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Mainstream Marxism

Posted on July 26, 2012 in Articles

The Article: Marxism Goes Mainstream by Stuart Jeffries in Raw Story.

The Text: Class conflict once seemed so straightforward. Marx and Engels wrote in the second best-selling book of all time, The Communist Manifesto: “What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.” (The best-selling book of all time, incidentally, is the Bible – it only feels like it’s 50 Shades of Grey.)

Today, 164 years after Marx and Engels wrote about grave-diggers, the truth is almost the exact opposite. The proletariat, far from burying capitalism, are keeping it on life support. Overworked, underpaid workers ostensibly liberated by the largest socialist revolution in history (China’s) are driven to the brink of suicide to keep those in the west playing with their iPads. Chinese money bankrolls an otherwise bankrupt America.

The irony is scarcely wasted on leading Marxist thinkers. “The domination of capitalism globally depends today on the existence of a Chinese Communist party that gives de-localised capitalist enterprises cheap labour to lower prices and deprive workers of the rights of self-organisation,” says Jacques Rancière, the French marxist thinker and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris VIII. “Happily, it is possible to hope for a world less absurd and more just than today’s.”

Ending A Rotten Culture

Posted on July 25, 2012 in Articles

The Article: Let’s end this rotten culture that only rewards rogues by Will Hutton in The Guardian.

The Text: Investment banking is an organised scam masquerading as a business. It is defined by endemic conflicts of interest, systemic amoral behaviour and extreme avarice. Many of its senior figures should be serving prison sentences or disgraced – and would have been if British regulators had been weaned off the doctrine of ” light touch” regulation earlier and if the Serious Fraud Office’s budget had not been emasculated by Mr Osborne. It is a tax on wealth generation and an enemy of honest endeavour – the beast that is devouring British capitalism.

The £290m fine on Barclays for rigging the interest rates in the inter-bank market is a defining moment. Not just for Barclays but for every bank with which it colluded. Barclays had the wit to come clean first – the first of many banks to suffer political and moral opprobrium for illicitly inflating its profits. It was also trying to protect itself from “reputational damage” – not wanting other banks’ assessment of its creditworthiness to become public .

In the light of what we now know, that seems laughable. But between autumn 2007 and spring 2009, Barclays was fighting for its life as an independent bank. Had the news surfaced that other banks harboured such doubts about its credit standing, Barclays might have ended up being owned by the British taxpayer like RBS and Lloyds.

Weimar America

Posted on July 24, 2012 in Articles

The Article: Weimar America: Four Major Ways We’re Following Germany’s Fascist Footsteps by Robert Cruickshank in AlterNet.

The Text: What happens when a nation that was once an economic powerhouse turns its back on democracy and on its middle class, as wealthy right-wingers wage austerity campaigns and enable extremist politics?

It may sound like America in 2012. But it was also Germany in 1932.

Most Americans have never heard of the Weimar Republic, Germany’s democratic interlude between World War I and World War II. Those who have usually see it as a prologue to the horrors of Nazi Germany, an unstable transition between imperialism and fascism. In this view, Hitler’s rise to power is treated as an inevitable outcome of the Great Depression, rather than the result of a decision by right-wing politicians to make him chancellor in early 1933.

Hey, LBJ!

Posted on July 23, 2012 in Articles

The Article: Hey, hey LBJ – why have you come back today? by Danny Schecter in Al-Jazeera.

The Text: Back in 1964, I was a student activist, a sympathiser of Students for a Democratic Society, and a full time civil rights movement organiser. We were “movement people”, just as Occupy Wall Street is today, suspicious of, and hostile to, the Democratic Party – which was then dominated by pro-segregationist Dixiecrats from the south and the new president from Texas, Lyndon Baines Johnson.

Some of us were still mourning for JFK, but we knew in our heart of hearts that even he operated more on political calculation than conscience and compassion. He had deepened our involvement in Vietnam, although there is evidence that he was looking for a way out.

We all suspected his killing in Dallas was more than it appeared to be, and that a cover-up was assassinating the truth of what happened, just as he had been assassinated. I later directed a film, Beyond JFK, based on Oliver Stone’s movie, laying out all the conspiracy theories.

Obamacare A Tax On The Middle Class? Not Really

Posted on July 22, 2012 in Articles

The Article: Don’t Buy The GOP Narrative That Obamacare Is A Tax On The Middle Class by Rick Ungar in Forbes.

The Text: “Minority Leader Mitch McConnell wasted no time getting to the floor of the Senate to argue that today’s Supreme Court ruling clarifies that Obamacare is nothing more than a tax on the middle class which—according to McConnell—is precisely what the Administration and Congressional Democrats promised it was not.

Leader McConnell, and his fellow Republicans, should read the Majority ruling before they embarrass themselves further.

In the opening paragraphs of Chief Justice Roberts’ opinion, he clarifies that the law specifically does not involve a tax. If it did, Roberts clarifies, the Court would have had no choice but to reject the case for lack of jurisdiction as a tax case cannot be brought until someone is actually forced to pay the tax. This is, as we know, not the case.