist revival. I think syndicalism seems a little more realistic/do-able, but Trotskyists would certainly disagree. I’m open to whatever could bring us to the abolition of profit-driven-interests trumping human-interests (like the health and welfare of the planet we live on).
Either way, the point is to put the decision making power in the hands of people, not profit-driven-non-human entities and not in the hands of a few, very-powerful people who own most of the wealth in society and who, for whatever reason, are driven to hoard resources and destroy anything, including the planet, that stands in the way of more profit$.
I had never thought about the fact that capitalism relegates democracy to *just* the government. Huh. This is true, and makes sense.
That’s the best kind of feedback. You have no idea how happy it makes me to see that sometimes the information & realizations that get exchanged on Tumblr actually help shape & change perspectives & inspire realizations in others. Talking about these things, in as many ways and through as many mediums as possible is important to shaping the direction of our collective futures.
When I was younger & more nihilistic, I thought fundamental change was impossible. I don’t know when this happened, but somewhere down the line I came to understand that society is changing, whether we’re silent & apathetic or actively engaged in the most important conversations of our time. History is moving; if we work purposefully & collectively we can nudge, push or shove it in the right direction.
Thousands of Greeks protest planned gold mining site that would be destructive to the environment
March 9, 2013
More than 10,000 people have taken to the streets of Greece’s second largest city to protest a planned gold mine they see as an environmental risk.
Police blocked the crowd’s march to the Canadian Consulate in Thessaloniki, but Saturday’s protest took place and ended peacefully. Eldorado Gold Corp., based in Vancouver, Canada, has been granted the rights to the gold mine in Halkidiki peninsula, east of Thessaloniki.
The company has established a camp employing 1,200 people and plans to begin digging soon.
The issue has bitterly divided Halkidiki residents, with some claiming the mine will harm tourism and release toxic substances, and others denying that and saying new jobs are crucial during Greece’s severe economic crisis.
Ours is a time of multiple crises generated by global capitalism. It is a time of global resistance, occupation, and insurgency. It is a time to connect with the ideas of Luxemburg, Trotsky, and Lenin – a critical-minded engagement with revolutionary resources, based on past revolutionary experience, as we consider future action for social change.
New waves of young activists are compelled to become radical– going to the root of today’s problems, demanding a shift of power in society from the super-wealthy 1% to the increasingly hard-pressed 99%.
It will not be a simple thing to win the battle of democracy, to create a world in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all. The problems we face have been more than two centuries in the making. Millions of people, generation after generation, have engaged in revolutionary struggles for basic human rights and dignity – liberty and justice for all, experiencing defeats and victories, learning and passing on an accumulation of lessons for those who would continue the struggle.
Luxemburg, Trotsky and Lenin were among the most perceptive and compelling revolutionaries of the 20th century. The body of analysis, strategy and tactics to which they contributed was inseparable from the mass struggles of their time. Critically engaging with their ideas can enrich the thinking and practical activity of those involved in today’s and tomorrow’s struggles for a better world.
A global activist collective – multiple individuals exploring texts on how to understand and change the world, proliferating study groups connecting revolutionary theory with the struggles of today and tomorrow – reaching out to the rest of the 99%, can have a powerful impact for social change. It is time, in the most revolutionary sense, to get political.
Although power-points aren’t exactly the most thrilling or efficient way to present information with text & visuals (I like Tumblr for that, for instance) this is still a pretty cool, creative Marxist project. Click on the source to see their powerpoints and read more about the project.
Follow dentonsocialists They’re pretty cool people irl & I hope to see them active & adding original content/engaging with the tumblr left. Doing a few reblogs to welcome them to tumblr (it’s the page’s first day).
Breaking:Obama signs sequester bill
March 01, 2013
Austerity has hit the United States as President Barack Obama signed into law a directive ushering in significant cuts to federal agencies’ budgets and triggering the sequester that has been debated in Washington during the last several weeks.
In the White House on Friday, President Obama inked his name to the order, and with it signed off on automatic budget cuts that the country’s political class say will save the United States over $1 trillion over the course of the next decade. In doing so, though, $85 billion will be erased from this year’s budget and a number of government departments will see their funding slashed immediately.
Through the sequester deal, roughly half of all cuts will be imposed on the Pentagon, drastically reducing funding for America’s defense. While uniformed personnel are protected from the directive, civilian employees and contractors across the world will be faced with layoffs and furloughs. The Department of Defense has already published a plan explaining who exactly will be impacted, and at its worst it could mean roughly $500 billion dollars cut from the Pentagon during the next decade.
The second half of all cuts triggered by the sequester will be implemented on domestic non-military spending. While crucially important programs like Social Security are exempt from the changes, practically all federal departments and agencies will face some degree of slashed funding. The Departments of Education, Agriculture and dozens of other agencies will see serious changes during the coming days, weeks, months and years. Many have already announced that the order will bring dire consequences. The Department of Transportation, for example, has warned that budget cuts might affect its ability to control air traffic; cuts to the Department of Homeland Security will mean longer lines at international borders and airports due to personnel layoffs. Rollbacks on education are expected to cause as many as 40,000 jobs to disappear nationwide, and more than half of a million women and children across the US will no longer have access to food aid due to reductions in the Women, Infants and Children program.
With the sequester deal essentially effecting each sector and every US resident alike, lawmakers in Washington have hoped to find another solution for solving the country’s ever-increasing economic woes. During an address from the White House Friday morning, though, Obama blamed Congress for not being able to prevent the cuts.
“What I can’t do is force Congress to do the right thing,” said the president. “The American people may have the capacity to do that, but in the absence of a decision on the part of the speaker of the House and others … we are going to have these cuts in place.”
