Mark Thoma: Paul Krugman and 'Challenging the Oligarchy'

Mark Thoma excerpts from Paul Krugman 'Challenging the Oligarchy'.

The Work of Nations was in some ways a groundbreaking work, because it focused squarely on the issue of rising inequality—an issue some economists, myself included, were already taking seriously, but that was not yet central to political discourse. Reich’s book saw inequality largely as a technical problem, with a technocratic, win-win solution. That was then. These days, Reich offers a much darker vision, and what is in effect a call for class war—or if you like, for an uprising of workers against the quiet class war that America’s oligarchy has been waging for decades. …

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Fuck off! Why should workers defend Capitalism? Krugman and Reich are wankers. Workers should smash Capitalism into the ground and grind it under their feet!

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Juan Cole: Abortion Clinics, White Christian Terrorism and GOP Candidates

Juan Cole writes about Abortion Clinics, White Christian Terrorism and GOP Candidates.

Americans are more at risk from violence by armed white Christian fanatics than they ever were from Muslims.

…

Deploying violence against people to halt abortions is the textbook definition of terrorism, which in the 1990s the Federal Code sensibly defined as non-state actors using violence against civilians to achieve a political aim. Much violence and coercion at Planned Parenthood (only 3% of its activity has to do with abortion) is inspired by Christian fundamentalism.

On this point, Christian ultra-conservativism agrees with the point of view of the Malik school of law among Muslims. In essence, Christian terrorists are attempting to move the United States on the below map away from a modern European norm, where abortion is elective up to a certain point in pregnancy, to an Afro-Asian and Maliki Muslim norm where it is often forbidden except to save the mother’s life (or not even then).

…

The same Christian fundamentalists who fulminate most loudly against “sharia law” (medieval Muslim canon law) are perfectly happy to impose their own, Christian sharia on secular American society. Some of them are willing to deploy violence to that end, making them religious terrorists. But on this issue, there increasingly isn’t much difference between the American Republican Party and the Wahhabi clerics in their Riyadh madrasas. In both cases, religious, theological doctrines are being made the basis of public law, which is un-American and actually unconstitutional (the First Amendment refers to that as Establishment of religion, which it forbids).

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The Capitalists desire control and are willing to align themselves with those who are willing and able to exercise control on their behalf. Class warfare is brutal, and the Capitalists want brutal people to keep Capitalism going.

This is where Fascism keeps coming up. It is the iron fist ready to smash any in-roads into the profitability of big business. Although Fascism starts out as a protest against the ravages of Capitalism on the petite bourgeoise, it morphs into a rabid defender of Capitalism because it cannot conceive of an alternative economic system. It just wants to get the wrong people out of running Capitalism.

Thus, the media supports White Terrorism by treating it differently. This is because the White Terrorists are aligned to the political agenda of the Capitalists. As such they are not fighting the system, they are preventing the system from falling into the wrong hands.

Cole also lists Top Ten differences between White Terrorists and Others

5. White terrorists are part of a “fringe.” Other terrorists are apparently mainstream.

6. White terrorists are random events, like tornadoes. Other terrorists are long-running conspiracies.

7. White terrorists are never called “white.” But other terrorists are given ethnic affiliations.

8. Nobody thinks white terrorists are typical of white people. But other terrorists are considered paragons of their societies.

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And this is how the media continues to construct racism, and to convince people that the victims of terrorism are actually terrorists. This then reinforces the racism of the proto-Fascists and eventually turns abstract racism into concrete racism.

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Ted Rall: Corporate News Media: Don't Vote for Trump's Racist Lies, Vote for Someone Else's Racist Lies

Ted Rall writes that Corporate News Media: Don’t Vote for Trump’s Racist Lies, Vote for Someone Else’s Racist Lies.

The third problem with the “Trump bad” narrative is that, getting rid of a toxic strain in politics requires pumping up its alternative. This, the Times and other corporate media outlets never do.

There are hundreds of American newspapers. Not a single one ever runs an opinion essay by a communist, much less hires one as a columnist. Given that 11% of Americans are communist, 11% of published opinions should be pro-communist — and would be, if we had a free press.

There are hundreds of major broadcast and online news and politics outlets. None employ a self-identified socialist. 36% of Americans are socialist.

