Michael Hoexter: Naomi Klein's "Hard-Money" Ideas Undermine Her Laudable Climate Action Goals

From Yves Smith, there is a repost of Michael Hoexter: Naomi Klein’s “Hard-Money” Ideas Undermine Her Laudable Climate Action Goals which is a review of This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate (TCE).

Hoexter derides Klein's attempt to use the profits from the Carbon-extraction industries (Coal, Oil, Gas, etc):

Of course, this is well-meaning economic freestyling on a number of different levels made to serve Klein’s, all-too-typical Left and liberal, preference to reduce economics to a simple morality play of victimizers and victims. For one, even within the terms of Klein’s stated policy preferences, Klein skims over that what she is proposing is akin to a complicated carbon tax, though Klein seems to think that this will be simply a matter of “taking” the fossil fuel industries’ ill-gotten gains as punishment. Klein seems to believe that fossil fuel companies will still continue to exist and function to a degree, generating profit and revenues, to in turn supply the money for climate action. In reality, not only would there be legal complexities in terms of corporate accounting and governance associated with such government actions but also the economic behavior of these companies and the fossil fuel sector overall after such fining or taxing is not explained in TCE.

Hoexter is correct in saying that a correct understanding of the role of money in the social-political system is essential for effective political action. This is why Marxist theory (which he also derides) is essential for the growing of the political consciousness of the working class.

This is not an issue to be left to our “betters”. We have to spend the time and effort really understand what Marx was writing about when he described the laws of motion for Capitalism.

My understanding of money is that it is a commodity just like any other. Its value derives from what be exchanged for it. This seems to be in contrast to the fiat currency view expressed by Hoexter.

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The Rojava revolution's radical democracy

A brief interview with Saleh Muslim Mohamed about The Rojava revolution's radical democracy is posted in Links magazine.

We have, in essence, developed a democracy without the state. That is a unique alternative in a region plagued by the internally conflicted Free Syrian Army, the Assad regime and the self-proclaimed Islamic State.

Another way of referring to this concept of democratic confederalism or democratic autonomy is radical democracy: to mobilise people to organise themselves and to defend themselves by means of peoples armies like the Peoples Defence Units (YPG) and Women's Defence Units (YPJ). We are practicing this model of self-rule and self-organisation without the state as we speak. Other people will speak of self-rule in theory, but for us, this search for self-rule is our daily revolution. Women, men, all strands of our society are now organised. The reason why Kobane still stands is because we have built these structures.

This is a different kind of Democracy:

Democratic autonomy is about the long term. It is about people understanding and exercising their rights. To get society to become politicised: that is the core of building democratic autonomy. In Europe you will find a society that is not politicised. Political parties are only about persuasion and individual benefits, not about actual emancipation and politicisation. Real democracy is based on a politicised society.

Emphasis Mine

For a Socialist Revolution to occur, the workers must be sufficiently polticised. They must that what happens in their daily lives in a political context.

This is very difficult to do in a society where politics is disparaged and derided. Political consciousness is vital to a healthy society. One can not delegate decisions about one's life to others.

And people should realise that all of our social interactions are mediated by politics. How we see and feel about the world influences what we do in the world.

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Michael Hudson: Putin's Pivot to Asia

Yves Smith comments on Michael Hudson: Putin’s Pivot to Asia.

Michael Hudson says that:

The most important way in which they’re coming together is reflected in Mr. Putin’s announcement that Russia is setting up its own bank clearing house system independent of the so-called SWIFT system. When you transfer funds from one bank to another, or when any bank uses U.S. dollars, it has to go through the SWIFT clearing house system in the United States.

Right now the only country that’s not part of this is Iran. To Russia, this has tipped America’s hand. It showed that what U.S. Cold Warriors really want is to break up Russia and China, and to interrupt their financial and banking services to disorient their economies. So Russia, China and Iran — and presumably other Asian countries — are now moving to establish their own currency clearing systems. To be independent of the SWIFT system and the U.S. dollar, Russia and China are denominating their trade and investments in rubles and yuan instead of the dollar. So what you’ve seen in the last few days in Beijing is a rejection of the dollar standard, and a rejection of American foreign policy behind it.

Emphasis Mine

The actions of the Capitalist State are designed to protect their own Capitalists. In the fierce competition between Capitalists, the politcal reality shapes the economic sphere.

