Puzzle or Misreading? Stagnation, Austerity and Left Politics | The Bullet No. 920. That the many attempts to theorize the crisis of 2008, the deepest crisis since the Depression, have at best been inconclusive should not be all that surprising. After all, as Michael Bernstein noted in the late 1980s,
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Parchment in the Fire: Finance’s hold on our everyday life must be broken | Costas Lapavitsas
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/01/finance-hold-everyday-life-broken-capitalism Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: Austerity, Capitalism, crisis, finance
Continue readingParchment in the Fire: The Making of the English Working Class turns 50
Check out @rosaluxnyc’s Tweet: https://twitter.com/rosaluxnyc/status/417378382330884096 Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: class, Labour
Continue readingParchment in the Fire: An Industrial Policy for Europe | The Bullet No. 918
http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/918.php Filed under: Capitalism, Europe
Continue readingParchment in the Fire: From ‘utopia’ to dystopia and resistance, a short run
Reblogged from Greek Left Review: by COSTAS DOUZINAS 16 December 2013 Originally published at Open Democracy : Can Europe Make It? http://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/costas-douzinas/from-‘utopia’-to-dystopia-and-resistance-short-run The latest mutation of the neoliberal doctrine is turning Greece into a real life dystopia, but resistance can still save the day. Demotix/Socrates Baltagiannis. All rights reserved. Michael Anderson’s
Continue readingParchment in the Fire: The high cost of subsidizing Wal-Mart’s profits
Reblogged from Systemic Disorder: Each United States Wal-Mart costs taxpayers nearly $1 million because of the miserably low pay at the same time that the four heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune possess $107 billion in wealth. That’s no coincidence. You subsidize Wal-Mart whether you shop there or not. And if
Continue readingParchment in the Fire: NAFTA at 20: State of the North American Worker
Twenty years since its passage, NAFTA has displaced workers on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, depressed wages, weakened unions, and set the terms of the neoliberal global economy. By Jeff Faux, December 13, 2013. Foreign Policy In Focus is partnering with Mexico’s La Jornada del campo magazine, where an earlier
Continue readingParchment in the Fire: Americanized Labor Policy Is Spreading in Europe – NYTimes.com
Americanized Labor Policy Is Spreading in Europe – NYTimes.com. While most of the debate over Europe’s response to the financial crisis has focused on the budget austerity enveloping the Continent, the comparatively unheralded erosion of worker protection is likely to have at least as big and lasting an impact on
Continue readingParchment in the Fire: Beyond the ‘Republican’ Economy: Hayek and Pettit on Private Property
Republican political theorists have spilled a lot of ink in the attempt to present ‘republicanism’ as a distinctive alternative to liberalism. The landmark book is, of course, Philip Pettit’s Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government, published in 1997. I have written about some of the problems of republicanism on
Continue readingParchment in the Fire: The marketisation of our universities: Economic criteria get precedence over what’s good in human terms | British Politics and Policy at LSE
The marketisation of our universities: Economic criteria get precedence over what’s good in human terms | British Politics and Policy at LSE. Business criteria, not education or the public good, drive what marketised universities do, writes Luke Martell. Universities are restructuring for the new era, ploughing money into marketing and glitzy buildings, designed to
Continue readingParchment in the Fire: Austerity and Human Rights
The Council of Europe Commission for Human Rights has published a report documenting the various ways in which austerity is negatively impacting on human rights across Europe. I have copied the summary of the report below: Europeans are living through the deepest economic recession since the Second World War. What
Continue readingParchment in the Fire: People at risk of poverty or social exclusion – Statistics Explained
People at risk of poverty or social exclusion – Statistics Explained. A recent Eurostat report has reported the following, disturbing figure in Europe: In 2012, 124.5 million people, or 24.8 % (Figure 1) of the population, in the EU-28 were at risk of poverty or social exclusion (AROPE), compared with 24.3 %
Continue readingParchment in the Fire: Credibility of the Ruling Elite is Being Shredded – Chris Hedges on Reality Asserts Itself
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11012 ‘And what happens in moments of breakdown is that people not only turn against an ineffectual liberal elite that is not able–that in essence–that has presided over political and economic paralysis, or certainly political paralysis, but they also jettison the values that elite purports to defend. And that’s what’s
Continue readingParchment in the Fire: George Osborne’s Economic Policy: More Poverty, Worse Public Servies
Check out @chakrabortty’s Tweet: https://twitter.com/chakrabortty/status/409810696763760640 Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: Austerity, Conservatism, neoliberalism
Continue readingParchment in the Fire: "Sack the Economists"
Reblogged from Real-World Economics Review Blog: from Geoff Davies Non-mainstream economists are all-too aware of the failure of mainstream economists to anticipate, let alone avoid, the Global Financial Crisis and the ensuing Great Recession. The mainstream profession is also failing to fix the problem, and is actually making it worse.
Continue readingParchment in the Fire: Polanyi on the Persistence of Economic Dogma
In reading Karl Polanyi’s 1944 classic, The Great Transformation, I’ve come across some passages regarding the persistence of the doctrines of economic liberalism (what we would today refer to as neo-liberalism) despite the onset of economic crisis. Despite being written almost 70 years ago, it sounds like it could have
Continue readingParchment in the Fire: How the Defeat of Trade Unionism Gave Rise to Low-Wage Jobs
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11136 Fast food workers are preparing to strike across the country Thursday, demanding an increase of pay to $15 an hour. Thursday’s major day of action–organizers say 100 cities will take part–comes just six days after more than 100 people were arrested nationwide at Black Friday protests against major retail
Continue readingParchment in the Fire: On the “decline” of Madrid, the state re-appropriation of public space, and strange hope
Reblogged from Contentious Politics in an Age of Austerity: Cristina Flesher Fominaya During the Global Justice Movement the constant refrain in Madrid’s movement network was how to break out of the activist ghetto, how to reach out to the people on the streets. With 15-M it seems those dreams were
Continue readingParchment in the Fire: New Review of "Marxism and Social Movements"
Reblogged from Shadows of Tender Fury: Mark Bergfeld has penned an insightful review of “Marxism and Social Movements” (Brill, 2013) in the latest issue of Oxford Left Review. The text is reproduced below, courtesty of the author. Colin Barker et al – Marxism and Social Movements There has been much
Continue readingParchment in the Fire: Karl Marx’s Revenge: Class Struggle Grows Around the World | TIME.com
Karl Marx’s Revenge: Class Struggle Grows Around the World | TIME.com. Karl Marx was supposed to be dead and buried. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and China’s Great Leap Forward into capitalism, communism faded into the quaint backdrop of James Bond movies or the deviant mantra of Kim
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