Communists, socialists and anarchists are the only major ideologies unequivocally opposed to the racist and Latinophobic and Islamophobic garbage Trump (and most other Republican candidates, and some Democrats) are spewing. Anyone who is serious about taking on this crap must support the real left.

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Rall is mistaking a positive view of something as being an active supporter of it. Having a favourable view of Socialism does not make one a Socialist.

The reason that Communists, socialists and anarchists are…unequivocally opposed to the racist and Latinophobic and Islamophobic garbage is that we want to build an inclusive society that is richer and fairer for all of us. We do this because of where we want to end up.

Rall forgets Malcolm X's dictum:

You cannot have Capitalism without Racism.

If yoy want to get rid of racism, you have to get rid of Capitalism.

This causes real agnst for liberals as they want to keep Capitalism, but do not want the rancidness of Racism permeating their nice, clean lives.

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Noah Smith: A big sweeping theory of modern history

Noah Smith describes his version of A big sweeping theory of modern history.

Here's a Big Sweeping Theory that I've been toying with. There are lots of theories of the cycle of rise and decline of empires in the agricultural, premodern world. I'd like to create a parallel theory of low-frequency cycles (or, more accurately, long-term impulse responses to stochastic technology shocks) in the modern, industrialized world.

It's possible to see the convulsions of the World Wars and the Great Depression as a one-time event — part of the growing pains of the industrial revolution, not to be repeated. But what if some of the core features of those events are actually part of a cycle? Here's a sketch of how that cycle might work:

Smith's model consists of seven (7) main phases:

1. Technological Change.
2. Globalization.
3. ?
1. Inequality.
2. Cultural Change.
3. Financialization.
4. Geopolitical Shifts.
4. Rise of Extremism.
5. Economic Slowdown.
6. War.
7. New Order.

The interesting thing is that Smith does not have an explanation for Phase 5: Economic Slowdown. Marxists do: the rate of profit declines below the necessary rate required for reproduction of Capital. In other words, Capitalists will not invest if the rate of return does not allow to get their money back within the foreseeable future. In normal times, this future is about five (5) years. In times of stress, this can drop to little as a year.

The alternative view of history is provided by Marx in which the driver of human history is class conflict. The economic organization of society creates classes which come into conflict over the distribution of the economic output. A political and ideological superstructure is created to contain this conflict. Breakdown of the system occurs when this superstructure cannot adapt fast enough to the changes in the economic organization of society.

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Mark Thoma: 'What Is Holding Back the Economy?'

Mark Thoma asks 'What Is Holding Back the Economy?'.

Not the first to say this, but the problem is that Republicans have misrepresented the causes of the distress so many households feel, in particular scapegoating those who have it even worse as somehow responsible for their problems (and the decline of America more generally). And then they sell the solutions as benefiting the middle class (trickle down anyone?) when they are really directed at reducing taxes for those at the top, and reducing the government services that people rely upon to survive in this economy to support the tax cuts.

But there is something else I'd like to note. The problem is blamed on government at all levels, and fiscal policy. We hear, when Republicans are named at all, that it is "especially" Republicans as though the balance only tilts in one direction. No, it's not especially Republicans, or even mostly Republicans that are standing in the way of doing more to help those who are struggling to make ends meet. It is Republicans. It's not congressional gridlock based upon reasonable differences over policy that cannot be resolved through compromise, it's an active attempt by one party to block anything the other party tries to do, even if it might help people economically. So long as the political benefits of this behavior — benefits based upon selling snake oil for the most part — exceed the economic costs of inaction, Republicans will stand in the way (all the while trying to convince those who are hurt the most by their actions that they will actually be helped). It's time to stop blaming "government" as though that is what is dysfunctional. The dysfunction, as evidenced by the slate of, and preferences over Republican presidential candidates, is in the Republican party. Their actions since the onset of the Great Recession have, in my view, hurt people who should have been helped, slowed the recovery, and diverted our attention from the true problems we face making it impossible to solve them (not that Republicans would have gone along with the solutions anyway). If this election tears Republicans apart and strips them of this ability to stand in the way of helping the working class, a dream I know, I will not be shedding tears. Quite the opposite.

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This is class warfare. The Capitalists are ruthlessly exploiting the Workers far more than necessary for the basic operation. This is exploitation for exploitation's sake.

