Half of U.S. poor by Fred Goldstein

Dandelion Salad

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

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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.

Simon Patten on Public Infrastructure and Economic Rent Capture by Michael Hudson

by Michael Hudson
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
http://michael-hudson.com
October 17, 2011

As published in American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 70, No. 4 (October, 2011).
*The author acknowledges funding from Prosper Australia in support of this article.

ABSTRACT. Reflecting the Progressive Era’s reform agenda Simon Patten (1852–1922) argued that freeing markets from one source of economic rent (by taxing land rent) would merely leave the surplus to be taken by other monopolists and rent extractors (railroads, Wall Street trusts, and basic privatized utilities).

Dare We Question Capitalism? by Jack A. Smith

by Jack A. Smith
Global Research
September 16, 2011

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Between 1900 and 2011 there have been 24 recessions in the United States (including the Great Depression), about once every 4.6 years — some decades more, some less — largely from inevitable overproduction and greed.

Yes, capitalism’s highly productive and has made many Americans rich and facilitated Washington’s global rule. It’s also an unstable system responsible for extreme inequality, poverty and stagnant wages at home and aggression abroad to advance U.S. economic interests.

Richard Wolff: Marxism as an option

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TheBigPictureRT on May 16, 2011

For tonight’s Conversations with Great Minds Thom Hartmann is joined by an economist Richard Wolff whose many books and more than four decades of teaching have focused on Marxian economics, economic methodology and class analysis. He is professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts – Amherst and is currently a visiting professor in the Graduate Program of International Affairs at the New School University in New York City. His latest book is Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to Do About It.

Marx meets the working class by Todd Chretien

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by Todd Chretien
SocialistWorker.org
April 7, 2011

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In Paris, Marx finally encountered the social force capable of achieving liberation.

“I AM referring to ruthless criticism of all that exists, ruthless both in the sense of not being afraid of the results…and being just as little afraid of conflict with the powers that be.”

Marx was in a fighting mood in the months after the German authorities banned the Rheinische Zeitung, the newspaper he had edited in 1842-43. This is not to say that he was unhappy, far from it. After years of courtship, he and Jenny Westphalen were finally married and soon expecting their first child. As Howard Zinn put it in his play Marx in Soho, the two “were powerfully in love.”

Robber Barons, Revolution, and Social Control, Part 1 by Andrew Gavin Marshall

by Andrew Gavin Marshall
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
March 12, 2011

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The Century of Social Engineering, Part 1

In Part 1 of this series, “The Century of Social Engineering,” I briefly document the economic, political and social background to the 20th century in America, by taking a brief look at the major social upheavals of the 19th century. For an excellent and detailed examination of this history, Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States  (which provided much of the research for this article) is perhaps the most expansive and detailed examination. I am not attempting to serve it justice here, as there is much left out of this historically examination than there is included.

The muckraking Marx by Todd Chretien

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by Todd Chretien
SocialistWorker.org
March 9, 2011

The owners of the Rheinische Zeitung hired a “devil of a revolutionary” as editor.

In 1841, things were looking good for Karl Marx. After completing his dissertation in philosophy, his mentor, the radical critic and philosopher Bruno Bauer, prepared Marx’s way to land a prestigious academic appointment. Only 23 years old and widely recognized as a rising intellectual star, Marx shot to the top of the most influential liberal circles in Germany.

Libya: The Empire strikes back By William Bowles

by William Bowles
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
williambowles.info
Crossposted on Strategic Culture Foundation
February 28, 2011

Pre-amble: I started writing this before events in Libya escalated, but it illustrates why it is imperative that we understand what exactly is going on in the Middle East and North Africa, especially when it comes to distinguishing between our wishes and reality. This is especially true of what is happening in Libya, where fact and invention (as well as wishful thinking) have become blurred in the press coverage.

