Economics – Page 16 – Rock Salted

“[Adapting a statement of Lenin regarding central banks,] can we also say that ‘without the World Wide Web socialism would be impossible . . . . Our task is here merely to lop off what capitalistically mutilates this excellent apparatus, to make it even bigger, even more democratic, even more comprehensive?” (p. 293)

“However, does capitalism really provide the ‘natural’ frame of relations of production for the digital universe? Is there not also, in the World Wide Web, an explosive potential for capitalism itself? Is not the lesson of the Microsoft monopoly precisely the Leninist one: instead of fighting this monopoly through the state apparatus (remember the court-ordered splitting up of the Microsoft Corporation), would it not be more ‘logical’ simply to nationalize it, making it freely accessible? So today, I am thus tempted to paraphrase Lenin’s well-known slogan ‘Socialism = electrification + the power of the soviets’: ‘Socialism = free access to the Internet + the power of the soviets.’ (The second element is crucial, since it specifies the only social organization within which the Internet can realize its liberating potential; without it, we would have a new version of crude technological determinism.” (p. 294).

See also The Communist Manifesto (“6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.”) and “Steve Bannon’s Brussels Plans Threaten Europe’s Liberal Legacy”

Pete Dolack – Austerity Never Ends

Link to an article by Pete Dolack:

“Austerity Never Ends: Economists Say Wages Are Too High”

Mike McCarthy & Micah Uetricht – Worked to Death

Link to an interview of Mike McCarthy, author of Dismantling Solidarity: Capitalist Politics and American Pensions Since the New Deal (2017), conducted by Micah Uetricht:

“Worked to Death”

Bonus link: Making Money

Herman Daly – Trump’s Growthism: Its Roots in Neoclassical Economic Theory

Link to an article by Herman Daly, from real-world economics review, issue no. 78, 22 March 2017, pp. 86-97:

“Trump’s Growthism: Its Roots in Neoclassical Economic Theory”

Paul Kivel – Social Service or Social Change?

Link to an article by Paul Kivel:

“Social Service or Social Change?”

Bonus links: “The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex” and “Philanthropy and Cultural Imperialism: The Foundations at Home and Abroad” and “Foundations and Cultural Imperialism An Interview with Robert Arnove” and “The Ford Foundation in the Inner City: Forging an Alliance with Neighborhood Activists” and “Science of Science and Reflexivity” and Black Awakening in Capitalist America: An Analytic History and Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism and Under the Mask of Philanthropy (plus review) and No Such Thing as a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy (this one is underwhelming) and “The Real Agenda of the Gates Foundation” and Foundations of the American Century: The Ford, Carnegie, and Rockefeller Foundations in the Rise of American Power and Top Down: The Ford Foundation, Black Power, and the Reinvention of Racial Liberalism and “The Philanthropy Racket or: How The People Destroying the World Anoint Themselves Its Saviors” and “Medicalizing Society” and Nonprofit Enterprise in the Arts: Studies in Mission and Constraint and “Philanthropic Power and Development: Who Shapes the Agenda?” and “Professional Societies: Corporate Service, or Public Services for You!” and Against Charity (plus review) and Wrong Kind of Green and “Class Struggle and the Parable of an Environmental Victory” and “The Philanthropy Hustle” and “The Problem With Capitalist Philanthropy” and “The Ultrarich Don’t Deserve Our Gratitude for Small Acts of Philanthropy” and “How the Ultrawealthy Use Private Foundations to Bank Millions in Tax Deductions While Giving the Public Little in Return” and “The Price of Civil Rights: Black Lives, White Funding, and Movement Capture” and “An Interview With John Stauber on the Impotence of the Progressive Movement” and “Which Side Are ‘Liberal’ Lawyers On?” and “The Political Economy of Effective Altruism” and “Reputational Laundering” Definition and Stephen Gowans Comment (“Change the institution, or make people behave in a contra-institutional way?“) and The Good Woman of Setzuan and “Socialism and Religion” (“those who live by the labour of others are taught by religion to practise charity while on earth, thus offering them a very cheap way of justifying their entire existence as exploiters and selling them at a moderate price tickets to well-being in heaven.”)

Michael Hudson – Euphemise to Conceal

Link to parts of an interview with Michael Hudson, discussing his book J Is for Junk Economics: A Guide to Reality in an Age of Deception:

“Euphemise to Conceal”

“Alluring Infrastructure Income”

“Focus on Capital Gains”

“Why Deficits Hurt Banking Profits”

“Retirement. What Social Obligation?”

Bonus links: Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power and Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society and “Social Chauvinism” (a critique easily leveled at Hudson’s admiration for protectionism)

Francisco Fortuño Bernier & Aaron Jaffe on Feminism

Francisco Fortuño Bernier & Aaron Jaffe:

By declining to confront our anti-egalitarian social structure at its roots, an individualistic, corporate feminism will never transform society. It can only offer a select few the entirely insufficient hope of catching up; of taking their turn; of being represented. The patience of the oppressed is rapidly transformed into a strategy of their oppressor.

Bonus link: Fortunes of Feminism (“Instead of arriving at a broader, richer paradigm that could encompass both redistribution and recognition, we would have traded one truncated paradigm for another—a truncated economism for a truncated culturalism. The result would be a classic case of combined and uneven development: the remarkable recent feminist gains on the axis of recognition would coincide with stalled progress—if not outright losses—on the axis of distribution.”)