Marxism, Capitalism and The Environment by Deirdre Griswold

Dandelion Salad

by Deirdre Griswold
Workers World
April 29, 2013

Image by Oxfam International via Flickr

Below is a talk on Marxism and the environment given by Workers World Editor Deirdre Griswold to a Workers World Party forum in New York on April 26, 2013.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels wrote a century and a half ago. Climate change is a modern problem. So why do we say that Marxism is essential to the struggle to protect the environment?

A Protest Against Real Distress: Religion and Revolutionary Struggle by Charley Earp

by Charley Earp
Guest Writer
Dandelion Salad
Radical Progress
Originally published on www.thenorthstar.info, Feb. 22, 2013
Feb. 27, 2013

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In response to Dario Cankovic’s Socialism and Religion, Redux:

“Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and also the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of spiritless conditions.”
— Karl Marx, Contribution To The Critique Of Hegel’s Philosophy Of Right

I have a love/hate relationship with religion and layers upon layers of both antipathy and affection for this complex reality. The same thing could be said for the revolutionary struggle.

Law of Value 10: Price and Value by Brendan M. Cooney

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brendanmcooney·Dec 23, 2012

[Here’s a yo-yo. Let’s say it took an hour to make, parts and everything. And here’s a bag of high-fructose jelly beans. Let’s say they took 20 minutes to make. What if they both sold for $5, despite having different labor contents? Wouldn’t this be a big problem for Marx’s value theory?

Caleb Maupin: The Anti-Capitalists Are Here + Larry Holmes: OWS and The Capitalist Crisis

Image by waywuwei via Flickr

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Sep 30, 2012 by wwpvideo

Caleb Maupin, Workers World Party Youth Organizer, speaks on the political impact of Occupy Wall Street. His remarks were made at a Workers World Party forum in September of 2012.

http://www.workers.org

Socialism: Our Alternative To The Madness Of The Market by Eric Ruder

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by Eric Ruder
SocialistWorker.org
August 30, 2012

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THE WORLD economy is still suffering from the worst crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Around the world, the consequences have been devastating–jobs wiped out, exploitation intensified for those who remain employed, social services eliminated or privatized.

At the same time, U.S. banks and corporations are sitting on a record $2 trillion in cash. In most sectors, profits have returned, often to record levels–and tax rates for corporations and wealthy individuals have remained at historic lows during the administration of a Democrat who promised to make the rich pay their fair share.

Law of Value 9: Abstract Labor by Brendan M. Cooney

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http://kapitalism101.wordpress.com/

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Aug 23, 2012 by brendanmcooney

[...] What kind of social power does money have? It seems to have any social power we might want it to have. In a society in which social life is coordinated by market exchange money has the ability to buy any aspect of this social life, to compel any action, to coordinate any complex activity. The more money we have, the greater our ability to command this social power. This is a non-specific power: It is not tied to any particular activity, commodity or person. It is social power in the abstract. [...]

Veblen’s Institutionalist Elaboration of Rent Theory by Michael Hudson

by Michael Hudson
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
http://michael-hudson.com
July 27, 2012

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Michael Hudson’s new book The Bubble and Beyond has just been released and can be purchased via here.

Speech given at the Veblen, Capitalism and Possibilities for a Rational Economic Order Conference, Istanbul, Turkey, June 6th, 2012

Simon Patten recalled in 1912 that his generation of American economists – most of whom studied in Germany in the 1870s – were taught that John Stuart Mill’s 1848 Principles of Political Economy was the high-water mark of classical thought. However, Mill’s reformist philosophy turned out to be “not a goal but a half-way house” toward the Progressive Era’s reforms. Mill was “a thinker becoming a socialist without seeing what the change really meant,” Patten concluded. “The Nineteenth Century epoch ends not with the theories of Mill but with the more logical systems of Karl Marx and Henry George.[1] But the classical approach to political economy continued to evolve, above all through Thorstein Veblen.

Ian Angus: How to make an Ecosocialist Revolution (2011)

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by Jill Hickson

At the October 2011 Climate Change Social Change conference held in Melbourne, Ian Angus, editor, climateandcapitalism.com and co-author of the book, Too Many People?, explains the concept of ecosocialism and how we can struggle for a better future.

