Loosening the grip of oligarchy
…the next political phase of the campaign started by Occupy is now starting to emerge.
…the next political phase of the campaign started by Occupy is now starting to emerge.
It’s not every day that an academic article in the arcane world of American political science makes headlines around the world, but then again, these aren’t normal days either.
Similarities abound between today’s declining civic ethos and mid nineteenth century, pre Civil War era human flesh markets starting with America’s contemporary desperation class composed of minimum wage workers toiling in America’s most praised corporations (e.g. Wal-Mart & McDonalds) who need public sector-funded food stamps to make basic ends meet.
“The capitalist era is passing… not quickly, but inevitably. A new economic paradigm — the Collaborative Commons — is rising in its wake that will transform our way of life."
Yes, we’re nice people, and yes we have been sapped of our energy. But the main reasons we’re not protesting are deeper and must be targeted directly.
“It is a confusion of ideas to suppose that the economical use of fuel is equivalent to diminished consumption. The very contrary is the truth….no one must suppose that coal thus saved is spared-it is only saved from one use to be employed in others”.
Beyond God and state, it’s money that rules. Can we still imagine alternatives?
Starkman explains why journalists often aren’t alert watchdogs, but he can’t see why limiting the profession to the role of a barking dog is, quite literally, a dead-end.
Crises are essential to the reproduction of capitalism.
There has been no fundamental reshaping, anywhere, of the market machine, however loud its critics have become.
What are we to make of Monsanto’s sponsoring of organic school gardens? Of local food bike tours made possible by Pepsi?
Africa, Latin America and Asia, they are supposed to be societies on a particular trajectory of history … they are all supposed to be trying to be in the future what Europe and North America are today. So, in that sense, technically there are no options open to them in the future.