Image by Collin Anderson via Flickr
by Paul Street
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Official Website of Paul Street
August 17, 2018
“Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains.” This famous socialist slogan, adapted from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ “The Communist Manifesto,” struck Noam Chomsky as a poor fit for most people in the world’s rich nations almost half a century ago.
Image by brent granby via Flickr
by Leela Yellesetty
SocialistWorker.org
Originally posted July 23, 2010
December 30, 2017
Part 1: A crying need for change
At the Socialism 2010 conference in Oakland, Calif., SocialistWorker.org contributor Leela Yellesetty spoke on “What Would Socialism Be Like?” This three-part article is based on her talk. In the first part, she answers the time-worn charge that socialism wouldn’t work with this question–who can say that capitalism is working?
Image by brent granby via Flickr
GreenLeftTV on Jun 14, 2016
At the ‘Socialism in the 21st Century’ Conference held in Sydney in May 2016 and organised by the Socialist Alliance, Michael Lebowitz, a world leading Marxist author who writes and researches the problems and possibilities of building a socialist alternative, here presents a paper on what Socialism might look like in this century and the differences with 20th Century Socialism as represented by the developments in the Soviet Union.
Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
by Mark Mason and Susan Cain
Guest Writers, Dandelion Salad
Mark Mason, PhD
crossposted from Dissident Voice, May 18, 2016
May 23, 2016
The dynamics of capitalism is postponement of enjoyment to the constantly postponed future.
— Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History, 1959
Is There No Alternative? Thinking Outside the Ballot Box
Image by KROCKY MESHKIN via Flickr
by Ralph Nader
The Nader Page
October 22, 2015
In college, Economics 101 is often described as the social science discipline that deals with the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services. MIT Economist Paul Samuelson liked to focus on scarcity, or more specifically, the allocation of scarce resources. “Abundance” was always a pretty word with an idyllic connotation for Professor Samuelson. I often wonder why there weren’t a few classes about the real-life consequences of abundance, along with scarcity and people’s material welfare.
Note: replaced video Oct. 26, 2015
with Noam Chomsky
Image by Public Citizen via Flickr
Laura Flanders
grittv.org
June 18, 2013
What do Takism Square, Google Glass, Trans Pacific Partnership and NSA have in common? Find out in this interview with Noam Chomsky.
On the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the pending trade deal critics are calling “NAFTA on steroids”:
These are patent rules so high, if they’d existed in 19th century the US would be an agricultural producer today… What we now call “piracy” is the way the rich countries developed. There’s a phrase for it in trade theory: kicking away the ladder. First you violate all the rules, then by the time you get rich you kick away the ladder so others can’t do it too and you preach about “free trade.”
[…]
This conversation was recorded backstage at the Left Forum in New York, June 8, 2013.
by David Bollier
www.bollier.org
July 13, 2012
Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
Raj Patel has been tracking the pathologies of the global food system for many years. An activist and academic who teaches at the UC Berkeley Center for African Studies, Patel has just published a second, updated edition of his 2008 book, Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System.
The problem with the food system is not that we don’t produce enough calories to eradicate hunger, Patel notes. It’s that the food system has its own priorities of institutional consolidation and profit, which means that more than 1 billion people in the world are malnourished and 2 billion are overweight – which is worse than when the first edition of Patel’s book came out.
by Chris Hedges
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Truthdig
April 30, 2012 Continue reading
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mobileT503 on Apr 10, 2012
Ralph Nader comes to Portland! Nader gave a powerful lecture and released his new book “Getting Steamed to Overcome Corporatism” for a Q & A and signing at Powell’s City of Books in downtown Portland. Look for Joe Anybody’s video of Nader’s lecture/symposium at Lewis & Clark College in southwest Portland to follow this event on the same day. [see video below]
Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
Updated: Nov. 7, 2011; added the Q&A video
EricSheptock on Nov 4, 2011
Consumer-advocate-turned-presidential-candidate Ralph Nader speaks to “occupiers” at Washington, DC’s Freedom Plaza about the “Occupy movement”.
https://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/
peakmoment | November 20, 2010
Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
Peak Moment 185: Rainey Hopewell’s crazy idea has ended up feeding a neighborhood and creating community. She and Margot Johnston planted vegetables in the parking strip in front of their house. They offer them free for the taking ? to anyone, anytime ? with messages chalked on the sidewalk noting when particular vegies are ready to pick. Neighboring children and adults are joining in to work on the garden, harvesting fun along with food, and even handing fresh-picked vegies to passers-by.
https://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/
by Leela Yellesetty
SocialistWorker.org
July 20, 2010
Part 1: A crying need for change
At the Socialism 2010 conference in Oakland, Calif., SocialistWorker.org contributor Leela Yellesetty spoke on “What Would Socialism Be Like?” This three-part article is based on her talk. In the first part, she answers the time-worn charge that socialism wouldn’t work with this question–who can say that capitalism is working?
I OFTEN think that one of the tremendous tricks of capitalism is getting us to accept an absurd state of affairs as normal–inevitable even. But to quote one of my favorite poets, Naomi Shihab Nye, “If you tilt your head just slightly, it’s ridiculous.”
https://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/
Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
peakmoment
January 30, 2010
Peak Moment 161: What if the food system benefited local producers, nourished nearby people, and built a stronger community? Krishna Khalsa of Eugene, Oregon wants to turn the food system on its head. He wants it to be run by, and for the benefit of, ordinary people – not corporate profit. He’s exploring models of local cooperative, entrepreneurial organizations where people provide the labor, share and hire resources, caretake the land, use all of nature’s abundance, support farmers and food producers, distribute food so that no one goes hungry, and build strong social bonds. Empower people, not profits!
By Michael Hudson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
michael-hudson.com
Economic Perspectives from Kansas City
December 20, 2009
There is a seeming riddle in the recent evolution of economic thought. It has become more otherworldly and abstract, more detached from the reality of how economies are running deeper into debt to a financial oligarchy. The global economy itself is polarizing between creditor and debtor nations, financial core and periphery (even as the United States manages to play both sides of this street). Yet academic orthodoxy treats this as anomalous, side-stepping the two key features of today’s economic crisis: the “magic of compound interest” multiplying debts owed by the bottom 90 percent of the population to savers among the top 10 percent, while industrial capitalism is turned into a “tollbooth economy” by privatizing rent-extracting privileges on what used to be the public domain.
talkingsticktv
June 05, 2009
Talk by Peter Linebaugh, Professor of History at the University of Toledo on “Magna Carta and the Commons” given March 13, 2009 at the Law of the Commons Conference at Seattle University and sponsored by the Seattle Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.