The SWIFT system was originally conceived as a neutral entity. However, the interests of US Capitalists have undermined this neutrality by turning it into a political weapon against the official enemies.

It is this politicisation of the SWIFT system that has prompted the emergence of an economic competitor, not purely economic considerations. Here we the example of how politics and economic decisions are intertwined.

This will not change under a Socialist or Communist system. Then, the political decisions will, openly, drive the economic decisions.

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Tony Abbott refuses to order Royal Commission into Commonwealth Bank

Jim McIlroy writes that Tony Abbott refuses to order Royal Commission into Commonwealth Bank …despite the clear recommendation of a landmark Senate inquiry into financial planning scandals at the CBA.

Susan Price, Socialist Alliance candidate for the seat of Summer Hill in the upcoming NSW state elections, said, "This scandal underlines the importance of the Socialist Alliance's call for the big banks to be nationalised under workers' and community control.

"Australia's Big Four banks are making massive profits from ripping off the people, while facing minimal public scrutiny. The CBA was a publicly-owned bank, until the Hawke-Keating Labor government privatised it in the early 1990s.

"We need to campaign for the CBA and other big banks to be placed in public hands, and to be run in the interests of the people. Any profits could be used to help fund education, health and public transport — not pouring into the pockets of the super-rich as they are now," Price said.

This objective will not be achieved outside of a Socialist Revolution, but it has value in raising people's consciousness about considering the limitations of Capitalism in providing social benefit.

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Hedges and Wolin on How New-Style Propagandizing Promotes Inverted Totalitarianism

Yves Smith comments on Hedges and Wolin on How New-Style Propagandizing Promotes Inverted Totalitarianism.

Younger readers may not recognize how radical the transformation of public discourse has been over the last 40 years. While there were always intellectuals who were largely above consuming much mass media, as well as political groups on the far right and left that also largely rejected it, in the 1960s and well into the 1980s, mass media shaped political discourse. … Local newspapers were much more influential in their markets then than now, but they seldom deviated much from the national middle of the road, pro-middle class sentiment. The sort of fragmentation that this interview mentions is in part a result of the Karl Rove strategy of focusing on hot-button interests of narrowly-sliced interest groups, along with media fragmentation which has made it easier to target, as in isolate, them.

Emphasis Mine

The “Inverted Totalitarianism” refers to controls on the foreign populations, rather than the domestic one.

Fragmentation of the subject classes has always been in place for class societies. This fragmentation has taken the form of racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and the like.

And in any class society, the lower classes have to be kept in line through a combination of force and propaganda. The ratio changes depending on need.

I think this piece is a reaction to the narrowing of the elite through the economic crises of the past twenty (20) years. The controlling class is being shed as no longer necessary. And former members want to return to the good old days (for them).

Maybe, they should realise that their interests lie with the workers now, not the Capitalists. They should shape their political consciousness appropriately.

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Encroaching Tides (2014)

Union of Concerned Scientists warn about Encroaching Tides (2014).

By 2045, many coastal communities are expected to see roughly one foot of sea level rise. The resulting increases in tidal flooding will be substantial and nearly universal in the 52 communities analyzed.

One-third of the 52 locations would face tidal flooding more than 180 times per year. Nine locations, including Atlantic City and Cape May, New Jersey could see tidal flooding 240 times or more per year.

A growing proportion of these floods would be extensive, and as floods reach farther into communities, they would also last longer. Flood-prone areas in five of the mid-Atlantic communities studied could be inundated more than 10 percent of the time.

All because of Climate Change!

Most of these communities would have to be abandoned by the time babies born today are having their own babies.

And it is too late to stop this sea-level rise. What we urgently need to do is to stop it from getting much worse.

Denial is not going stop people from losing their homes and communities.

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If Germany Drops Coal, can the Industry Survive?

Jake Richardson asks If Germany Drops Coal, can the Industry Survive?

Germany is looking into cutting its use of coal power, at the same time that it is cutting out nuclear. If it does, there could be a ripple effect because Germany is a major player in the European energy market. A Berlin-based journalist said that Germany’s emphasis on renewables is already impacting electricity markets in Poland and the Czech Republic. (Denmark is also exploring how it might go coal-free, but even sooner.)

