Critiques of Capitalism. Printer Friendly Page. June 4, 2014 By Steven Jonas This column is the beginning of an analysis dealing with the question, "If 'Stalin' 'Stalinism' always and solely equal 'socialism/communism' and then because of that 'socialism/communism' always equals 'bad,' why does not 'Hitler' equals capitalism equals 'bad'? " In the Western, capitalist, telling of history, "Stalin" and "Stalinism" almost invariably equal "socialism/communism," which, of course, all equal "bad. " One major experiment (forgetting about what happened in China, and perhaps with more relevance, Cuba) and that's it. The latter usually begins with something like: "of course 'Stalinism' [usually without defining what they mean by that term] was awful, the Soviet Union was a complete horror show, and we are definitely not talking about anything like that.
" For many years I have thought about what might have happened in the development of capitalism from early on. Thus the Soviet Union always operated in a hostile global environment. Submitters Bio: Bank of England governor: capitalism doomed if ethics vanish | Business. Capitalism is at risk of destroying itself unless bankers realise they have an obligation to create a fairer society, the Bank of England governor has warned. Mark Carney said bankers had operated a "heads-I-win-tails-you-lose" system.
He questioned whether traders met ethical standards and said that those who failed to meet high professional standards should face ostracism. Speaking at a City conference, the Bank's governor warned that there was a growing sense that the basic social contract at the heart of capitalism was breaking down amid rising inequality. "We simply cannot take the capitalist system, which produces such plenty and so many solutions, for granted. Prosperity requires not just investment in economic capital, but investment in social capital. " "Just as any revolution eats its children, unchecked market fundamentalism can devour the social capital essential for the long-term dynamism of capitalism itself.
"All ideologies are prone to extremes. May Day 2014 and the breakdown of world capitalism. By Nick Beams 6 May 2014 Below is the text of the speech given by Nick Beams, national secretary of the Socialist Equality Party of Australia, to the International Online May Day Rally hosted by the International Committee of the Fourth International and the World Socialist Web Site on Sunday, May 4. Six years after the eruption of the global financial crisis, workers all over the world are confronted with one indisputable fact: all the dangers they face—war and the onslaught on their jobs and social conditions—arise from the breakdown of the global capitalist system that began in September 2008. From the outset, the International Committee of the Fourth International insisted that the crisis arose from contradictions rooted in the very foundations of the capitalist system.
Those contradictions, which exploded with the outbreak of World War I in August 1914 and led to all the horrors that followed, had come to the surface once again. How has our analysis stood up? What a cruel joke! Page 2 of Article: Four Ways to Evolve Beyond Capitalism. Disaster Capitalism(image by BloGlobal) In my previous article, I explained how all of the economic problems we currently face are natural results of capitalism. From rising poverty in the midst of record-high corporate profits, polluted air and dwindling water, private prison systems that rely on mass incarceration, students going deep into debt while the government books student loan profits, foreclosures, stagnant wages, all of these economic problems can be addressed once we acknowledge our seriously flawed economic system and vow to fix it.
Now that we're having a serious conversation about capitalism, we can also have a conversation about solutions. Along with calling out flaws of capitalism, I'm proposing four solutions that would fix the most glaring problems in capitalism and blaze a new path forward for the next generation. 1. There's nothing wrong with starting a business to make and sell goods that people want to buy. 2.
Printing: Let's Make Capitalism a Dirty Word. March 6, 2014 By carl gibson 'Under the capitalist system, the majority of life for today's average American before retirement is spent pursuing profits that will never be shared with them.' Carl Gibson, RSN "Americans have literally becomes slaves to capitalism. " mmediately upon entering adulthood, Americans are forced to compete for increasingly-scarce employment. The purpose of most employment isn't to create value for society or future generations, but to create profits for a scant few executives and shareholders.
In return for all their hard work, Americans who aren't executives or shareholders are paid just enough to meet basic needs like food, clothing, and shelter. As a system predicated on the need to grow endlessly and never stagnate, capitalism is doomed to fail. Capitalism is succeeding exactly like it's supposed to all the resources and wealth are concentrating into fewer and fewer hands and corporate profits are hitting record highs every quarter. Capitalism is dead. Page 2 of Article: Global Capitalism Has Written Off The Human Race.
