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See also: “rent-seeking behavior” or “rentier capitalism” for similar examples.
Whenever I wake up and the first thing I see on my Tumblr is a blog post about ”rentier capitalism” or “rentier state”, I KNOW IT’S GOING TO BE A GOOD DAY.
I feel invigorated! Time to slam a whole pot of coffee and get on my three page to-do list. Thank you Marxist theory!
9 January, 2012
Sourced from feistyfeminist
Originally from feistyfeminist
Reblogged from shorterexcerpts
Tagged as Jason Read Marxism capitalism poverty rentier capitalism rentier state
Notes (1928) -
Defiant Occupy Boston protesters were arrested and charged with unlawful assembly and being in a public park after hours in a massive, early morning crackdown at the protest group’s second tent city on the Rose Kennedy Greenway.
“It’s important that we gain control and make sure the rules are followed, “ said Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis, who was on site during the police action.
11 October, 2011
Reblogged from fuckyeahmarxismleninism
Tagged as boston repression police occupy ows police brutality imperialism austerity unemployment capitalism crisis
Notes (8) -
Police attack and arrest Occupy Boston protesters on the Greenway in Boston, October 11, 2011.
11 October, 2011
Reblogged from fuckyeahmarxismleninism
Tagged as occupy boston ows repression police police brutality imperialism demonstration austerity youth unemployment crisis capitalism
Notes (11) -
11 October, 2011
Reblogged from fuckyeahmarxismleninism
Tagged as ows demonstration boston occupy police police brutality imperialism repression youth crisis capitalism
Notes (13) -
The Ideological Crisis of Western Capitalism
(Photo: emperley3)
Sunday 10 July 2011
by: Joseph E. Stiglitz, Project Syndicate | Op-Ed
Just a few years ago, a powerful ideology – the belief in free and unfettered markets – brought the world to the brink of ruin. Even in its hey-day, from the early 1980’s until 2007, American-style deregulated capitalism brought greater material well-being only to the very richest in the richest country of the world. Indeed, over the course of this ideology’s 30-year ascendance, most Americans saw their incomes decline or stagnate year after year.
Moreover, output growth in the United States was not economically sustainable. With so much of US national income going to so few, growth could continue only through consumption financed by a mounting pile of debt.
I was among those who hoped that, somehow, the financial crisis would teach Americans (and others) a lesson about the need for greater equality, stronger regulation, and a better balance between the market and government. Alas, that has not been the case. On the contrary, a resurgence of right-wing economics, driven, as always, by ideology and special interests, once again threatens the global economy – or at least the economies of Europe and America, where these ideas continue to flourish.
In the US, this right-wing resurgence, whose adherents evidently seek to repeal the basic laws of math and economics, is threatening to force a default on the national debt. If Congress mandates expenditures that exceed revenues, there will be a deficit, and that deficit has to be financed. Rather than carefully balancing the benefits of each government expenditure program with the costs of raising taxes to finance those benefits, the right seeks to use a sledgehammer – not allowing the national debt to increase forces expenditures to be limited to taxes.
This leaves open the question of which expenditures get priority – and if expenditures to pay interest on the national debt do not, a default is inevitable. Moreover, to cut back expenditures now, in the midst of an ongoing crisis brought on by free-market ideology, would inevitably simply prolong the downturn.
A decade ago, in the midst of an economic boom, the US faced a surplus so large that it threatened to eliminate the national debt. Unaffordable tax cuts and wars, a major recession, and soaring health-care costs – fueled in part by the commitment of George W. Bush’s administration to giving drug companies free rein in setting prices, even with government money at stake – quickly transformed a huge surplus into record peacetime deficits.
The remedies to the US deficit follow immediately from this diagnosis: put America back to work by stimulating the economy; end the mindless wars; rein in military and drug costs; and raise taxes, at least on the very rich. But the right will have none of this, and instead is pushing for even more tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, together with expenditure cuts in investments and social protection that put the future of the US economy in peril and that shred what remains of the social contract. Meanwhile, the US financial sector has been lobbying hard to free itself of regulations, so that it can return to its previous, disastrously carefree, ways.
But matters are little better in Europe. As Greece and others face crises, the medicine du jour is simply timeworn austerity packages and privatization, which will merely leave the countries that embrace them poorer and more vulnerable. This medicine failed in East Asia, Latin America, and elsewhere, and it will fail in Europe this time around, too. Indeed, it has already failed in Ireland, Latvia, and Greece.
There is an alternative: an economic-growth strategy supported by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. Growth would restore confidence that Greece could repay its debts, causing interest rates to fall and leaving more fiscal room for further growth-enhancing investments. Growth itself increases tax revenues and reduces the need for social expenditures, such as unemployment benefits. And the confidence that this engenders leads to still further growth.
Regrettably, the financial markets and right-wing economists have gotten the problem exactly backwards: they believe that austerity produces confidence, and that confidence will produce growth. But austerity undermines growth, worsening the government’s fiscal position, or at least yielding less improvement than austerity’s advocates promise. On both counts, confidence is undermined, and a downward spiral is set in motion.
Do we really need another costly experiment with ideas that have failed repeatedly? We shouldn’t, but increasingly it appears that we will have to endure another one nonetheless. A failure of either Europe or the US to return to robust growth would be bad for the global economy. A failure in both would be disastrous – even if the major emerging-market countries have attained self-sustaining growth. Unfortunately, unless wiser heads prevail, that is the way the world is heading.
For a podcast of this commentary in English, please use this link.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2011.
Just in case anyone is curious, Joseph Stiglitz is probably the most well respected economist on the planet. He’s won both the “Nobel” prize in Economics, the John Bates Clark Medal and (I believe) is the most academically cited living person in Economics.