Germany is also phasing out nuclear power in favour of renewable energy. However, the biggest challenge to a 100% renewable energy generation is the storage of energy:

One advantage of solar and wind power is that it doesn’t take as long to construct these kinds of renewable plants. Energy storage for renewables is not close to catching up to renewable electricity production, but it does seem to be picking up some steam, so to speak.

But, in Australia, we going in the reverse direction thanks to the Conservative government. Gains are being wound back in favour of coal.

This is a consequence of having a Capitalist system: profit trumps survival everytime!

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Wall Street gets what it wants

Seth Godin bemoans the idea that Wall Street gets what it wants.

Wall Street thinks it wants industrial-style reliable incremental growth, the stuff they got accustomed to getting from General Electric, General Mills and General Dynamic. But in fact, what they invested in this time is changing the world.

The world is going to change with or without this public company. It's bumpy for us along the way, though, because we trusted the companies that are now owned by people who want something else.

Godin forgets that Capitalism has its own laws of motion. One of those laws is reproduction of Capital. Capital has to be reproduced through profits. And Capital will go where it can reproduce the fastest.

The individual Capitalist is a slave to this law. If they do not follow the law, they will be extinguished as a Capitalist.

Godin can gush all he wants about the new economy, but Capitalism has to alienate the worker from the product of their labour in order to function. The mechanisation of work is an imperative either through rote or automation.

Godin's vision cannot be obtained until the workers wrest control of the means of production from the Capitalists. In other words, the workers have to push through a Socialist Revolution.

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Understanding and Overcoming America's Plutocracy

Jeffrey Sachs opines about Understanding and Overcoming America's Plutocracy.

Despite the results of the recent mid-term elections in the USA, Sachs writes that:

The evidence is overwhelming that politicians vote the interests of their donors, not of society at large. This has now been demonstrated rigorously by many researchers, most notably Princeton Professor Martin Gilens. Whether the Republicans or Democrats are in office, the results are little different. The interests at the top of the income distribution will prevail.

Emphasis Mine

Sachs is beguiled by the illusion that the Capitalist State can be bent to the will of the people, even though he has evidence clearly before him that it serves the interests of the Capitalists. Thus, he moans about the recent trend of politics in the USA.

Sachs hopes that the people will rescue the Capitalist State from itself:

Is there a way out? Yes, but it's a very tough path. Plutocracy has a way of spreading like an epidemic until democracy itself is abandoned. History shows the wreckage of democracies killed from within. And yet America has rallied in the past to push democratic reforms, notably in the Progressive Era from 1890-1914, the New Deal from 1933-1940, and the Great Society from 1961-1969.

All of these transformative successes required grass-roots activism, public protests and demonstrations, and eventually bold leaders, indeed drawn from the rich but with their hearts with the people: Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy. Yet in all of those cases, the mass public led and the great leaders followed the cause. This is our time and responsibility to help save democracy. The Occupy Movement and the 400,000 New Yorkers who marched for climate-change control in September are pointing the way.

Emphasis Mine

The three (3) periods cited by Sachs do, indeed, correspond to times of great radical movements: rise of radical trade-unionism (IWW, CIO); communist revolutions in Russia, Italy, Germany, Hungry, Romania; Youth Revolt and the Anti-Vietnam movement. All of these periods called into question the validity of the Capitalist system. Under such an existential threat, the Capitalist State responded by granting sufficient reforms in order to drain these movements of their momentum.

Though hugely unpopular with the ruling class, those leaders saved the system from itself. Sachs is calling for popular movements to be again subverted by the ruling class in order to save the system.

Barak Obama was supposed to be such a leader. His modest reform of affordable health care is unlikely to last as long as his presidency. He will leave no legacy. Richard Nixon left a far greater reformist legacy than Obama will leave.

Sachs has forgotten the largest mass mobilisation in history occurred in February 2003 (almost twelve (12) years ago)—ten (10) million people marched against the war in Iraq. And yet the war went ahead again.

The ruling class know that the workers are defenceless and leaderless. That is why they are so blatant in their attacks.

Until the workers expand their consciousness to see that the Capitalist system will always have it for them, these crises will continue.

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Australia: How and why the Gough Whitlam government's far-reaching reforms were won

Jim McIlroy opines about Australia: How and why the Gough Whitlam government's far-reaching reforms were won.

