GLW: Who's to blame for Australia's domestic violence crisis?

Liah Lazarou asks Who's to blame for Australia's domestic violence crisis?.

The money exists to fund the kinds of services and programs necessary to enact the changes we desperately need. Imagine if the tens of millions of dollars allocated each day for military expenditure was redirected to vital services such as health centres, rape crisis centres, women's refuges and counselling, education, training and employment services for all women and their dependents.

Or if Australia's biggest corporations were taxed in such a way that a portion of the billions of dollars of profits they make each year had to be spent on public and community education.

Domestic violence is not incidental: it is built into a class system that profits and maintains itself through women's oppression and exploitation. Addressing the underlying cause of violence against women requires ending sexism and gender inequality.

We need a feminism that fights for programs and services to help women survive right now, at the same time as it fights the structures which perpetuate sexism and gender inequality.

Emphasis Mine

Capitalism is a violent system as any system that is based upon exploitation, has to be. Slavery was violent: Feudalism was violent.

The Capitalist's excuse is that humans are naturally violent and greedy, and the system has to accommodate these traits.

But as human beings, we have the ability to transcend our base selves and create a better society. Do we dare to do so, or just accept the current situation?

Read more!

Chris Dillow: Markets need Marxism

Chris Dillow explains why Markets need Marxism.

All this poses the question. Why, then, haven't we seen state help to create what Robert Shiller has called financial democracy?

It's certainly not because of a commitment to laissez-faire: the massive implicit subsidy to banks tells us that the state is very happy to intervene in the financial system.

Instead, the answer was pointed out by Marx: the state serves the interests of capitalists, not the people. And financial capital would rather financial markets consisted of rent-seeking than of enhancing aggregate welfare. Crony capitalism has encouraged  financialization (pdf), not financial democracy.

In this sense, a well-functioning market economy requires that the state be freed from the grip of capitalists. In some respects it is capitalism that is the enemy of a market economy, and Marxism that is its friend.

Emphasis Mine

The question of whether markets should be retained under Socialism is a vexed one. Some Marxists think markets are a panacea for the distribution problem for the industrialized world. Others think that centralized planning does away with markets altogether.

Read more!

Chris Dillow: Tax credits: the Bubble's failures

Chris Dillows examines Tax credits: the Bubble's failures.

[George Osborne] failed to see that big political change requires more than bums on seats in Whitehall. It rests upon broader social conditions. The Bubble, with its focus upon Westminster, under-estimates this fact. In this sense, some Corbynistas—who see that there's much more to politics than Westminster—know something the Bubble is keen to deny.

Emphasis Mine

The Capitalists are very keen for everyone to focus their political energies upon the bourgeoisie parliamentary system as the only true democratic institution. The Reformists fervently believe this.

However, political power is derived from the realisation of economic power, and is enforced and defended by the state.

Capitalists and Reformers are both very afraid of street and work-place mobilisations because the ensuring political discourse cannot be controlled to the benefit of the Capitalists. These mobilisations are either disarmed through appeal to reform, or suppressed by the state.

Yet, from these mobilisations, the revolutionary movement is built. It is when ordinary people understand politics as existing outside of parliament that revolutionary consciousness begins to grow.

Read more!

Noah Smith: Racial bias in police killings

Noah Smith has a hypothesis about Racial bias in police killings.

Let me offer an explanation I see as more likely: Cops often tend to shoot (or otherwise brutalize) people not out of fear, but out of wrath.

My hypothesis goes like this. Cops pull out their guns and their nightsticks when they see suspects as having challenged their authority. They are determined to maintain power and control at all costs (i.e., South Park nailed it). Black people are more commonly seen as challenging cops' authority, probably because a lot of black people grew up in a state of relative anarchy and therefore lack other people's conditioned response of instant meek submission to police.

This seems to be exactly what happened with Eric Garner. He wasn't threatening at all; he's obviously a big teddy bear, he doesn't have any weapon, and he wasn't making any move to attack anyone. But he's an insubordinate teddy bear, who thinks he can reason his way out of an unfair arrest. So the cops grab him and choke him to death.

It also explains why so many suspects get shot in the back. For example, Walter Scott. A man who's running away is not a threat. He is not a source of fear. He is, however, flouting authority. Same with Samuel Dubose. Type "police shoot black man" in Google, and "police shoot black man in the back" is one of the first results that come up.

Here the police shoot a black guy in a wheelchair.

This psychologically plausible hypothesis is also parsimonious, because it allows police racism to explain both racial profiling and excess unjustified brutalization of black people. It also implies that in areas with entrenched racial conflict—say, the South—white police will be more likely to kill black people, because they view blacks as socially subordinate (hence any backtalk or resistance will be seen as more unacceptable if it comes from a black person than if it comes from a white person). So that would be an interesting test.

Emphasis Mine

In Australia, the legacy of the frontier wars is an element in the resistance by Aborigines and the brutal oppression they suffer.

As is happening in Israel now, racial oppression engenders resistance, both non-violent and violent. Both forms are treated the same way because they challenge the authority of the state.

Remember that the state exists to oppress the non-ruling classes—whether they are slaves, serfs, or workers. This is why the Capitalist state can never be captured; it can only be destroyed.

Read more!

Chris Dillow: Technical change as collective action problem

Chris Dillow sees Technical change as collective action problem.

In these ways, capitalism is a form of collective action problem. We can imagine a society in which super-machines do indeed allow us all to live in luxurious leisure. But the decentralized decisions of capitalists might not get us there.

Granted, sensible aggregate demand policies might suffice to overcome realization crises — though the believe that such policies will be enacted is a form of what I've called centrist utopianism. But the other obstacle to investment and growth — the fear of future technical change — might not be so easily soluble within the confines of capitalism.

These issues are, of course, unresolved. What is clear, though, is that Marxism presents a useful perspective upon them.

Emphasis Mine

This is a very difficult problem for workers in general. They see their jobs as means of getting sustenance. We need to see our jobs as contributing to the well-being and advancement of society.

This change of focus must be part of the growing consciousness of workers. Without it, we will be forever enslaved to the Capitalists who oppress us into ever-meaningless and demeaning forms of employment.

Read more!