Source: Paul Craig Roberts (image by Illustration by LeonKuhn) Economic theory teaches that free price and profit movements ensure that capitalism produces the greatest welfare for the greatest number. Losses indicate economic activities where costs exceed the value of production, thus investment in these activities is curtailed. Profits indicate economic activities where the value of output exceeds its cost, thus investment increases. Prices indicate the relative scarcity and value of inputs and outputs, thus serving to organize production most efficiently. This theory doesn't work when the US government socializes cost and privatizes profits as it has been doing with the Federal Reserve's support of "banks too big to fail" and when a handful of financial institutions have concentrated much economic activity. Subsidized "private" banks are no different from the former publicly subsidized socialized industries of Great Britain, France, Italy, and the former communist countries.
Unfettered capitalism bad. However, unregulated capitalism is not an unalloyed good. Left alone, it is not simply a wealth-generating system. It is a wealth-concentrating system, in which the extremely rich own a vastly disproportionate amount of the wealth and exercise a disproportionate amount of political influence, with which they get steadily more wealthy and own more and more of the country. It may sound like a cliché, but the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
Americans lived through the so-called Gilded Age of unregulated capitalism from the late 19th century to the early 20th. This time was characterized by extreme poverty in the lower classes and extreme wealth in the upper. An unregulated stock market caused the Crash of 1929, Bush-era deregulation led to the economic disaster in 2009 by extension, and the Great Recession that we’re still climbing out of.
Again, capitalism is the best economic system the world has yet seen. Daniel Barden Martinez. Janet Yellen and I were taught to revere capitalism. But it's a failing system | Richard Wolff. Janet Yellen, the United States' Federal Reserve's new Chair, and I were graduate economics students around the same time at Yale University. The professor who shaped the macroeconomics we learned was James Tobin. He taught us to be Keynesian economists: that is, to accept capitalism as the sole object and focus of our studies, to celebrate it as the best possible system, and to preserve it against its own serious faults.
Keynesian economics teaches that to secure capitalism's blessings requires systematic government intervention in the workings of the economy. Yale doctorates during those years certified that we had learned how the monetary and fiscal policies offered by Keynesianism comprised the government's optimum tools of economic intervention. Central banks (in the US, this meant the Federal Reserve) would administer monetary policy. Successive Chairs of the Federal Reserve sought to manipulate the nation's monetary system to those ends, so far as possible. Rock-Star Pope at war with GOP’s Ayn Rand Capitalism - Paul B. Farrell. By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch Reuters Pope Francis waves as he arrives to lead his Wednesday general audience in Saint Peter's square at the Vatican.
SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) — Yes, Pope Francis is officially a rock star. All red flags warning Paul Ryan and GOP conservatives their extreme-right agenda is in more trouble than the low congressional poll numbers suggest. Short term, we expect conservative politicians will keep pushing their hard-right agenda. But they’re out of step with the revolution. Rock-Star Pope leading the 21st century revolution Long term, Rolling Stone is a huge warning to conservatives: “Pope Francis: The Times are A-Changin:’ Inside the pope’s gentle revolution.” Yes, inside America’s political sitcom little is heard, denial dominates. Last summer Time magazine covered his trip to the “World Youth Rally” in Brazil.
He calls for global “disorder.” Capitalism and financial speculation: root cause of all global social ills Get it? “Catholics call St. Marx Was Right: 5 Correct Predictions About Modern Capitalism | Sean McElwee. There's a lot of talk of Karl Marx in the air these days -- from Rush Limbaugh accusing Pope Francis of promoting "pure Marxism" to a Washington Times writer claiming that New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is an "unrepentant Marxist. " But few people actually understand Marx's trenchant critique of capitalism. Most people are vaguely aware of the radical economist's prediction that capitalism would inevitably be replaced by communism, but they often misunderstand why he believed this to be true. And while Marx was wrong about some things, his writings (many of which pre-date the American Civil War) accurately predicted several aspects of contemporary capitalism, from the Great Recession to the iPhone 5S in your pocket.
Here are five facts of life in 2014 that Marx's analysis of capitalism correctly predicted more than a century ago: 1. The inherently chaotic, crisis-prone nature of capitalism was a key part of Marx's writings. 2. 3. 4. 5. In Conclusion: Marx was wrong about many things. Printing: Safe Passage..., with a Big IF: A Review of Paul Craig Roberts' THE FAILURE OF LAISSEZ FAIRE CAPITALISM. February 1, 2014 By Gary Corseri Economics may be the "gloomy science" for most of its glum practitioners, but in Roberts' humanist hands, it's a scalpel to carve order from disorder--to framework the challenges of our precarious, modern, globalized world; to alert us to the dangers we face now, and the even graver threats ahead if we cannot restore real democracy, moral sensibility, and rational balance.