These reforms were the reactions to the radicalisation of the masses:

However, it is important to emphasise that the Whitlam victory occurred on the crest of a wave of popular mass struggles — most centrally the anti-Vietnam War moratoriums — and the rise of a new youth radicalisation that began on the university campuses and spread to broad layers of society from the 1960s to the early 1970s.

This upsurge also involved the new wave of women's liberation, the growing Aboriginal rights movement, the start of gay liberation and the modern environment movements. The youth revolt also challenged traditional authority roles in the family, education, morality, culture and politics.

…

In Australia, the anti-war movement grew from a small minority to a mass movement expressed in the Moratoriums of 1970 and 1971. General anti-war sentiment gradually increased to become a large majority by the time of the 1972 election.

It was in this tumultuous social context that the Whitlam Labor government came to power, carried on a huge wave of popular demand for real change.

As Capitalism has shown time and time again, it can co-opt these movements into the mainstream where they can be safely defused. Radicals are turned into reformist then into bureaucrats. From the barricades to the warrens of the bureaucracy. This has happened with the environmental, feminist, and Aboriginal radicals. They now fill in forms to get funding to keep going on. Thus, the slow grinding down of youthful vigour into middle-age malaise begins.

McIlroy writes that there are three (3) important lessons from the Whitlam Era:

First, that progressive change is possible — if we could afford free education in 1974, for instance, we surely can now.

Second, that the corporate elite will not accept any challenge to its interests, however mild. It will violate democracy to protect its interests.

And third, that the Labor Party is not an appropriate vehicle to achieve social change. Faced with a challenge to its mild reformist agenda in the mid-70s, Labor capitulated.

The problem with the ALP since its very beginnings was that it was not a party of the working-man but of a would-be petite burgeoisie. Their dream was not of an international working class, but of owning their own little business.

McIlroy concludes that:

We should remember the progressive gains from Whitlam's government, but remember they were not handed down but won by the struggles of ordinary people. And we can win them again — and more — in the future.

We now need to accelerate the vital task of building an alternative political movement to eventually challenge the status quo of big business rule, and to struggle for a socialist society.

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Fierce Entanglements require Dialogue: Israeli-Palestinian conflict rooted in their different stories about the World

Donald Ellis argues that Fierce Entanglements require Dialogue: Israeli-Palestinian conflict rooted in their different stories about the World.

The goal of conflict resolution is to moderate and bridge these incommensurate realities. Political solutions by leaders and elites, necessary as they are, do not directly redress subjugation, inequality, and oppression. Decisions that emerge from political leaders and elites become directives that are “sold” to the masses. Issues and solutions do not emerge naturally from the conflicting parties and the more resolutions reflect political accommodations and elite interests the more remote they are from the population.

The fundamental problem with this type of argument is that common ground can be achieved between the genocidists and their victims. The State of Israel wants no less than the complete obliteration of the Palestinians by whatever means necessary.

The Zionists have never accepted nor will accept a two state solution in the former British Mandate of Palestine.

The mere existence of Palestinians de-legitimises the State of Israel. They have claims that recognised under international law. They have rights due to them as human beings.

By denying Palestinians their claims and rights, the Zionists act outside of the law of nations and states.

Those with great power refuse to see the rights and claims of the powerless. This is why justice requires the overthrow of systems that permit such outrages.

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Feminism and Exclusion from Power

In Rebecca Solnit blog post, “The War Is Over (If You Want It), Feminism and Men”, she writes that:

The highest powers in the country [USA] have begun calling on men to take responsibility not only for their own conduct, but for that of the men around them, to be agents of change.

In my initial assessment of this post, I disagreed by writing that:

This war can not be won by participating in the current power structure because misogyny is the key to power. In order to have power in a Capitalist, one must be a misogynist. Becoming a feminist excludes one from power.

This is because of the fundamental authoritarianism of male culture: violence. Women see the direct violence violence through rape, murder, domestic violence, pornography, sexual harassment, office politics, slurs, glances. But there is also the hidden violence under which men live their lives.

Violence among males starts early with bullying, abuse, punishment, masculinisation. This is mainly violence for violence's sake. The message is that you can be hurt no matter what you do or say. It is important to know that violence can be inflicted and you are powerless to stop it.

Indeed, during my school years, corporal punishment was seen as a way of taming the wild beasts that we boys were seen as. This could be administered by almost anyone: parents, elder siblings, teachers, police, priests, nuns, and even total strangers. It was okay as long as there was seen to be taming the wildness or beastliness of the boys.