23 September, 2011
Reblogged from gonzodave
Tagged as capitalism neoliberalism news op-ed politics economics class antagonism Joseph Stiglitz
Notes (17) -
I hear all this, you know, “Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever.”—No! There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there—good for you! But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea—God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.
—
Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren on class warfare.
(via agreatnation)
Amen.
(via themoderatelyambitiousscientist)
I want to be Elizabeth Warren for Halloween. She’s my personal hero. Forever and ever.
(via likeproust)
Elizabeth Warren, I want to KISS YOU ON THE MOUTH.
(via criticalmess)
I wanted this in writing on my blog.
(via absurdlakefront)
21 September, 2011
Sourced from eschatonblog.com
Originally from agreatnation
Reblogged from absurdlakefront
Tagged as Elizabeth Warren Warren for President! class warfare politics economics capitalism
Notes (730) -
reinventionoftheprintingpress:
The Senate joined the House Thursday night in passing a bill that would give the nation’s patent system its first overhaul in more than 50 years.
The America Invents Act, H.R. 1249 — which cleared the Senate in a 89 to 9 vote — would change the U.S. from a first-to-invent to a first-to-file patent system, a move proponents say would bring the U.S. patent system closer to systems already used by most of the rest of the world.
“We can no longer stand on a 1950s patent system and expect our innovators to flourish in a 21st century world,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), an author of the bill, argued from the Senate floor. “Let’s unleash the genius of the American people and our inventors in the United States of America.”
Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), however, took to the floor in the moments leading up to the vote to argue that the reform would stack the patent process in favor of large, well-funded corporations.
“This isn’t a patent reform bill,” said Cantwell, with frustration evident in her voice. “This is big corporation patent legislation that tramples on the rights of small inventors. … It is siding with corporate interests against the little guy.”
Cantwell had offered one of three amendments to the bill, which were defeated earlier in the day.
Though I do NOT have even a basic understanding of patent law, this reform is , on its face, disappointing to me.
-
Now that he is safely dead
Let us praise him
build monuments to his glory
sing hosannas to his name.
Dead men make
such convenient heroes: They
cannot rise
to challenge the images
we would fashion from their lives.
And besides,
it is easier to build monuments
than to make a better world.— excerpt from poet Carl Wendell Hines’ poem, ‘Now That He Is Safely Dead’ about Martin Luther King, Jr.
26 August, 2011
Reblogged from reinventionoftheprintingpress-d
Tagged as Martin Luther King Jr. Poor Peoples' Movement Capitalism Carl Wendell Hines
Notes (98) -
John C. Médaille takes the left-Christianist line:
In the standard theory of economics, only freedom is considered in the belief that justice will take care of itself. But the Church responds by saying that freedom itself is dependent upon justice, and to ignore the latter is to destroy the former. Freedom cannot be reduced to a mere competition of unrestrained desires. This describes not freedom, but license, and licentiousness always doubles back on itself to destroy freedom. No, true freedom starts with justice. And our Easter freedom means moving away from not just personal injustice, but also from those “structures of sin” (as the Blessed John Paul called them) into the freedom of Christ.
This is not merely an otherworldly call; every religion, but particularly an incarnational religion, has meaning in terms of our concrete social, political, and economic systems. And as Christians, it is our task to make the gospel concrete within our social institutions. Indeed, that is the whole reason for renewing our baptismal vows.
Robert T. Miller’s riposte:
The magisterial doctrines of the Catholic Church entail very little about economics or even politics. They do not, for example, make any particular form of government morally obligatory, and thus the autocracy of the Roman Empire, the constitutional monarchy of Elizabethan England, and the democratic republicanism of the United States are all morally permissible. Similarly, Catholic doctrine does not make any form of economic organization morally obligatory; rather, a wide range of systems, including both capitalism and distributism, are morally permissible.
Now, I suppose the editors asked my opinion on this question because they expected me to argue that capitalism has some special moral standing in Catholic doctrine. Although I will not go that far, I will defend a more modest proposition, namely, that, for people like us in a society like ours, capitalism is the most reasonable choice among the various economic systems we might adopt.
though i have little respect for what the Catholic Church has to say about most things, much less economics, these three little sentences did just catch my eye:
Freedom cannot be reduced to a mere competition of unrestrained desires. This describes not freedom, but license, and licentiousness always doubles back on itself to destroy freedom. No, true freedom starts with justice.
interesting.
21 August, 2011
Reblogged from letterstomycountry
Tagged as capitalism catholicism politics economics freedom liberty
Notes (10) -
In 1995, I published a book called The World After Communism. Today, I wonder whether there will be a world after capitalism.
That question is not prompted by the worst economic slump since the 1930s. Capitalism has always had crises, and will go on having them. Rather, it comes from the feeling that Western civilization is increasingly unsatisfying, saddled with a system of incentives that are essential for accumulating wealth, but that undermine our capacity to enjoy it. Capitalism may be close to exhausting its potential to create a better life – at least in the world’s rich countries.
By “better”, I mean better ethically, not materially. Material gains may continue, though evidence shows that they no longer make people happier. My discontent is with the quality of a civilization in which the production and consumption of unnecessary goods has become most people’s main occupation.
This is not to denigrate capitalism. It was, and is, a superb system for overcoming scarcity. By organising production efficiently, and directing it to the pursuit of welfare rather than power, it has lifted a large part of the world out of poverty.
Yet what happens to such a system when scarcity has been turned to plenty? Does it just go on producing more of the same, stimulating jaded appetites with new gadgets, thrills, and excitements? How much longer can this continue? Do we spend the next century wallowing in triviality?>
5 short paragraphs.
read them.
19 August, 2011
Reblogged from whipporwill-deactivated20111220
Tagged as economics politics capitalism Karl Marx history
Notes (19)