Thanks to its rich reserves of oil and natural gas, Libya has a positive trade balance of $27 billion a year and a medium-high per capita income of $12,000, six times greater than that of Egypt … Witness the fact that nearly one million and a half immigrants, mostly from North Africa, work in Libya. Some 85 percent of Libyan energy exports go to Europe: Italy takes first place with 37 percent, followed by Germany, France and China. Italy is also in first place in imports to Libya, followed by China, Turkey and Germany.

Hegel’s hard work by Todd Chretien

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by Todd Chretien
SocialistWorker.org
February 23, 2011

Marx looked to Hegel’s original method for thinking about society’s problems.

“IF THERE should ever be time for such a work again,” said Marx to Engels amid a flurry of letters in January of 1858, “I should greatly like to make accessible to the ordinary human intelligence, in two or three printer’s sheets, what is rational in the method which Hegel discovered but at the same time enveloped in mysticism.” (From The Selected Correspondence of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: 1846-1895, New York: International Publishers, 1942, p. 102.)

African Americans and the struggle for socialism, 1901-1925 By Abayomi Azikiwe

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By Abayomi Azikiwe
www.workers.org
Editor, Pan-African News Wire
Feb 19, 2011

In 1901 the Socialist Party of America, after much ideological and political struggle, emerged as a coalition of various factions within the socialist movement. It had conservative, moderate and revolutionary tendencies within its ranks. Eugene V. Debs, an organizer of workers in the railroad industry, emerged as a charismatic figure, the party’s political candidate and a public spokesperson for the socialist movement.

Debs ran numerous times for presidential office and opposed wars of imperialism waged by the U.S. ruling class. He served prison terms for his outspoken opposition to war and U.S. foreign policy.

Getting started with Marx and Engels by Todd Chretien

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by Todd Chretien
SocialistWorker.org
February 8, 2011

Todd Chretien begins a new series that goes through the works of Marx and Engels.

“PHILOSOPHERS HAVE only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.” So wrote Karl Marx in his Theses on Feuerbach when he had reached the ripe-old-age of 27.

Yet Marx and his collaborator Frederick Engels spent their lives interpreting the world, covering page after page, year after year. Their Collected Works fill up 50 volumes, which average about 600 pages each.

Law of Value 7: Production and Exchange by Brendan M. Cooney

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brendanmcooney | February 08, 2011

Law of Value 7: Production and Exchange

Production- Exchange script

We get into trouble anytime we try to understand something in isolation. The true meaning of things exist not buried inside them but in their relation to other things. Take money for instance. The meaning of this rectangular piece of paper covered in strange hieroglyphics can only be understood when we look at the role money plays in the complex coordination of modern capitalist production. Take away capitalist production and this rectangular piece of paper loses its meaning.

What’s at stake in the global class struggle against capitalism

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www.workers.org/

http://blip.tv

Larry Holmes, WWP secretariat member, speaking at the Workers World Forum, Jan. 14, 2011, in New York.

The legacy of Karl Marx by Duncan Hallas (1983)

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by Duncan Hallas
SocialistWorker.org
January 14, 2011

In 1983, while the International Socialist Organization–the publisher of SocialistWorker.org–was still a very young group, British socialist Duncan Hallas came to the U.S. to give a national tour of meetings about Karl Marx, in honor of the 100th anniversary of Marx’s death.

Many of the meetings were small–often, they were held in living rooms. But those who attended couldn’t help but be persuaded by Duncan’s presentation. Here, we reprint an article by Duncan that appeared in Socialist Worker in March 1983–one of the best brief introductions to Marxism.

Is socialism possible in the U.S.? by Paul D’Amato (1989)

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by Paul D’Amato
SocialistWorker.org
January 14, 2011

Paul D’Amato explains why the image of a classless, conflict-free society in the U.S.–the picture that dominates the media–was never a reality.

IN THE two decades after the Second World War Two, pundits and academics proclaimed the U.S. an exceptional society–one in which everyone was middle class and where concepts of class and class struggle were irrelevant.