With the destruction of the union movement and associated political movements, the Capitalists are rampaging unchecked taking a significant section of the working class along with them.

I do not share Thoma's tact belief that the Democratic Party is any better. They are also a Capitalist party, although less prone to rampaging.

The solution lies outside of Capitalism. This is something that nearly all workers will not consider. For them, Communism and Socialism are still evil as they think these systems prevent them from becoming rich.

The workers think they achieve a better outcome by becoming richer individuals instead of being part of a society that is richer and distributes its benefits more fairly.

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Juan Cole: Why did Turkey dare shoot down a Russian Plane? The Proxy War in Syria

Juan Cole asks Why did Turkey dare shoot down a Russian Plane? The Proxy War in Syria.

We may conclude that Russia’s targeting of Turkmen, an ethnic group that speaks a language similar to that spoken in Turkey, raised nationalist hackles in Ankara. But in addition, these Syrian Turkmen are religious, just as is the leadership of the ruling AKP in Turkey. And, further, they are a linchpin for Turkish, American and Saudi intervention in Syria, since they appear to be among the arms smugglers getting munitions to the rebels against the al-Assad government. Although the CIA maintains that these weapons only go to some 45 “vetted” groups that are not extremists, they in fact get into the hands of al-Qaeda and its allies, grouped as the Army of Conquest, as well. Russia must defeat the Army of Conquest and protect the Alawites of Latakia if it is to achieve its war aims in Syria, and appears to have decided to begin by blocking Turkmen smuggling. The Turkmen had their revenge, claiming to have killed one or both of the pilots who ejected from the downed fighter jet and also taking down a Russian helicopter that attempted to rescue them. [Update: Russia later rescued both pilots, who are actually unharmed.]

Russia and Turkey are now fighting a proxy war in Syria, and have been all this fall. As of yesterday, they are not just using proxies, but are directly in conflict with one another.

Turkey and the Turkmen are carving out a sphere of influence in northern Syria and are insisting that Russia recognize it. How severe the conflict becomes depends in part on how Russia responds to this setback for its war aims. It also depends on whether Turkish goals are more ambitious, to help the al-Qaeda-led Army of Conquest take Latakia. If Jabal Turkmen is a red line for Turkey, Latakia port is a red line for Russia. Red lines have a way of turning into hot wars.

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Turkey was able to do this because it has the backing of the USA. Any retaliation by Russia means direct conflict with the USA. An indirect way would be for Russia to overtly support Kurdish rights in Turkey. And covertly support the Kurdish militias.

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SMH: Face of Reclaim Australia rally Nathan Paterson insists: I'm not racist

Face of Reclaim Australia rally Nathan Paterson insists: I'm not racist

He insisted he was not racist, referring to his friendship with the Bangladeshi owner of the kebab shop that he frequents.

In a way, Paterson is correct. He does not hate or hurt people because of their race. He is not a racist in the concrete sense.

There is a scale of concrete racism:

1. Someone who kills a person because they are of a different race
2. Someone who assaults a person because they are of a different race
3. Someone who insults a person because they are of a different race
4. Someone who is rude to a person because they are of a different race
5. Someone who avoids a person because they are of a different race
6. Someone who hates a person because they are of a different race
7. Someone who dislikes a person because they are of a different race
8. Someone who discriminates against a person because they are of a different race
9. Someone who encourages concrete racism
10. Someone who condones concrete racism
11. Someone who protects concrete racism

Concrete racism occurs someone takes action to harm another based on their race. There is no evidence that Paterson has done any of these things, nor condone anyone doing such things.

Yet. he has a partial glimpse of the truth:

He has been trying to find Housing NSW accommodation for several months and has been told it could take more than 10 years to find the permanent two-bedroom home he would like to have so that the younger of his two sons can stay with him on weekends.

It's that struggle that has led him to believe governments - whether local, state or federal - aren't doing enough to help "everyday Australians".

"The government needs to start looking after its own people," he said.

"Newcastle council want to let some of those 12,000 Syrian refugees come to settle here, but there isn't even any housing for Australian people."

He points to the discrimination by Australian governments in the area of housing. He has the keen sense to recognize that there should be suitable housing for everyone.

Because of the government's war on the poor, he is unable to secure suitable housing. It is this scarity of housing that bringing up the abstract racism in him. The government is indirectly creating racism through housing scarity.

