Link to an interview by Alexandros Orphanides:
“Frances Fox Piven on Syriza and Greece’s Prospects for Fighting Austerity”
Tag: Politics
Robespierre on Property
“The first social law is therefore the one that guarantees all members of society the means to live; all others are subordinate to that one; property was only instituted and guaranteed to cement it. It is in order to live that we have property in the first case. It is not true that property can ever be in opposition with men’s subsistence.
“The aliments necessary to man are as sacred as life itself. Everything essential to conserve life is property common to the whole of society. Only the surplus can be individual property and left subject to the enterprise of merchants. Any mercantile speculation that I make at the cost of the life of my like is not a traffic, but brigandage and fratricide.”
Maximillien Robespierre “The Incorruptible”, December 2, 1792.
Laura Gottesdiener – A Foreclosure Conveyor Belt
Link to an article by Laura Gottesdiener:
“A Foreclosure Conveyor Belt: The Continuing Depopulation of Detroit”
Jeffrey Sommers & Michael Hudson – The Koch Brothers’ Governors
Link to an article by Jeffrey Sommers & Michael Hudson:
Pavlina Tcherneva – When a Rising Tide Sinks Most Boats
Link to an article by Pavlina Tcherneva:
Robert Wood – What We Talk About When We Talk About Capitalism
Link to an article by Robert Wood reviewing the 2014 books Trouble in Paradise: Communism After the End of History, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate and Capitalism: A Ghost Story:
Pierre Bourdieu – The Left Hand and the Right Hand of the State
Link to an interview with Pierre Bourdieu:
“The Left Hand and the Right Hand of the State”
Bonus quote:
“Today, financial crisis is a permanent state of things the reference to which legitimizes the demands to cut social spending, health care, support of culture and scientific research, in short, the dismantling of the welfare state. Is, however, this permanent crisis really an objective feature of our socio-economic life? Is it not rather one of the effects of the shift of balance in the ‘class struggle’ towards Capital . . . ? In other words, the crisis is an ‘objective fact’ if and only if one accepts in advance as an unquestionable premise the inherent logic of Capital . . . .”
Slavoj Žižek, “Multiculturalism, or, the Cultural Logic of Multinational Capitalism”
Megan Erickson – Edutopia
Link to an article by Megan Erickson:
Bonus links: David F. Noble, “Digital Diploma Mills: The Automation of Higher Education,” Michael Margolis, “Brave New Universities,” Robert Abele, “The Capitalist Takeover of Higher Education,” John Dewey, Democracy and Education, Thorstein Veblen, The Higher Learning in America
John Williams – Unemployment Charts
Link to a chart from Shadowstats detailing current unemployment in the United States:
“Alternate Unemployment Charts” (at this writing, 23%, as compared to the widely-reported 5.5% “official” number)
Bonus link: “Response to BLS Article on CPI Misconceptions”
Susan Milligan – The President and the Press
Link to an article by Susan Milligan:
Bonus links: “State Department Announces New ‘Long-standing’ Policy Against Backing Coups” and Killing Hope and “Administration Sets Record for Withholding Government Files” and “Oil Imperialism and Monetary Policy” and “Fear and Loathing 40 Years Later” and “When Our Monsters Speak, TV Journalists go Deaf”