The release of the Panama Papers last weekend — a paper trail of eleven million leaked documents from the Mossack Fonseca global law firm — shows how major global banks move assets of billionaire capitalists and major political figures offshore to protect them from taxation. The revelation has stirred up a political hornets’ nest all…
In an interview with Cenk Uygur March 23, Bernie Sanders noted, “The media is an arm of the ruling class of this country,” going on to point out its concentrated corporate ownership (for example, Disney’s ownership of ABC, Comcast’s of NBC, etc). This corporate media have a vested interest in not covering real news in…
In a Washington Post article (“What rich countries get wrong about poverty,” March 28), Ana Swanson summarizes an argument by Caroline Freund, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, as follows: “Blaming the super-rich for global poverty would be a mistake.” In fact it might reflect an erroneous “First World mindset.” (Note: I…
Download a PDF copy of Kevin Carson’s full C4SS Study: Center for a Stateless Society Paper No. 20 (Spring 2016) Techno-Utopianism, Counterfeit and Real (With Special Regard to Paul Mason’s Post-Capitalism) I. Capitalist Techno-Utopianism from Daniel Bell On II. Categories of Leftist Techno-Utopianism III. Other Non-Capitalist Techno-Utopianisms John Holloway Michel Bauwens Accelerationism IV. Analysis: Comparison of the…
Download a PDF copy of Kevin Carson’s full C4SS Study: Center for a Stateless Society Paper No. 20 (Spring 2016) Techno-Utopianism, Counterfeit and Real (With Special Regard to Paul Mason’s Post-Capitalism) I. Capitalist Techno-Utopianism from Daniel Bell On II. Categories of Leftist Techno-Utopianism III. Other Non-Capitalist Techno-Utopianisms John Holloway Michel Bauwens Accelerationism IV. Analysis: Comparison of the…
At Reason, Steve Chapman (“Bernie Sanders’ Free Trade Mythology,” March 19) faults Bernie Sanders for saying: “Do you know that in 1960, Detroit, Michigan, was one of the wealthiest cities in America? Flint, Michigan, was a prosperous city. But then what happened is corporate America said, ‘Why do I want to pay somebody in Michigan…
Neither Bernie Sanders, the self-described democratic socialist, nor Donald Trump, the self-described terrific businessman, knows squat about economics. If their polices were enacted, regular working people would be harmed. This is most clear with trade. Sanders and Trump are flaming protectionists, which means they peddle perhaps the oldest, most-thoroughly discredited economics doctrine ever spoken. (An…
Download a PDF copy of Kevin Carson’s full C4SS Study: Center for a Stateless Society Paper No. 20 (Spring 2016) Techno-Utopianism, Counterfeit and Real (With Special Regard to Paul Mason’sPost-Capitalism) I. Capitalist Techno-Utopianism from Daniel Bell On II. Categories of Leftist Techno-Utopianism III. Other Non-Capitalist Techno-Utopianisms John Holloway Michel Bauwens Accelerationism IV. Analysis: Comparison of the Two…
On Facebook, Doug Henwood — author of Wall Street and editor of the Left Business Observer — recently pointed to the U.S. Arpa-E agency’s development of an advanced storage battery as an example of the “public sector” outperforming the “private sector” (March 3 at 10:48AM). “While VC is funding the world’s first stabilized action camera,”…
It’s generally conceived that the entrepreneur is the lone economic wolf in the economy, bringing together the morass of labour, capital and resources and placing it under his/her will. This picture of rugged individualism usually serves little purpose other than to justify large expansions of wealth by corporate CEOs and ignores the actual picture of…
In a recent open letter to the mayor (Julia Carrie Wong, “San Francisco tech worker: ‘I don’t want to see homeless riff-raff,’“ The Guardian, Feb. 17), entitled tech bro Justin Keller whined that the sight of homeless people ruins his enjoyment of the local atmosphere in San Francisco. And when his family comes to visit,…
Techno-Utopianism, Counterfeit and Real (With Special Regard to Paul Mason’s Post-Capitalism) Download a PDF copy of Kevin Carson’s full C4SS Study: Center for a Stateless Society Paper No. 20 (Spring 2016) I. Capitalist Techno-Utopianism from Daniel Bell On II. Categories of Leftist Techno-Utopianism III. Other Non-Capitalist Techno-Utopianisms John Holloway Michel Bauwens Accelerationism IV. Analysis: Comparison of the…
Despite everything the academic power structure and its allies in the U.S. Justice Department could do to Aaron Swartz — including driving him to suicide — the enemies of information freedom in academia have been in steady retreat ever since. Back in 2011, in his Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto, Swartz defined his revolutionary goal as…
The so-called “sharing economy” is sometimes also called the “gig economy” — arguably a more accurate term, because “sharing economy” carries overtones of cooperation and mutuality that are (to say the least) grossly misleading. In the case of ride-sharing companies like Uber and Lyft it’s misleading because it suggests the direct sharing of rides between…
In a recent commentary (“Economic Inequality,” January 2016), venture capitalist Paul Graham defends inequality on the grounds that it’s not necessarily the result of a zero-sum game. In fact, he says, it’s usually not. He accuses “the most naive” critics of growing levels of economic inequality of starting out from “the pie fallacy: that the…
Download: The Decline and Fall of Sloanism [PDF] or the ready for print zine. Introduction I. Babylon is Fallen Resumption of the Crisis of Overaccumulation Resource crises (Peak Oil) Fiscal Crisis of the State Decay of the Cultural Pseudomorph (Failed) Attempts to Counteract the Crisis of Value with Enclosure of the Digital Commons II. Relocalized…
If you believed the talking heads, you might think concern with inequality in our society was just a product of envy and economic ignorance. That’s another reason not to believe the talking heads. The fact that someone has more wealth than I do doesn’t injure me or make me worse off. And the economy isn’t…
As used by right-wing apologists for “free market capitalism” (an oxymoron if ever there was one), capitalism is the source of everything good in the world — but also something that never existed. And it switches repeatedly back and forth from one to the other, every couple of sentences, in the same argument. I learned…
Paul Mason. Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future (Allen Lane, 2015). Based on Mason’s preview of Postcapitalism in his article at The Guardian, I was predisposed to like it. And having read the book itself, I can’t say I’ve changed my mind much. Mason occupies a niche where there is plenty of room for more…
C4SS Feed 44 presents Charles Johnson‘s contribution to Part 8 of Markets Not Capitalism: “The Clean Water Act versus Clean Water,” read by Stephanie Murphy and edited by Nick Ford. The levels of invasiveness required by “intellectual property,” in the digital age, cannot be exaggerated. The intrusive DRM embedded in proprietary media, and the draconian…
