Link to an article by Sam Mitrani & Chad Pearson:
“A Short History of Liberal Myths and Anti-Labor Politics”
This article does an excellent job summarizing why Upton Sinclair called Republicans and Democrats “two wings of the same bird of prey” and why Malcolm X said, “The difference between the Republican and the Democrats is that the Republicans stick the knife in your back six inches, and the Democrats pull it out one.” However, there are a few points to quibble about. For instance, there is evidence to suggest Mayor Harrison in Chicago supported the Haymarket Martyrs — though this is tangential if not irrelevant to the overall article. More importantly, there is room to criticize some economic assumptions underlying the article. Take the claim “2. Let the banks collapse, which would have led to an even worse economic crisis than the one we experienced,” which seems dubious. Lehman Bros. collapsed. The government could have wound down the other big banks too — with the “even worse economic crisis” confined largely to the financial parasites and leaving ordinary commercial banks and credit unions intact, an overall positive result. That claim is followed-up by the (false) implication that there is a fixed money supply: “less and less money went into public services, schools, infrastructure, etc. because it had all been given to the already obscenely wealthy.” Modern Monetary Theory demonstrates how fiat money can be created by the government if there is a will to do so — the issue is lack of political will, not, as implied, a lack of actual dollars. After all, the TARP bailout money was created out of thin air! This economic history actually indicates that the government could also create money for socially beneficial programs, but chooses not to. These economic correctives actually reinforce the authors’ points, just in a slightly different way.
Bonus link: “We Need an Alternative to Trump’s Nationalism. It Isn’t the Status Quo”
