Links

Alex Vitale – Police and the Liberal Fantasy

Link to an article excerpted from the book The End of Policing by Alex Vitale:

“Police and the Liberal Fantasy”

 

Bonus links: Review and “The Left Hand and the Right Hand of the State” and “Stop Kidding Yourself: The Police Were Created to Control Working Class and Poor People” and “Policing Class” and Punishing the Poor and The Fabrication of Social Order: A Critical Theory of Police Power and The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison and “Locking Up the Lower Class” and “Police Make More Than 10 Million Arrests a Year, but That Doesn’t Mean They’re Solving Crimes” and “An Empire of Patrolmen”

Michael Hudson – Socialism, Land and Banking: 2017 Compared to 1917

Link to an article by Michael Hudson:

“Socialism, Land and Banking: 2017 Compared to 1917”

 

For a more nuanced and detailed account of Soviet bureaucracy, and the construction and dismantling of Stalinism, see The Soviet Century.  Combined with The Half Has Never Been Told, it is worth wondering whether industrialization is possible without slavery.  Also, it is worth questioning Hudson’s characterization of China as pursuing “socialist” policy, rather than being state capitalist — he basically just assumes such points.  Though this was intended as a speech to be delivered in China, so maybe he felt the need to pander on that point a bit.

Richard Wolff – The Political Economy of Obama/Trump

Link to an article by Richard Wolff:

“The Political Economy of Obama/Trump”

 

(One small caveat about this article.  This statement is misleading: “Strictly trickle-down economics was how his administration ‘handled’ the 2008-09 crisis. Nothing remotely like the New Deal’s taxing the rich to fund programs for the poor and middle was proposed or debated, let alone adopted as policy.” At the federal level, there is no need to tax the rich to pay for programs for the poor, because the USA is no longer on the gold standard as it was during the New Deal.  Today, money can simply be printed to fund these programs, within reasonable limits.  This is explained in detail by Modern Monetary Theory publications.).