Like the Grinch who stole Christmas, the Conservative government of Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper has just left a lump of coal in Canadian workers’ stockings. A cover story in the Globe and Mail of December 22, 2011 announces that federal public pension programs are being targeted for cuts to reduce the federal deficit.1 The […]
Subjects Archives: Political Economy
Is United States Government a Paper Tiger?
In a 1956 interview with Anna Louise Strong, Mao described American imperialism as a paper tiger. Of course, the military strength of the United States is unparalleled, especially because this country accounts for about half of worldwide military spending. Even so, the last three significant wars have shown that the country has been unable to […]
Radical Potential in Every Community
Amy Sonnie and James Tracy. Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels, and Black Power. New York: Melville House Printing, 2011. ix-201 pp. $16.95 (paperback). Most current academic discussion of radical movements populated by whites is devoted to understanding ultra-right movements based largely on demands for less government intervention and nostalgia for a lost time in […]
Labor Has a Legitimate Lien on Capital
When Steve Miller, the vulture capitalist who drove Delphi into the ditch of America’s dreams, declared, “Bankruptcy is a growth industry,” he was smiling, but he wasn’t joking. Bankruptcy in the US isn’t a sign of economic distress or mismanagement. It’s a business plan — calculated, cunning, and void of redeeming social value. American Airlines […]
Occupy Production
As the Occupy movement keeps developing, it seeks solutions for the economic and political dysfunctions it exposes and opposes. For many, the capitalist economic system itself is the basic problem. They want change to another system, but not to the traditional socialist alternative (e.g., USSR or China). That system too seems to require basic change. […]
Who Controls Capital? What Does Capital Control?
Who controls capital, and what does capital control? The concept of “capital” in this context must be corporate enterprise. By this metric the commanding heights of capital in the United States would be the Fortune 500 or 1,000, perhaps a thousand or so more, with an array of satellite firms numbering in the tens of […]
#OWS and the Young Trade Unionists
Cory McCray, Founder of the Young Trade Unionists, and George Hendricks, Baltimore Teachers Union (BTU) Rep and Vice President of the Young Trade Unionists (YTU) If you head down to the IBEW Local 24 Union Hall Auditorium on W. Patapsco Avenue in Baltimore on the first Tuesday of any month, you’ll encounter a meeting of […]
Shale Gas and Climate Change — A Burning Issue
On November 6th, thousands of protesters staged a colorful encirclement of the White House in Washington D.C., protesting against the Keystone XL pipeline project and against expansion in extraction of tar sands oil. Within just four days after this bold direct action, Obama ordered a thorough review of the pipeline plan and suspended decision-making on […]
Qatar, Al Jazeera, and the Arab Spring
The leader of al-Nahda movement, Rachid Ghannouchi, made his first visit to a foreign country after the first post-revolution Tunisian elections. His choice was the State of Qatar. Analysts see many messages in this gesture but some Tunisians are troubled by the invitation he had extended to the Emir of Qatar. Although many do not […]
Occupy Your Education: A Note to Students about Changing the World
The current Occupy Movement has captured people’s imagination and refocused the national discussion on issues of economic injustice, social stratification, and corruptions of American democracy. Contrary to what some people might think, the Occupy Movement is not composed solely of “young, idealistic college kids.” People of many different ages, ethnicities, and ideological persuasions are […]
Lessons from a Long History of Dissent: From the Early Twentieth Century to Occupy Wall Street
World Peace Forum Teach-In, Vancouver, Canada, November 12, 2011 (Modified from Notes) We are at what social theorists call a “historic moment,” in which real change suddenly seems possible. It is therefore all the more important to learn from past struggles. One of the first lessens of a long history of dissent from the early […]
The Occupy Wall Street Uprising and the U.S. Labor Movement: An Interview with Steve Early, Jon Flanders, Stephanie Luce, and Jim Straub
The Occupy Wall Street uprising has taken the nation by storm, beginning in the Financial District in Manhattan and then spreading to cities and towns in every part of the country and around the world. The anger over growing inequality and the political power of the rich that has been bubbling under the surface for […]
Occupy Denialism: Toward Ecological and Social Revolution
This is a reconstruction from notes of a keynote address delivered to the Power Shift West Conference, Eugene, Oregon, November 5, 2011. All of us here today, along with countless others around the world, are currently engaged in the collective struggle to save the planet as a place of habitation for humanity and innumerable other […]
Occupy Wall Street: An Opening to Worker-Occupation of Factories and Enterprises in the U.S.
The Social Economy Context The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement has clearly expressed the hopes and great potentialities of the working class both in the U.S. and globally. The 99 percent are speaking up and saying that they will no longer do the bidding of the 1 percent. In essence it is the revolt […]
An Open Letter to Greg Mankiw
Wednesday November 2, 2011 Dear Professor Mankiw — Today, we are walking out of your class, Economics 10, in order to express our discontent with the bias inherent in this introductory economics course. We are deeply concerned about the way that this bias affects students, the University, and our greater society. As Harvard undergraduates, […]
Prison vs. Princeton
It costs the state of New Jersey more money to hold a prisoner for one year than to fund one Princeton student’s tuition. Here’s an overview of the disturbing trend of prioritizing prison over higher education in the US. PublicAdministration.Net was created as an online informational resource for individuals looking to pursue public administration-related […]
Capitalism and Environmental Catastrophe
John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff at Occupy Wall Street. Photo by Carrie Ann Naumoff This is a reconstruction from notes of a talk delivered at a teach-in on “The Capitalist Crisis and the Environment” organized by the Education and Empowerment Working Group, Occupy Wall Street, Zuccotti Park (Liberty Plaza), New York, October 23, 2011. […]
Interview with Salim Lamrani: “The Economic Sanctions against Cuba Constitute the Principal Obstacle to the Development of the Country”
Salim Lamrani. État de siège; les sanctions économiques des États-Unis contre Cuba(State of Siege: The United States’ economic sanctions against Cuba). Prologue by Wayne S. Smith. Preface by Paul Estrade. Paris, Editions Estrella, 2011. 15 euros. CSF: You’ve just published a new book under the title État de siège. What exactly do you cover […]
Pessimism of the Reality, Optimism of the Ideal
I. It seems to me that José Vasconcelos has found a formula on pessimism and optimism that not only defines the feeling of the new Ibero-American generation in the face of the contemporary crisis, but also corresponds to the absolute mentality and sensibility of an era in which, despite the thesis of José Ortega […]
The Vampire Squid Turns to Education
In his Republic, Plato analogized elites to guard dogs who must be educated as to whom they must guard against and whom they must protect. One of Plato’s nightmare scenarios was a ruling class that lost the ability to make this distinction and turned wholly predatory on its sustaining population. Enter our present-day banking […]
