Finding Alternatives to Greed and Dismantling Our Right-Wing World | Ming Chun Tang
Commentary | July 9th, 2014
Human history has been almost entirely dominated by the right-wing worldview. It's been an endless cycle in which privileged groups have taken turns
dominating each other in a seemingly eternal battle between the powerful and the powerless. From the imperial conquests of the ancient world through
European colonialism, the two World Wars and Soviet communism to modern neoliberal capitalism, it's always been the same story, flowing through different
chapters but reaching the same inevitable conclusion: Oligarchy. It's a story familiar to the Zapatistas as well as countless other sites of confrontation
between the haves and the have-nots in recent years. The hierarchical, conflict-ridden relationship today between those who rule the world and those who
are ruled, between corporate bosses and workers, between autocrats and their citizens, between the rich and the poor, is a continuation of this cycle of
domination.
The Gold Myth and Commodity Money: Ancient Scams of Historical Proportions | Richard Posner
Commentary | June 25th, 2014
Can someone please give me a sane reason why anyone would pay over a thousand dollars for an ounce of shiny metal that has virtually no intrinsic
value?
Or, better still, how about scientifically verifiable proof that gold is actually worth significantly more than a steaming pile of dog shit.
It's my guess that most people who read this article will go ballistic, call me names, insist that I'm simply ignorant, have no understanding of
"economics" and that the gold standard is the only possible solution to our economic woes. Yet not a single one will be able to offer any real
reason why gold is actually "valuable." That's because it isn't.
Radical Critique of Piketty: A Primer to Our Two-Part Book Talk | Nicholas Partyka
Analysis | June 11th, 2014
Over the past couple of months the dominant media in the US and the English-speaking world generally has given a lot of attention to one book in
particular. This is interesting because the attention given this particular book is entirely out of keeping with so-called normal expectations. This sense
of surprise can be detected in numerous credulous headlines from most if not all the major publications and media outlets regarding the popularity and
fiscal success of a six hundred page book by a French economist on income inequality. The book we are
talking about here is of course the now well known Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty. This sense of surprise exists for many
reasons. A couple obvious ones are that books this long are not typically popular among the general reading public, nor are books on or by economists, and
especially economics books on an arcane subject like historical trends in income inequality.
On the Recent Crisis in Venezuela: Rejecting the "Naturalist" Fallacy in the Theory of Economic Crisis | Nicholas Partyka
Theory/Analysis | June 4th, 2014
Let us think about hurricanes for a moment. What this has to do with economic theory will become clear as we proceed. For the moment, please bear with me
as I elaborate. I want to make a point here about how economic crisis is typically perceived and understood, or rather misperceived and misunderstood. What
I will be presenting here is a view of economic crisis as inherent to market activity; this is in contrast to the dominant view of crisis. Many people both
within and outside of the economic profession and the business world understand economic crises similarly to how they understand natural disasters, e.g. hurricanes. In both cases, they see the event as coming from outside the system, as sui generis phenomena.
Neoliberalism's Balancing Act: Shifting the Societal Burden and Tempting Fate | Colin Jenkins
Theory | May 22nd, 2014
As discussed in Part One of this project, regarding the layered appearance of the economic foundation and political sphere, Poulantzas stays within the
confines of base-superstructure theory while also extending this notion to emphasize a strict demarcation. This emphasis is seen in the following
statement, which is predicated upon a firm economic base: "In this state, political power is thus apparently founded on an unstable equilibrium of
compromise." Thus, the political apparatus is viewed as an outgrowth of the inherently fragile economic base formed by capitalist relations (i.e. capital
v. labor, private property as a social relation).
