Pages tagged "Truthout"
Poverty Has Always Accompanied Capitalism
This article originally appeared at Truth-out.org.
Mark Karlin: Let's start with the a statement from the preface of your book: "Questioning the capitalist system, let alone discussing system change, simply does not occur to mainstream academics and the journalists and politicians they trained. Such discourses are repressed." How is an open public discussion of capitalism stifled?
Read moreEconomic Theorists: The High Priests of Capitalism
People have always chosen among different co-existing economic theories to understand the world and to act within it. Who chooses which theory, consciously or not, shapes world history. Disagreements over Brexit emerged partly from different ways of understanding the British economy and its relation to Europe. Donald Trump's support...
Read moreRichard Wolff on the Changing Tides of Capitalism and Socialism
This article originally appeared at Truthout.org
Nearly 30 years ago, many capitalists were celebrating what political scientist Francis Fukuyama called the "ultimate victory of the VCR": where consumerism sank communism. However, they failed to calculate the effects of this consumerism on the environment. They also failed to predict how the public would...
Read moreHow Capitalism and Racism Support Each Other
By Richard D. Wolff
This article originally appeared at Truthout.org
Capitalism's supporters use and benefit from a racism whose practice and consequences should be blamed on capitalism itself.
Read moreOn the Meaning of Capitalism, We Don't Agree
This article originally appeared at Truthout.org
Within conversations on the left, many of us use the term "capitalism," but we aren't all using it to mean the same thing. Among both its champions and opponents, capitalism acquired too many different meanings over the 200 to 300 years of its global ascendancy. I am sometimes faulted for using the term as if everyone knew and agreed on its meaning, when that is not the case. My critics demand instead...
Read moreHow Two-Party Political Systems Bolster Capitalism
This article originally appeared at Truthout.org.
The two-major-party arrangement both allows for disagreements yet also keeps dissent bounded by common commitments to reproduce capitalism.
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Debunking the Magnitude of Markets: A Holiday Story
This article originally appeared at Truthout.org
Like all human institutions, markets have strengths and weaknesses. Born in particular historical conditions, they alter over time as conditions change, and eventually die. Just as other institutions - monarchy, slavery, empire, feudalism, tribal society...
Read moreCapitalism - Not China - Is to Blame for the Current Global Economic Decline
This article originally appeared at Truthout.org
Capitalism, like a speeding train, barreled into a stone wall in 2008. Shocked and dazed, its leaders have been trying to "recover." By that, they mean to fix the mangled tracks, reposition the locomotive and cars on those tracks and resume forward motion. No basic economic change...
Read moreCapitalism and Its Regulation Delusion: Lessons From the Volkswagen Debacle
This article originally appeared at Truth-out.org
Volkswagen (VW), we now know, systematically evaded pollution control regulations. Over the last decade it defrauded 11 million buyers of its diesel-engine vehicles, fouled the planet's environment and...
Read moreWhy Debates Over the Fed's Interest Rate Miss the Point
Sometimes public debates focus on important social issues; at other times, debates distract from them. Disputes over whether the Federal Reserve System should raise interest rates illustrate that second sort. Yes, "serious people" take...
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