Yes, he is a racist in the abstract sense:

"They're all over in their countries blowing each other up, and they want to bring all that here. I say just leave them there."

Yet, how can he not feel this way when the media and government continually say the same thing? Why is he labelled a racist when he just repeats what people of importance say the same thing?

Paterson is being manipulated into becoming a racist of a deeper hue through the policies and actions of the government, and the blanket propaganda of the media.

The only hope for him to grasp the unpopular idea that everyone is a human being deserving of the same dignity and rights.

Even this simple act will be corroded by the simple fact of trying to survive in an economic and political system that is built on and needs racism.

You cannot get rid of racism by hounding people like Paterson, but through the revolutionary overthrow of Capitalism.

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Seth Godin: A reason persuasion is surprisingly difficult

Seth Godin gives A reason persuasion is surprisingly difficult.

To many people, it feels manipulative or insincere or even morally wrong to momentarily take the other person's point of view when trying to advance an argument that we already believe in.

And that's one reason why so many people claim to not like engaging in marketing. Marketing is the empathetic act of telling a story that works, that's true for the person hearing it, that stands up to scrutiny. But marketing is not about merely sharing what you, the marketer believes. It's about what we, the listener, believe.

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This is sound advice for revolutionaries. We must thoroughly understand the world that a worker inhabits.

The best way is for us to be workers ourselves and engage other workers in political discussions based on our shared experiences.

Although we tend to inflate ourselves with our supposed superior political education, we would be wasting everyone's time if we approached every political discussion as it were an internal party debate.

As Ted Rall points out in Bernie Sanders is a Socialist and So Are You:

As far as I know, Bernie hasn’t emphasized the quality of public education in his campaign. But something is, no pun intended, radically wrong when so few Americans understand basic political and economic terms — especially when they apply to the political and economic system under which they themselves live.

By global standards, Sanders’ campaign is calling for weak socialist tea. In most European countries, all colleges are free or charge nominal fees. Socialized medicine, in which your doctor is a government employee and there’s no such thing as a big for-profit hospital corporation, is the international norm. Paid leave? Obviously. And most governments recognize the importance of public infrastructure, and not relying on the private sector to provide every job.

There can only be one reason Americans don’t know this stuff: they’re idiots. Their schools made them that way as kids. Media propaganda keeps them stupid as adults.

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So, we face a populace that is intentionally crippled in political thinking. Yes, we can decry their political idiocracy. But these people are the foundations that a Socialist revolution must be built upon.

To mis-quote Donald Rumsfeld:

As you known, you go into a revolution with the people as they are, not the people you might want or wish to have at a later time.

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From Beirut to Paris - your wars are our dead: Socialist Alliance statement on terror attacks

From Beirut to Paris - your wars are our dead: Socialist Alliance statement on terror attacks.

These latest acts of terror must not be allowed to justify ongoing and new imperial wars, tougher anti-refugee and anti-immigrant laws and anti-democratic “security” laws and repression of democratic rights.

In response to the attacks in Paris, people opened their homes to the traumatised and wounded. Taxi drivers ferried people home for free. People queued to donate blood. There has been international condemnation, statements from Western leaders, including Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and a global outpouring of sympathy and symbolic acts of solidarity across the globe.

The same level of response from the West did not follow the immediate aftermath of the bombings in Beirut (often called the 'Paris of the middle east'). But people's lives matter as much in Paris as they do in Beirut or Syria or Iraq. Perhaps this latest attack in the heart of Europe has, at least, made the horror inflicted on the people of Beirut and the Middle East more difficult to ignore.

Terrorist forces such as ISIS and Al Qaeda are the products of decades of Western imperialist intervention and occupation in the Middle East. These same Western governments have been responsible for more bloodshed across the region than ISIS. In Iraq, for example, where more than half a million have been killed since the 2003 invasion and the society largely destroyed, the kind of extreme fundamentalist terror represented by ISIS was unknown prior to the invasion and occupation by the US and its allies.

At the time of the invasion of Iraq, both Western intelligence agencies and the millions of people who marched against war warned that this military intervention would only create more terror. They have been proven correct and it is the people of Paris, Beirut, Syria and Iraq who are paying the price.