An Occupier’s open letter to Chris Hedges by Caleb T. Maupin

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by Caleb T. Maupin
www.workers.org
Mar 30, 2012

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Chris Hedges, a writer for The Nation and former New York Times reporter, spoke at the Left Forum’s closing plenary on March 18 in New York City. [DS added the links.]

As someone who was among the thousands of youth on Sept. 17 when the occupation of Zuccotti Park began; as someone who attended some of the early General Assemblies prior to that historic day; as someone who was arrested as part of the OWS Martin Luther King Day actions; as someone who is currently involved in the continuing occupation of Union Square in preparation for the May 1st General Strike, I must say loudly and clearly that you, Chris Hedges, do not speak for me.

Inequality, capitalism and socialist revolution by Fred Goldstein

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By Fred Goldstein
www.workers.org
Feb 29, 2012 9:09 PM

Image by waywuwei via Flickr

The Occupy Wall Street movement has made the inequality in capitalist society an issue that has put the rich on the defensive, at least in public. The growth of inequality in the last 30 years, and especially in the last decade, has been talked about for years in many quarters by economic analysts and even some politicians. But before the Occupy Wall Street movement raised the slogan of the 1% versus the 99%, this condition went entirely unchallenged and was merely observed as an inevitable, undesirable (unless you were part of the 1%) fact of life.

The Nature and Effects of Imperialism by Fazal Rahman, Ph.D.

by Fazal Rahman, Ph.D.
Guest Writer
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Originally published on imperialismandthethirdworld.wordpress.com
January 31, 2012

Multidimensional and complex nature and effects of imperialism on democracy, society, nature, and human nature

“At the same pace that mankind masters nature, man seems to become enslaved to other men or to his own infamy.  Even the pure light of science seems unable to shine but on the dark background of ignorance.  All our invention and progress seem to result in endowing material forces with intellectual life, and in stultifying human life into a material force.”  Karl Marx.  Selected Works, Vol. 1, p. 500.   “That hideous pagan idol (imperialism), who would not drink the nectar but from the skulls of the slain.”  Karl Marx.  On Colonialism, Moscow Publication, 1968, p. 87.

Half of U.S. poor by Fred Goldstein

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By Fred Goldstein
www.workers.org
Dec 21, 2011 10:59 PM

Image by Chris Wieland via Flickr

Karl Marx was right: Gap grows between 99% and 1%

The number of people in the U.S. who are officially poor or “near poor” has become a matter of controversy.

The Census Bureau has changed the method by which it measures official poverty. Now, regional differences are taken into account when calculating the costs of maintaining a family, as well as adding any government assistance — like food stamps — to a family’s income while subtracting medical, transportation, childcare and other expenses.

Law of Value 8: Subject/Object by Brendan M. Cooney

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Image by Ann Douglas via Flickr

brendanmcooney on Nov 15, 2011

One of the more common objections raised to Marx’s theory of value, at least here in the theoretical void of cyberspace, is the objection posed by subjective value theory. Though these modern objections often take quite a crude, simplistic tone, they are echoes of a rather old debate, one that dates back to debates between Marxists and Austrian economists that took place in the late 1800′s and early 1900′s.

Occupy Wall Street – On the strategy and tactics of non-forceful and forceful responses to the violence of the capitalist-imperialist state by Fazal Rahman, Ph.D.

by Fazal Rahman, Ph.D.
Guest Writer
Dandelion Salad
November 12, 2011

Image by Ann Douglas via Flickr

Abstract:

In this article, a dialectical approach to the strategy and tactics of non-forceful and forceful forms of struggle, in face of the all-round violence of the capitalist-imperialist state, is proposed. As some of the pacifist, progressive, and anarchist or anarchist-like speakers and writers of the 2011 American Protests (Occupy Protests) are absolutizing the non-violence-not only as a tactic, but also as a permanent strategy and philosophy of the struggle-a brief critique of them is also included in this paper.

A Master Class in Occupation by Chris Hedges

by Chris Hedges
Featured Writer
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Truthdig
Oct. 31, 2011

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NEW YORK CITY—Jon Friesen, 27, tall and lanky with a long, dirty-blond ponytail, a purple scarf and an old green fleece, is sitting on concrete at the edge of Zuccotti Park leading a coordination meeting, a gathering that takes place every morning with representatives of each of Occupy Wall Street’s roughly 40 working groups.

“Our conversation is about what it means to be a movement and what it means to be an organization,” he says to the circle. A heated discussion follows, including a debate over whether the movement should make specific demands.