Looking back now, the degree of beastliness seemed to be determined by class and ethnicity. Aboriginal boys got the worst no matter how well behaved they were. And their parents believed that they deserved it. No wonder the boys turned into men with no belief in decency or society. They had been beaten into beasts.

We, of the lower orders and paler complexions, fared somewhat better. Yet, we were turned into beats. I know of two (2) boys from my youth who murdered their fathers. There was always a tension within the neighbourhood about there would be one beating too far, and an orgy of violence would erupt.

This is the sheer terror of living in a violence-saturated world. One small mistake could be your last. So, you become cautious and predictable.

And this leads to the problem of alcohol during our adolescence: the reactions are intensified and the violence becomes deadly. Mistakes are truly fatal.

Yet, this problem of hidden violence does not disappear in adulthood. I am still threatened with rape or serious injury if I get too uppity. I am more adept at avoiding it. It is a part of my life.

What can I do about it? One thing I could do is join the power structure. I could become a dispenser of violence. This would take the edge off being a victim.

And I would be rewarded for doing so. I get access to more social status, more power, more credibility, more money, more sex, and better health.

So, why don't I? If I did, I would have to become someone I truly hate. I remember almost all of that abuse I suffered. I hate the perpetrators for doing that. I understand why they did it—they were trying to survive. It was them or me. Sensibly, they chose me.

In order to be a male feminist, one has to stand outside of the power structure and be seen as being weak. Therefore one becomes a target.

Those in power are not going to seriously weaken the basis of their power. It is up to we outsiders to do that for them.

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The War Is Over (If You Want It), Feminism and Men

Rebecca Solnit argues strongly that The War Is Over (If You Want It), Feminism and Men.

The situation as it has long existed needs to be described bluntly. Let's just say that a significant number of men hate women, whether it's the stranger harassed in the street, the Twitter user threatened into silence online, or the wife who's beaten. Some men believe they are entitled to humiliate, punish, silence, violate, and even annihilate women. As a consequence, women face a startling amount of everyday violence and an atmosphere of menace, as well as a host of smaller insults and aggressions meant to keep us down. It's not surprising, then, that the Southern Poverty Law Center classifies some men's rights groups as hate groups.

In this context, consider what we mean by rape culture. It's hate. Those sports-team and fraternity rapes, the ones that sometimes result in young men swapping phone videos that they never seem to recognize as evidence of felonies, are predicated on the idea that violating the rights, dignity, and body of another human being is a cool thing to do. Such group acts are based on a predatory-monster notion of what masculinity is, one to which many men don't subscribe but that affects us all. It's also a problem that men are capable of rectifying in ways women are not.

Emphasis Mine

Here is where the real time War on Terror should be waged. It should be waged against the terrorism that afflicts women everyday and every hour of the day. Terror forms their lives.

This war can not be won by participating in the current power structure because misogyny is the key to power. In order to have power in a Capitalist, one must be a misogynist. Becoming a feminist excludes one from power.

We must change the system to overcome this misogyny. An inclusive political system is the basis for an anti-rape culture.

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Israel's Gaza defeat a sign of Palestinian strength

Raul Bassi writes that Israel's Gaza defeat a sign of Palestinian strength.

Israel's July-August war on Gaza, under the pretext of Operation Protective Edge to counter Palestinian rocket fire, demonstrated why it will never defeat the Palestinian resistance.

As in Vietnam, the resistance in Gaza has to resort to war in the tunnels. This tactic is dictated by the overwhelming superiority of the occupying forces and the technical capabilities of the indigenous people.

Egypt is not North Vietnam nor China in this analogy. But the Gazans appear to be able to get sufficient support via the ordinary Egyptian and other Arabs in order to keep the tunnel networks open and operational.

I imagine that the Israeli offensive has exposed the blind-spots of their intelligence services because Hamas knows which tunnels were not discovered during the offensive. This will prove vital during the next Israeli offensive. And the one after that.

With each battle, Israel is slowly losing the war because Hamas learns more and more about the deficiencies of the IDF and associated intelligence services.

Hamas's popularity is based on the fact it has to date proven to be a useful instrument of resistance.

Israel may be able to kill large numbers of people, inflict tactical defeats, weaken Hamas' military capacity and destroy Palestinian infrastructure. But they will never be able to defeat the Palestinian peoples' resistance to colonial occupation.