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Elie Fares makes the same point in From Beirut, this is Paris: in a world that doesn’t care about Arab lives:

When my people died, no country bothered to light up its landmarks in the colors of our flag. Even Facebook didn’t bother with making sure my people were “marked safe”, trivial as it may be. So here’s your Facebook safety check: we’ve, as of now, survived all of Beirut’s terrorist attacks.

When my people died, the world was not in mourning. Their death was but an irrelevant fleck on the international news cycle, something that happens in those parts of the world.

And you know what, I’m fine with all of it. Over the past year or so, I’ve come to terms with being one of those whose lives don’t matter. I’ve come to accept it and live with it.

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The world forgets that its is the Arabs, Kurds, and Iranians who are fighting the ISIS, and who are being killed by them.

No wonder people in the Middle East have such a cynical attitude to the values espoused by the West. They think, as Gandhi did, that Western Civilization is a good idea — not a reality.

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Paul Krugman: The Heartland of Darkness

Paul Krugman looks into The Heartland of Darkness.

This new paper by Angus Deaton and Anne Case on mortality among middle-aged whites has been getting a lot of attention, and rightly so. As a number of people have pointed out, the closest parallel to America’s rising death rates — driven by poisonings, suicide, and chronic liver diseases — is the collapse in Russian life expectancy after the fall of Communism. (No, we’re not doing as badly as that, but still.) What the data look like is a society gripped by despair, with a surge of unhealthy behaviors and an epidemic of drugs, very much including alcohol.

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The US Capitalist system is so brutal that it is killing its main supporters: middle-aged, white males. This is the group that is supposed to benefit from the sexism, racism, homophobia, islamophobia, and xenophobia.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Branko Milanovic: Those Who are Left Out in the Cold

Branko Milanovic writes about Those Who are Left Out in the Cold.

But I think that it is insufficient to leave this argument at a very abstract level where one group of Americans would have a more cosmopolitan welfare function and better perception of global benefits of trade and another would be more nativist and ignorant of economics. I do not think that the real difference between the two groups has to do with welfare concerns and economic literacy but with their interests. Many rich Americans who like to point out to the benefits of globalization worldwide significantly benefited and continue to benefit from the type of globalization that has been unfolding during the past three decades. The numbers, showing their real income gains, are so well known that they need no repeating. They are large beneficiaries from this type of globalization because of their ability to play off less well-paid and more docile labor from poorer countries against the often too expensive domestic labor. They also benefit through inflows of unskilled foreign labor that keep the costs of the services they consume low. Thus rich Americans are made better off by the key forces of globalization: migration, outsourcing, cheap imports, which have also been responsible for the major reduction of worldwide poverty. Perhaps in a somewhat crude materialist fashion I think that their sudden interest in reducing worldwide poverty is just an ethical sugar-coating over their economic interests which are perfectly well served by globalization. Like every dominant class, or every beneficiary of an economic or political regime, they feel the need to situate their success within some larger whole and to explain that it is a by-product of a much grander betterment of human condition.

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Let's not forget that Capitalism has been a positive force in world economic history. The world today with its technological marvels and gigantic industrial infrastructure would not have been possible without Capitalism.

Let us also remember that Capitalism is unsustainable. It requires unlimited growth to survive. Yet we live in a finite world. Capitalism is heading for catastrophe unless we change the system.

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Chris Dillow: Conning the working-class

Chris Dillow writes about how Capitalists are Conning the working-class.

Some laboratory experiments (pdf) by Philip J. Grossman and Mana Komai have shown how strong such within-class envy can be. They show that some of the poor are willing to attack other poor people even at their own expense. They conclude:

We find strong evidence of within class envy: the rich targeting the rich and the poor targeting the poor…Within the poor community, the target of envy is usually a poorer subject whose wealth is close to the attacker; the attacker may possibly be trying to preserve his/her relative ranking.

I say all this for a reason. It's tempting for lefties to believe that people vote Tory because of "neoliberal" ideology and the right-wing media. But there might be more to it than this. Even without such propaganda, there are cognitive biases at work which undermine class solidarity. I fear some on the left underestimate this fact because of the same cognitive bias which contributed to that woman voting Tory - wishful thinking.

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Yes, the divisions within the working class are based on cognitive biases. But these biases are fostered and engendered through Capitalism.

There is no natural way these biases can be overcome except through conscious action and though on the part of the working class.

