Meditations and Molotovs – 07.31.17

 On today’s program, Vince airs Wendy Brown’s lecture, “In the Account of Neoliberalism.” Wendy Brown is Professor of Political Science at the University of California Berkeley. Her research interests include the history of political and social theory, Continental philosophy, and critical theory, together with the examination of contemporary capitalism. In her research into the problems that plague contemporary capitalism and …

ANDREW O’HEHIR – It can happen here: But has it? The 1933 scenario is no longer hypothetical

We have crossed the river of history into a new country, and there’s no way back. Now we are stumbling around, amid the gathering darkness, and trying to figure out whether anything in this alien landscape is recognizable. Will the presidency of Donald Trump — an eventuality unforeseen by anyone, including Trump himself — resemble things that have happened before? …

Paul Craig Roberts – Where are Marx and Lenin when we need them?

Marx and Lenin were ahead of their time. Marx wrote before offshoring of jobs and the financialization of the economy. Lenin presided over a communist revolution that jumped the gun by taking place in a country in which feudal elements still predominated over capitalism. In 21st century America capitalism has been unfettered from the regulations that democratized it and made …

Leonardo Boff – The Earth Will Defeat Capitalism

There is an indisputable and sad fact: capitalism as a mode of production and its political ideology, neoliberalism, are so thoroughly established globally that it seems to make any real alternative impossible.  It has in fact occupied every space and aligned almost every country to its global interests. Since society has been commercialized and turned everything, even the most sacred things, such as human organs, water and the capacity of flowers to be …

FRAN QUIGLEY – How Corporations Killed Medicine

Along the path toward the creation of a global capitalist system, some of the most significant steps were taken by the English enclosure movement. Between the 15th to 19th centuries, the rich and the powerful fenced off commonly held land and transformed it into private property. Land switched from a source of subsistence to a source of profit, and small farmers were …

Valerie Brown – Why Financial Markets Won’t Solve the Climate Crisis

t may not be polite to mention Karl Marx in America, but leading thinkers on the left think that capitalism may be the cause of climate change and that to save the planet the system needs fundamental reform. According to a new book, the profit motive drives capitalism above all other considerations. It forces us to extract everything from the planet that will …

Richard D. Wolff – Capitalism – Not China – Is to Blame for the Current Global Economic Decline

Capitalism, like a speeding train, barreled into a stone wall in 2008. Shocked and dazed, its leaders have been trying to “recover.” By that, they mean to fix the mangled tracks, reposition the locomotive and cars on those tracks and resume forward motion. No basic economic change, in their view, is needed or even considered. They see no absurdity in …

It’s the Planet Stupid!: Capitalism and The Destruction of the Commons – John Atcheson

There is a war going on right now between those who are working to protect the commons and the hard-core capitalists, who are working to privatize our economy, culture, ecology, environment and government. The stakes are high. The outcome will determine whether we live in a dystopian chaos, or a civil society; whether we preserve our natural life support system, …

Flipping the Script: Rethinking Working-Class Resistance By Henry A. Giroux

I have often thought about when that moment came in which my working class sensibility turned into a form of critical class consciousness. For most of my youth, I was defined by ruling-class types and mainstream institutions through my deficits, which amounted to not having the skills and capacities to do anything but become either a cop or firefighter. For …

Karl Marx Was Right By Chris Hedges

On Saturday at the Left Forumin New York City, Chris Hedges joined professors Richard WolffandGail Dinesto discuss why Karl Marx is essential at a time when global capitalism is collapsing. These are the remarks Hedges made to open the discussion. Karl Marx exposed the peculiar dynamics of capitalism, or what he called “the bourgeois mode of production.” He foresaw that capitalism had …