Cultural Detritus, Reviews, and Commentary
Link to an article by Joan Roelofs:
“Military Keynesianism Marches On”
Bonus links: “The Left Hand and the Right Hand of the State” and Modern Money Green Economics for a New Era and “Documents Expose How Hollywood Promotes War on Behalf of the Pentagon, CIA and NSA” and “American Sniper?” and “culture industry” and “How the U.S. Military Undermines the American Economy” and Super Imperialism and Review of The Global Minotaur
Link to an article by Rob Urie:
“Strike for the Environment, Strike for Social Justice, Strike!”
Bonus links: “Greta Thunberg in Review” and “Greta Thunberg Is No Genius – She’s an Apostle”
Link to a review by Fabian Van Onzen of the book Value and Crisis: Essays on Labour, Money and Contemporary Capitalism (2019) by Alfredo Saad-Filho:
Bonus links: Review of Making Money and “How Decades of Neoliberalism Led to the Era of Right-Wing Populism” (this article reviews another book on the same topic but is rather questionably historicist, though it is absolutely correct to note that “all policies — whether statist or neoliberal — are normative”) and “When Socialist Hungary Went Neoliberal” (“neoliberalism represents a class project, aiming not so much to ‘restore’ the power of economic elites . . . but instead to re-establish the conditions for capital accumulation following the global crisis of capital accumulation (1968-75). . . . as neoliberalism gradually gained traction amongst ruling classes across the world it has come to represent the current phase of global capitalism. In this regard, neoliberalism is, among others, characterized by a structural reorientation of the state towards export-oriented, financialized capital, open-ended commitments to market-like governance systems, privatization and corporate expansion, a deep aversion to social collectives and the progressive redistribution of wealth on the part of ruling classes, etc.”) (note that this interviewee makes much-contested if not outright dubious claims about “Soviet-style state capitalism” and “the Stalinist myth that the Soviet bloc regimes were somehow ‘post-capitalist’ societies”, that is, he calls the former USSR “state capitalist” rather than communist/socialist)
Link to an article by Intan Suwandi:
“Outsourcing Exploitation: Global Labor-Value Chains”
The key seems to be that, at a minimum, contracting with outsourced suppliers on terms that are (objectively) unreasonable should force the large contracting party to bear responsibility for foreseeable problems — much like old fraudulent conveyance laws. Suwandi’s article nails the problem, though this article provides only a cursory explanation of why Global South suppliers would agree to such an arrangement, something that others have explained more fully: Slavoj Žižek Quote About Domination, “Multiculturalism, or, the Cultural Logic of Multinational Capitalism”, Ruy Mauro Marini‘s “Brazilian ‘Interdependence’ and Imperialist Integration” (“sub-imperialism” involves peripheral economies collaborating actively with the imperialist expansion of core economies like the United States, assuming in that expansion the position of a key nation), “Malcolm Describes the Difference Between the ‘House Negro’ and the ‘Field Negro.’”. See also The Fissured Workplace
Link to an article by Michael Hudson:
“Global Warming and U.S. National Security Diplomacy”
Bonus link: The State and Revolution
Link to an article by Paul Le Blanc:
“Today’s Struggle for a Green New Deal: Lessons from the Freedom Budget of the 1960s”
Bonus links: “What the New Deal Can Teach us About Winning a Green New Deal: Part I” and “What the New Deal Can Teach Us About Winning a Green New Deal: Part III—the First New Deal” and “When the FBI Targeted the Poor People’s Campaign”
Link to an article by Michael Hudson:
Link to an interview with Dick Bryan & Mike Rafferty, conducted by Llewellyn Williams-Brooks:
(Note: the first part of the interview is non-substantive background information about publishing this theory in book form, and the substantive discussion of the theory is toward the end).
See also: Michael Hudson, especially “From Marx to Goldman Sachs: The Fictions of Fictitious Capital”, and “We Have Nothing to Lose but Our Debts”, and The Debt Collective
Link to a review by Nicholas Freudenberg of Gerardo Otero’s book The Neoliberal Diet: Healthy Profits, Unhealthy People (2018):
“The Capitalist Diet: Energy-dense and Profitable”
Bonus link: “Nick Freudenberg on the Corporation the Individual and Public Health” – though his invocation of liberal pluralism along the lines of the FCC’s old “fairness doctrine” is subject to criticism and probably still isn’t sufficient.
Link to an article by Rob Urie:
“Toward an Eco-Socialist Revolution”
There are many reasons to question the proffered solution here, which would be unpopular and prone to the all the problems that have historically accompanied peasant societies (rigid social hierarchies, etc.). Still, this article thinks seriously about real issues and the necessary scope of solutions, and actually ventures to offer a solution.