After nearly seventy (70) years, it would have been obvious that the solution to the Palestinian problem for Israel is a political one. But is not easy for colonial powers to understand this. It took England 400 years to leave most of Ireland.

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Take Kurdish freedom fighters off terrorist list

Sue bolton says “Take Kurdish freedom fighters off terrorist list”.

There are two reasons to support the Kurds of Kobane. One reason is humanitarian: to prevent a massacre. The other reason is to protect and defend the building of an alternative society which should be a beacon for all left and progressive people in the world.

Unfortunately for the Kurds, their unacknowledged homeland, Kurdistan, is occuppied by four other states:

1. Iran
2. Iraq
3. Syria
4. Turkey

Turkey has been waging genocide against the Kurds. This is largely unreported in the West unless there is a terrorist attack in Istanbul.

Because Turkey is an important NATO ally (US client), this is tolerated in the West. Genocide is only wrong if it is done by official enemies. And since before 9/11, the PKK has classified as a terrorist even as it tries to defend against the genocidal attacks of the Turkish state.

This level of oppression calls for a new and substainable society in which everyone participates. This leads to progressive measures in governance and social norms:

The Kurds in Syria are building a society that should be a model for the Middle East — a society where the rights of minority religions and minority ethnic groups are protected, and where there is a revolution in women's rights. The US doesn't want to support the Kurds in Rojava because it is using sectarianism to keep compliant governments in power in various countries in the Middle East.

Once again, we see Capitalism relying on divise means to maintain power.

Bolton lists the demands of the Socialist Alliance as:

• Arms for the defenders of Kobane.
• Opening the border with Turkey and an aid corridor for Kurds.
• End Turkish support for IS.
• Remove the PKK from Australian terrorist list: they are freedom fighters not terrorists

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Video gamers on the feminist frontline

Jemma Nott writes that Video gamers on the feminist frontlines.

A fierce debate over women’s participation in video game culture has erupted online. Known as “GamerGate”, it is a battle over power and sexism in video games.

Women now represent nearly half of those who play video games, and the traditional gamer identity is being challenged. The problem of sexism in video games is part of a wider problem of misogyny in society, and in the same way misogyny is being confronted in parliament or at universities, it is also being confronted in gaming.

The women critics have been threatened with rape and death, but not the men critics. This is the same traditional response of all patriarchal societies to threats—whether in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sudan, Nigeria, DRC, UK, USA, etc.

What is lost is that GamerGate is just a widely publicised version of something that has been happening since feminism began — patriarchal society feeling threatened by the concept of cultural equality.

Men have been given a small space to rule over as compensation for loss of power in the rest of their lives: workplace, politics, culture. Like a rat defending their last bit of rotting cheese, men will fight tooth and claw to defend that rather than go after the big cheese in the elite's fridge. It is safer to do so.

We need to overcome what divides us as workers (racism, sexism, homophobia) before we can concentrate on overthrowing Capitalism. Capitalism needs sexism in order to survive.

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Evolution is real and God is no wizard, says Pope Francis

Evolution is real and God is no wizard, says Pope Francis. But this evolution is theistic rather than atheistic.

The type of evolutionary theory the Catholic Church espouses is teleological with Homo Sapiens as the end-product of a pre-determined process. But this is really nonsense given the catastrophes that life on Earth had to survive: asteroids, climate change, ice ages, super-volcanoes, Oxygen. Humans were reduced to about 2,000 to 10,000 individuals during the Stone Age. It was probably luck just we got through this at all.

What is more interesting is the tail-end of the article:

Pope Francis also delivered an off-the-cuff, mini-encyclical on the rights of the poor, the injustices of unemployment, and the need for environmental protection on Tuesday, saying he's not preaching communism but the Gospel.

He said the poor need land, a roof over their head and work, and said he knew well that "if I talk about this, some will think that the pope is communist".

"They don't understand that love for the poor is at the centre of the Gospel," he said. "Demanding this isn't unusual, it's the social doctrine of the church."

Francis' remarks to the World Meeting of Popular Movements, delivered in his native Spanish, ran for more than six pages, single-spaced.

Francis has already been branded a Marxist by conservative US commentators for his unbridled criticism of capitalist excesses, for his demand that governments redistribute social benefits to the needy, and his call for the church to be a "poor church, for the poor".