The Obama administration has come under fire as of late for blaming the sequester deal on House Republicans. “The sequester is not something that I’ve proposed. It is something that Congress has proposed,” the president said last year. By some reports, though, the budget cuts were brought to the table by White House officials during the president’s first term in office. A bipartisan commission chaired by former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyoming) and former Clinton White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles offered a way to cut America’s ever-growing deficit. Under this proposal, Congress and the president would have to do both raise taxes and cut spending across the board. Knowing that neither party was willing to agree on these measures, lawmakers and Mr. Obama agreed on a law that would trigger automatic cuts beginning March 1, 2013, unless a deal could otherwise be reached. Back then, it was seen as a sword of Damocles that would prompt action from either party.
“Nobody who ‘agreed’ to sequestration actually wanted it to happen,” reports Molly Ball of The Atlantic. “The supercommittee was supposed to forge the deal that Obama and House Speaker John Boehner could not in their July 2011 debt-ceiling talks. It was this hypothetical future deficit reduction that got Republicans, grudgingly, to agree to raise the debt limit,” she says.
As time passed, though, the lawmakers that agreed to make the sequestering an option stopped searching for other solutions. A failure to find a compromise between lawmakers on the Hill left the spending cuts scheduled for March 1 to eventually become inevitable, and as the clock winded down on Friday the only option left was to slash the budget.
“In the end, nobody could agree, and nobody took the deadline very seriously anyway,” adds Ball.
While the sequester officially starts today following Pres. Obama’s signature on the directive, most government agencies won’t feel the pinch until later in the year. Many departments have already published their plans for handling the crisis, including outlines of how spending will be conducted during the coming months. But with funds drying up quickly and a further deal reversing the sequestering uncertain, the impact of the cuts are likely to only increase over time.
“It does not mean we have to agree with Karl Marx, who advocated violence and whose worship of the state as a utopian mechanism led to another form of enslavement of the working -class, but we have to speak in the vocabulary Marx employed.” –Chris Hedges
Richard Wolff responds to quote about Marxism:
A quote was sent to me and this is a quote from a very famous writer. It says the following: that in this age of bankrupt capitalism, we’re going to have to return, this writer believes, to the work of Karl Marx, who was a critic of capitalism, and therefore, has insights we need to build on. But the quote also associates with Karl Marx the following: he advocated violence and he worshipped the state as a utopian mechanism to lead to a better society. And the questioner wanted me to comment about this representation of Marx.
So let me do that. I am not going to shy away EVER on this program from talking about Marx and Marxism. The Cold War is over. The great enemy, the Soviet Union, is gone. There wasn’t much justification for ignoring and denying the importance of Marx, even when that wasn’t true, but now that we are basically 20 years out from our ‘Cold War struggle’ there is absolutely no justification. Marx was an important thinker in the world – the work he wrote and the items he put out have been influential in the world and no mature thinker can afford to ignore what that’s about. It’s not a question of agreeing with it. It’s a question of learning what has to be said by someone who is critical of the system.
Because Marx has had an enormous influence across the world, in every country, we have the following obvious situation: Marx, born in Germany, lived most of his adult life in Great Britain. A theorist who died in 1883 has now been picked up and has been found to be interesting, important & insightful. Cultures as varied as Scandinavia, China, South Africa, Ecuador, and you fill in the blank (because it’s in every other country in the world) have been influenced. So if all this influence has happened, then you can be sure that Marx and Marxism have been interpreted in radically different ways.
By the way, the same is true, for example of Islam – how it is interpreted in one country by one group of Muslims is different from how it has been interpreted in other countries by other groups who are also Muslim, who also read the Qu’ran, who also take Mohammad very seriously but who interpret Islam very differently. The same is true of Christianity, right? There are Protestants & Catholics who disagree and Baptists & Methodists have their disagreements and so on.
The same is true of Marx. If you wish to represent Marx or Marxism, you are therefore confronted with something that only ignorance would allow you to deny. Namely, you’ve got to decide which of the interpretations you find persuasive. There aren’t too many people who on one Sunday go to the Catholic service, the next Sunday the Baptist service, the next Sunday the Quaker service, right? People choose whichever one they were either born into or find persuasive and so it is with Marx.
Now to answer the question: Were there interpreters of Marx & Marxism who advocated violence? Yes. Were there interpreters of Marx & Marxism who worshipped the state in the way this quotation suggests? Yes. But here comes the problem dear friends – there were people who interpreted Marx to not be in favor of violence and to not worship the state. I, for example, as someone who has read Marx and takes Marxism very seriously and has benefited enormously in my understanding of what’s going on by virtue of that study, I don’t interpret Marx in that way at all. I don’t think he endorsed violence. I don’t think he worshiped the state. There is a reason, by the way, that Karl Marx never wrote a book or an article about the state. He didn’t worship it. That wasn’t his idea. His idea was that you have to change the economic system. You have to change the way the system works, not the way the government works. He saw the government more shaped by the system than the other way around. That’s where he focused himself.
The point is not to persuade you of my particular interpretation – but to understand that any quotation such as the one sent to me, that acts as though you can say ‘Marx believed X, you got it?’ is the same as saying ‘I’m going to talk to you about religion’ and then begin to talk to you about, let’s say, Roman Catholicism and act as if it were the only one. That’s not true. It is one, for sure. But it’s not the only one. And the interpretation of Marx as having something to do with state-worship or violence is an interpretation, but it isn’t the only one and shouldn’t be dealt with as if it were.
Source (with audio if you prefer to listen than read)