Here's a book that presents its theses nimbly, deftly, consummately. Roberts can be as "elegant" as a mathematical proof, and as down-to-earth, colloquial, no-B.S. as a man who has walked the windy labyrinths of power, observing closely, "testing axioms on the pulses," and finding his own way to what works--and to Truth. "Economist Herman Daly put it well when he wrote that the elites who make the decisions have figured out how to keep the benefits for themselves while 'sharing' the costs with the poor, the future, and other species.
" Roberts would not describe himself as a "Globalist. " The Curse of Capitalism. Government is government and business is business and the two are very different from each other. A business exists solely to earn profits for its owners. On the other hand, a prime function of government is to keep the playing field level between citizens so that no one person or groups of people can take unfair advantage of others.
This being the case, it should be clear that the goals of government and corporations are at cross purposes with each other. A business earns profits by exploiting its environment and seeking advantage in the market place. In contrast, governments exist to ensure that a business does not wrongfully exploit the environment, take unfair advantage of their competitors or customers, and operates in a manner that is beneficial and positive for all concerned. It should be obvious that a business will maximize profits if it is able to control the environment within which it operates. Validation of the foregoing is clearly evident all around us.
America , wake up! Is Capitalism Heading In Wrong Direction? Nowadays, many people are losing their faith and have started questioning the fair operation of capitalism. One of the compelling reasons for such distrust is too much greed and misuse of self-interest that was supposed to be the building block of capitalism and a genuine drive to business activity. However, the damaging events like 2008 great recession showed that not only excessive greed but also something more cynical was in the making that led to the near breakdown of capitalism. “It was the expansion of markets, and of market values, into sphere of life where they don’t belong” according to Michael J. Sandel, the author of a recently published book, What Money Can’t Buy. The infiltration of monetary forces into every aspect of our lives has created a mentality that is overtaking society ridden with the relentless material pursuits. Such an astonishing development is alarming and we should be apprehensive about the direction in which capitalism is headed.
Why Capitalism Can’t Fix Our Most Urgent Problems. Can capitalism solve the problems of global warming and growing inequality? It seems to me this is like discussing the issue of inappropriate hypersexual imagery bombarding 11-year olds and then asking: Can Justin Bieber or Lady Gaga fix the problem? Real capitalism, not the theoretical version taught in school, is a system of minority rule in which a few people profit at the expense of others. Real capitalists are always trying to cut their costs and increase their profits, which leads to unemployment, falling wages, rising economic disparity and not paying for the environmental damage they cause.
Private ownership of what are social means of livelihood produces incentives for capitalists to pass along the real costs of industry to communities, workers, future generations and other species. Private ownership makes growing inequality inevitable. Capitalism is sociopathic. Its ideologues, like the late Margaret Thatcher, reject the social, claiming only individuals exist.
Capitalism as a Secularized Religion. The heated public discussion of the pope’s capitalism criticism reveals this is ultimately a conflict about religion. Capitalism as a secularized religion. Part 1 By Tomasz Konicz [This article published on 12/25/2013 is translated from the German on the Internet, For many conservative capitalism fans, the sharp criticism that Pope Francis directed at late capitalism in his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium [Joy of the Gospel, (1)] doubtlessly represents a kind of stab-in-the-back or dagger thrust. The skilful balancing act carried out by the influential radio commentator Rush Limbaugh in his criticism of the pope [2] in order not to offend the hosts of believing Catholics among his ultra-conservative followers. The American economics magazine Forbes even urged the Pontifex to pay the necessary respect to capitalism and show some “gratitude” [4]. Welt Online [5] was somewhat nicer in criticizing the outrage of the pope.
For capitalism, the enemy is us. Roger’s Rules » The Evils of Capitalism. The Political Economy of Predatory Capitalism. Preventing disaster capitalism. Distinguishing capitalism from market economy, leading cardinal defends Pope’s economic comments. Income inequality: Does wider gap between rich and poor threaten capitalism?