Austerity and its discontents

source Clearly, the politics and policies of austerity have been summarily rejected in both France and Greece. Now, of course, comes the hard part: figuring out what a non-austerity approach will look like not only in those two countries but also across the rest of Europe. Meanwhile, Paul Krugman, who does understand that “the austerity [...]

Richard Pryor, Karl Marx, and the critique of capitalism

Richard Wolff [ht: ja] explains, in an interview with the Guardian, how he has drawn inspiration for his critique of capitalism (from Marx) and for his speaking style (from Richard Pryor). Anthony Arnove, an editor at Haymarket books, which is bringing out Wolf’s [sic] next work, Democracy At Work: A Cure for Capitalism, explained what [...]

Economists’ voices for the Occupy movement

Mainstream economists haven’t exercised much of a voice when it comes to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Paul Krugman refused to be associated with the movement, while Greg Mankiw quickly dismissed the Occupy-related walkout on his class. And most of the other mainstream economists in the United States followed suit, either downplaying or ignoring altogether [...]

Occupy housing

Jason Reblando’s project of photographing the Greenbelt Communities that were created during the New Deal is an important reminder: of the possibility of creating housing for people during difficult economic times, of organizing housing on a cooperative basis, and of solving the environmental problems associated with individual consumption by fostering collaborative consumption. They are a [...]

Sharing the marbles?

How do we get the rich to share the proverbial marbles? Jonathan Haidt suggests, based on recent research within developmental psychology, that we focus less on distributive fairness and more on procedural fairness: which is about whether honest, open and impartial procedures were used to decide who got what. If there’s a problem with the [...]

The year of the cooperatives

Apparently, the United Nations has declared 2012 to be the International Year of Cooperatives [ht: ja]. The UN’s goal for the United States is to rebrand cooperatives — and it may get some help. In 2009, the United Steelworkers, North America’s largest industrial trade union, announced a new affiliation with Mondragón. The goal: To help [...]

Upstairs, downstairs today

The enormous success of Downton Abbey in the United States seems to have been accompanied by a growing perception of class conflict between rich and poor. Downton Abbey, now in its second season on Masterpiece Classic, is, at least thus far, a decidedly noncapitalist representation of class conflict.* But the interest in the series does [...]

“Capitalism in Crisis”

“Capitalism in Crisis” is not my invention (contrary to what readers might suspect) but, rather, the title of a new symposium in the Financial Times. In the opening essay, John Plender notes that, as at many points in its history (such as in the early years of the Industrial Revolution, in the middle of the [...]

“Trash the system or crash the planet”

Political decisions are easy when everyone gains. Real politics starts when there are tradeoffs or conflicts, when some will be helped and others will be hurt by a proposed policy. That’s the lesson I learned from a young Democratic activist and thinker many years ago. And it’s the lesson of Naomi Klein’s recent essay on [...]

Out with the old, in with the new

source [ht: ra] If we spent even a fraction of the time inventing alternatives to capitalism that we do in attempting to reinvent capitalism, we would be much further along in getting rid of the old and bringing in the new. Roger Backhouse and Bradley Bateman argue that we need to look to the past [...]