The Transformer: One Man's Confrontation with Capitalism and War | William T. Hathaway
Commentary | March 27th, 2014
A friend of mine works as a janitor. After graduating from college he worked as a market researcher and an advertising salesperson, but both jobs soured
him on the corporate world. He hated being a junior suit, and the thought of becoming a senior suit was even worse. He finds being a janitor a much better job. He's left alone, it's low pressure, and what he does improves the world rather than worsens it. The pay's lousy
but that's standard these days. He loves music, so he loads up his MP3 and grooves to the sounds. Although the work is routine, it's brightened by
occasional bits of human interest: used condoms in executive wastebaskets, marijuana butts in the emergency stairwell, a twenty-dollar bill under a desk.
Across 100 Miles of Ocean: Experiments in Capitalism and Socialism | Akio Tanaka
History | February 14th, 2014
The Age of Enlightenment ushered in revolutions in France and the US, but the revolution that really threatened the dominant global order was the
revolution mounted by the slaves of French Haiti in 1804. In response to the revolt, France and the US, a nation founded on slave labor and appropriated
Indian land, joined forces to suppress the Haitian revolution. The US has intervened militarily in Haiti repeatedly since 1804, most
recently in 2010 to maintain the lowest sweat-shop wages in the hemisphere. The Age of Industrialization began with the inventions of the steam engine at the end of the eighteenth century and the internal combustion engine at the
end of the nineteenth century. However, both coal and oil produce carbon dioxide which contributes to global warming.
Calibrating the Capitalist State in the Neoliberal Era: Equilibrium, Superstructure, and the Pull Towards a Corporate-Fascistic Model | Colin Jenkins
Theory | February 4th, 2014
Since the capitalist formation of relations between what is perceived as the 'public sector' and the 'private sector,' traditional nation-states and their
governing bodies have played a major role as facilitators of the economic system at-large. This became a necessary supplemental component as localized
economies, which were dominated by agrarian/plantation life, gave way to industrialization and subsequent mass migration into urban centers, thus
introducing new industrial economies based in the manufacturing/production process. With the advent of wage labor came predictable outcomes of "capital
accumulation" and a perpetually increasing polarization between the "owning class" and "working class."
The Urban Fiscal Crisis as Neoliberal Shock Therapy: A Cartalist Fiscal-Sociological Approach | David Fields
Theory | January 22nd, 2014
This paper argues that the neo-Marxist contributions to fiscal sociology put forward by James O'Connor's (2002 [1973]) The Fiscal Crisis of the State and Erik Olin Wright's (1977) Class, Crisis, and the State ultimately fail to accurately explicate the
contradictions of state legitimacy with the respect to the logic of capital during times of urban economic duress. To make this argument, I incorporate a
dialectically materialist framework that manifests the interconnections between urban governance, capital accumulation and the structure of the state, with
an emphasis on what I call a Cartalist sociological approach to money as an institution of social power.
Beyond Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft: The Foundations for Ethical Political Humanist Social Science | David Fields
Theory | January 9th, 2014
It is pertinent to recognize that social reality is not an aura of perceived characteristics, of which there lays no unifying substance that could account
for coherence. There is an evident danger in oversimplifying things. The attempt of this paper is to promote an approach to social science that engages
issues concerning social ontology; that is, epistemic positions in regards to the means by which to uncover underlying interconnecting structures that
constitute the manifestation of certain types of social reality. In this sense, the very notion of society itself amounts to an immensely complex entity -
the broad functioning of which cannot be captured by obscure models of positivistic simplification.
On the Front Lines of Class War: Why the Fight for a Livable Wage is Everyone's Fight | Colin Jenkins
Analysis | December 18th, 2013
In the spring of 2004, amid the thaw of a frigid New York City winter, a brave group of Starbucks baristas began organizing. Like most service-sector
employees in the United States, they were faced with the daunting task of trying to live on less-than-livable wages. Inconsistent hours, inadequate or
non-existent health insurance, and less-than-dignified working conditions paled in comparison to their inability to obtain the most basic necessities.
Apartment meetings, backroom discussions, and after-hours pep talks - all fueled by a collective angst - culminated into a sense of solidarity, the natural
bond that occurs when workers take the time to realize their commonalities and shared struggle.