Only we can liberate ourselves. There is no magic cure to Capitalism except the revolutionary change that originates in ourselves.

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Dan Little: ABM approaches to social conflict

Dan Little discusses ABM approaches to social conflict.

Second, it is important to notice the range of factors the simulation does not consider, which theorists like Tilly would think to be crucial: quality of leadership, quality and intensity of organization, content of appeals, differential pathways of appeals, and variety of political psychologies across agents. This simulation captures several important aspects of this particular kind of collective action. But it omits a great deal of substantial factors that theorists of collective action would take to be critical elements of the dynamics of the situation.

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In other words, the discipline and cohesion of a Leninist party is vitally important in bringing about revolutionary change.

Key variables in their simulation are religious identity, demographic change, population density, the history of recent inter-group conflict, and geographical location. The action space for individuals is: move location, mobilize for violence. And their model is calibrated to real data drawn from four states in Northwest India. Their basic finding is this: "Conflict is predicted in this model where islands or peninsulas of one ethnicity are surrounded by a sea of another (Figure 2.1)."

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It is interesting to note that the two (2) major incubators of the Bolshevik Revolution were island:

• Industrial district of Vyborg near St. Petersburg
• Kronstadt Naval fortress at St. Petersburg

Their isolation was meant to contain unrest, but the isolation allowed and fostered revolutionary temperments.

All these models warrant study. They attempt to codify the behavior of individuals within geographic and social space and to work out the dynamics of interaction that result. But it is very important to recognize the limitations of these models as predictors of outcomes in specific periods and locations of unrest. These simulation models probably don't shed much light on particular episodes of contention in Egypt or Tunisia during the Arab Spring. The "qualitative" theories of contention that have been developed probably shed more light on the dynamics of contention than the simulations do at this point in their development.

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Revolutionaries should continue to study previous revolutions, and see what is applicable to the current and evolving political situation.

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Robert J. Schwendinger: "Migration, "Free" Trade and China in History"

Robert J. Schwendinger writes that "Migration, "Free" Trade and China in History".

The seeds of failure for a prosperous China Trade were being planted during the years in which western nations treated China as a semi-colony, taking as much as they could get and giving little or nothing in return. The failure was also precipitated by the nations in which Chinese nationals were exploited for their labor, but denied universal rights and protections.

The story of Commissioner Lin Tse Hsu and his destruction of the great quantity of opium in 1839 is as important to Chinese history as the Boston Tea Party is to the United States; and although Lin’s actions precipitated defeat by the Western powers, the national humiliation China and Chinese suffered for almost a century is partly responsible for the two revolutions in modern times. With an emphasis on its own needs, China will assuredly measure each petitioner for respect. That nation’s history also suggests the need to be especially aware of challenges to its sovereignty.

Emphasis Mine

So far, the successful Communist revolutions have all been based on national uprisings against colonialism:

• Russian revolution against French Imperialism
• Chinese revolution against European, American and Japanese Imperialism
• Vietnamese revolution against French and American Imperialism
• Laotian revolution against French Imperialism
• Cuban revolution against American Imperialism
• Venezuelan revolution against American Imperialism

For the nest series of Revolutions, these will have to be in Imperialist countries like Australia. Here nationalism is the natural enemy of social revolution.

This is why it is important to build anti-racism movements around land rights and refugee rights. We have to emphasis the international character of the working class.

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Edward Lambert: Is it Debt Deleveraging or the Fall in Labor Share?

Edward Lambert argues against Adair Turner: Is it Debt Deleveraging or the Fall in Labor Share?.

I look at another cause for economic sluggishness… the fall in labor share. It is not a concept so easy to accept. If you pay labor less, business should be able to grow faster right? You have lowered business costs. You have made it easier for firms to project higher profits, right?

Yet, I see the fall in labor share as a fall in effective demand, which has lowered economic potential and the social benefits in the economy. The drying up so to speak of labor share of income has caused firms to seek out profits in other channels where money is circulating. Firms are able to survive, but labor continues to suffer.

We can say that deleveraging debt and the fall in labor share both contribute to the economic sluggishness. But since Adair Turner did not talk about the fall in labor share, I will.

Emphasis Mine

This is classic Marxism: Capitalist crises are caused by over-production and under-consumption. The proletariat can only purchase with what they earn (current and/or future earnings).

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