This sharpening of the divide between the interests of the Capitalists and the workers has forced the Catholic Church to side with the interests of the workers. But this does not mean that the Church espouses Socialism or Communism. These are still anathema.

The decay of the Capitalist superstructure means that the interests of the workers can be accomodated through reformist politics. Harsh choices have to be made about what people support: Capitalists or workers. There is no longer a middle ground—only the extremes.

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Artificial Billionaires: Regimes' Crony Capitalism Stifling Middle East

The World Bank sees there is a problem with the wrong type of state involvement in the economy—Artificial Billionaires: Regimes’ Crony Capitalism Stifling Middle East.

Contributors at Informed Comment write that:

The “privileges” referred to in the report are the many old policies that continue to protect the business interests of entrenched elites. The report shows the extent to which these policies—designed to prevent or deter competitors while allowing elites to make easy money or “to earn rents”—distort the natural workings of economies in which businesses either grow and become more productive, or exit the market. In this environment, political connections are more important for success than innovative spirit.

Emphasis Mine

In the view of the Capitalists, the state is supposed to defend their class interests against the workers, not favour one faction of Capitalists over another.

Despite what is happening elsewhere as Europe blunders towards new recession, the contributors maintain that Capitalism needs only be set free in order for it to work properly:

Only by removing the type of privileges described in this report can the region move toward the level of job creation it needs. The report shows that promoting open markets and competition, and leveling the playing field, will provide an environment conducive to entrepreneurship and the emergence of dynamic firms. Reforms initiated transparently would make sure citizens are aware of what their governments are doing and can provide input into policymaking.

This proves that Capitalism has exhausted its intellectual vigour. Capitalists have become zombies shuffling mindlessly around while muttering “Reforms! Reforms!”.

Workers should realise that only a worker-lead and controlled government can overcome the malaise in investment and create an economy that benefits the workers over the Capitalists.

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Europe blunders towards new recession

Dick Nichols writes that Europe blunders towards new recession.

The main cause of the possible new recession in Europe is due to the fundamental problem of Capitalism:

The root cause is the lack of profitable investment opportunities in production, even as big capital is nearly drowning in retained earnings.

The Europe-wide shortfall in demand arising from the investment slump is also confirmed by the continuing decline in the annual EU inflation rate. It fell to a new low of 0.4% in September and was zero or negative in four of the crisis-hit countries of the “periphery” — Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy.

The IMF has proposed a Keynesian response of using the very low interest rates to fund public works:

The evidence of the costs of stagnant investment has now become so strong that IMF chief economist Oliver Blanchard has called on Germany to take advantage of its very low borrowing costs to raise its deficit and fund public investment in infrastructure.

Since Germany is so intransigently pro-business in pushing for lower public debt, lower wages, and lower taxes, the only real hope for Greece is for strong left-wing government action:

By the same token, however, if a Syriza government can force through its program of radical debt renegotiation, higher working-class incomes and greater public investment funded by higher taxes on the rich, then the start of the only possible road out of austerity will become visible.

The lessons of the last two hundred years of Capitalism are still being ignored. The Capitalists are only interested in protecting their capital. And the state protects the Capitalists. The sooner the workers wake up to this, the sooner they can start exploring alternatives to Capitalism.

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Now the economists complain we're not shopping enough

Here

Peter Boyle writes that Now the economists complain we're not shopping enough.

Boyle quotes Nick Hanauer from his essay “The Pitchforks Are Coming… For Us Plutocrats”:

The thing about us businesspeople is that we love our customers rich and our employees poor. So for as long as there has been capitalism, capitalists have said the same thing about any effort to raise wages.

This highlights the fundamental cause of crises in Capitalism: underconsumption. The workers can only buy commodities with money they earn through labour. It is possible in the short-term for credit to be used to fill the gap, but as was seen in the GFC, this only delays the inevitable.

Hanauer concludes that:

If we don't do something to fix the glaring inequities in this economy, the pitchforks are going to come for us. No society can sustain this kind of rising inequality. In fact, there is no example in human history where wealth accumulated like this and the pitchforks didn't eventually come out. You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising. There are no counterexamples. None. It's not if, it's when

Although this is welcome, the revolt could more likely end as a Fascist state because of the low political consciousness of the workers.

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