Links

Kristina Betinis – Chicago Symphony Musicians Strike Defies Aristocratic Principle

Link to an article by Kristina Betinis:

“Chicago Symphony Musicians Strike Defies Aristocratic Principle”

Selected Quote:

“A right-wing pressure campaign has been launched to press the musicians into accepting what is declared by the ruling elite to be an incontrovertible social fact: that no worker should receive a decent pension. This idea is advanced as though it were self-evident.”

 

Bonus links: “How the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Won Higher Wages By Playing For Free” and “Ballet Against Austerity”

Robert Pfaller – The Ideology of Postmodernism is to Present All Existing Injustice as an Effect of Discrimination

Link to an interview with Robert Pfaller:

“The Ideology of Postmodernism is to Present All Existing Injustice as an Effect of Discrimination”

 

In this brief interview Pfaller does understate the problem of discrimination, in that even in a situation of complete economic equality, there can be inequalities in terms of access, prestige, or other forms of capital — Ursula Le Guin’s novel The Dispossessed even has a plot point to this effect where a stupid physicist tries to distort and suppress the work of another in order to maintain and enhance his own prestige and power (even though the two are economically equal).  Still, Pfaller’s analysis is remarkably astute for being so direct and easy to understand!

Bonus links: The Trouble with Diversity and “The Politics of Identity” and “Can We Really Measure Implicit Bias? Maybe Not”

Lance Olsen – Why All the Uproar Over the Green New Deal?

Link to an article by Lance Olsen:

“Why All the Uproar Over the Green New Deal?”

 

Bonus links: “Will A Green New Deal Save the Climate, or Save Capitalism?” and “A Class Struggle Strategy for A Green New Deal” and “The Green New Deal, Capitalism and the State” and “A Green New Deal for Agriculture” and “This Historical Moment Demands Transformation of Our Institutions. The Green New Deal Won’t Do That.” (the Stan Cox quote is willfully obtuse — R. Buckminster Fuller? — but otherwise the article is good) and “How Green is the ‘Green New Deal’?” and “Modern Money Green Economics for a New Era” and “Communism, Fascism and Green Shaming” and “Politics, Democracy and Environmental Rebellion” (“Calls for a stripped down Green New Deal, one that forgoes a robust Job Guarantee, is a ploy to engineer a capital strike where millions of workers will be tossed out of their jobs to ‘prove’ that the economy requires environmental destruction and militarism.”) and “Planning the Green Tech Revolution” and “The Realism and Unrealism of the Green New Deals” and “Bernie’s Green New Deal Is for the Working Class” and The State and Revolution

John Steppling – Population Bomb or Bomb the Population?

Link to an article by John Steppling:

“Population Bomb or Bomb the Population?”

Bonus links: “Ashley Dawson: Extreme Cities” (Steppling’s article essentially provides the answer to an audience question that Ashley Dawson stumbled with in this video of an otherwise excellent talk) and “Malthus’ Essay on Population at Age 200” and “Population Explosion” and “Will Limiting Population Growth Solve the Climate Crisis?” and “Ten Reasons Why Population Control Can’t Stop Climate Change”and “Saving Nature: Overpopulation is not the Primary Problem” and “1973: Ernest Mandel on Marxism and Ecology, ‘The Dialectic of Growth'” and The Closing Circle and Too Many People?: Population, Immigration, and the Environmental Crisis