Brendan Cooney: Marxian Economics and Philosophy

Video: Capitalist Equilibrium?

Part 2

For quite some time I have been following the clear and rich explanations of Marxian concepts and ideas by Brendan Cooney. He is well versed in classical economics and Marxian value theory and very adapt in communicating these in such a way that most people can understand it. On top of that, he takes his time every few weeks to make a professional and engaging video using his own scripts to deal with another major perspective or concept using classic cartoons. The scripts and more can be found at http://kapitalism101.wordpress.com/. Brendan describes his motivation for making his video's in these words:

"In times of crisis the law of value asserts itself with violence. My videos deal with the nature of value in a capitalist society, how this value is expressed, and what contradictions grow from it."

I seriously recommend anyone who seeks a more profound understanding of the present economic systems to check out the resource Brendan is building up.

Minqi Li: Marxism and Limits to Growth, Capitalism with Zero Profit Rate?

In this short presentation, University of Utah economist Minqi Li ties together Marxian economics, in particular the theory of capitalist crisis and the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, and the perspective of the limits to growth. As regular visitors of this blog might have guessed, this seemed to me quite interesting. I tried to improve the sound of the original video so people might hear better.


Part 2 Part 3

Minqi Li's abstract of the paper presented in November 2006, at the Social Structure of Accumulation Conference in Ireland:

"Capitalism is a socio-economic system that rests upon the endless pursuit of profit and capital accumulation. However, after centuries of relentless capitalist accumulation, resource depletion and environmental crisis have reached the advanced stage. The paper discusses the depletion of fossil fuels, the likely effects of various renewable energies and nuclear energy on future energy supply, the limits to improvement in energy efficiency, and the depletion of other resources. It relates the limits to growth to Marx’s hypothesis on the “law of the tendency for the rate of profit to fall.” It can be established that if the growth rate falls towards zero, then either the profit rate or the net investment has to fall towards zero. The coming crisis may be seen as the expression of the conflict between the “productive forces” and the “existing relations of production”. The historical constraints and possibilities for the post-capitalist society are discussed."

Minqi Li was born in January 1969 in Beijing, China. He studied at Beijing University between 1987 and 1990 and participated in the 1989 student movement. Between 1990 and 1992 he was a political prisoner. After 1989, he rejected the bourgeois liberal ideology and moved towards revolutionary marxism. He came to the United States in 1994 and received Ph.D. in economics from University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2002. He taught political science in York University, Canada from 2003 to 2006 and since July 2006 he has been teaching economics at the University of Utah. Minqi Li is the author of The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World Economy.

Recent publicly available articles:
Capitalism with Zero Profit Rate?: Limits to Growth and the Law of the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall (University of Utah Department of Economics Working Paper Series, May 2007)
The United States, China, Peak Oil, and the Demise of Neoliberalism (Monthly Review, April 2008)
Climate Change, Limits to Growth, and the Imperative for Socialism (Monthly Review, July-August 2008)

Nate Hagens: Umbrella View of Resource Depletion & Human Behaviour

Talk by Nate Hagens of University of Vermont on Resource Depletion, Energy Supply, peakoil, Energy Demand, Human Behaviour and Finance held at the Alcatraz 'Peak' Summit from 26 to 28 June in Italy hosted by The Oil Drum, ASPO Netherlands and ASPO Italy. Nate's presentation I witnessed this June at the informal meeting organised by theoildrum.com and ASPO near Perugia, Italy, , is extremely interesting, if more than a little speedy. I highly recommend this presentation as it served to summarise in an hour what we had been talking about at Alcatraz for three days straight.

Umbrella View of Resource Depletion & Human Behaviour from Rembrandt Koppelaar on Vimeo.

Leo Panitch: Still a Marxist after All

In this lecture, Leo Panitch explains his positive but critical relation to Marx and how to understand current events, like the crisis, in Marxist terms. He does this not by just labelling current events with Marxist language, but is interested in how different capitalisms came to pass and how to transcend them in today's world. This is what makes Panitch very stimulating to read and listen to.

He has been a Professor of Political Science at York University since 1984. He was the Chair of the Department of Political Science at York from 1988-1994. He was the General Co-editor of State and Economic Life series, U. of T. Press, from 1979 to 1995 and is the Co-founder and a Board Member of Studies in Political Economy. He is also the author of numerous articles and books dealing with political science including The End of Parliamentary Socialism (1997). He was a member of the Movement for an Independent and Socialist Canada, 1973-1975, the Ottawa Committee for Labour Action, 1975-1984, the Canadian Political Science Association, the Committee of Socialist Studies, the Marxist Institute and the Royal Society of Canada. He is currently a supporter of the Socialist Project.

He is a prominent exponent of Marxism who sees his own work as theoretically innovative within that tradition, because he maintains that the dominance of the United States in the early years of the twenty-first century can't be understood using theories of imperialism that are themselves a century old.

He has argued, for example, that the concept of imperialism developed for the Victorian era over-emphasized the matter of the export of capital. Yet if one uses that as a yardstick today (he reasons) Great Britain is more a victim of U.S. imperialism than Kenya -- since American investors have much more at stake in the former than in the latter. The advanced industrial nations, in other words, are interpenetrating -- exporting capital to one another, not to the 'South,' and this requires a great deal of revision in Marxist-Leninist models.

A vast amount of his publications can be found here.

Panitch has also argued that Marx was wrong to contend that the rise of trade unions would develop a socialistic class-consciousness in the working class. The association of workers for the purpose of collective bargaining has proven quite compatible with capitalism -- since such bargaining concerns the terms of wage labor, not the legitimacy of wage labor. He argues that Marxist political parties must abandon the assumption that there is anything inherently revolutionary about any class, so that they can get to work creating a self-conscious revolutionary class of wage earners, "articulating the articulation."

Charles Hall in New Scientist -Revisiting the Limits to Growth After Peak Oil

One of my favourite academics who address the importance of natural sciences to economic issues is the loud-voiced Charles Hall. He managed to get the undiluted message of the limits to growth published right there in the New Scientist. His article is really worth a good look.

"The world today faces enormous problems related to population and resources. These ideas were discussed intelligently and, for the most part, accurately in many papers from the middle of the last century, but then they largely disappeared from scientific and public discussion, in part because of an inaccurate understanding of both what those earlier papers said and the validity of many of their predictions. Most environmental science textbooks focus far more on the adverse impacts of fossil fuels than on the implications
of our overwhelming economic and even nutritional dependence on them. The failure today to bring the potential reality and implications of peak oil, indeed of peak everything, into scientific discourse and teaching is a grave threat to industrial society.

(...)

No substitutes for oil have been developed on anything like the scale required, and most are very poor net energy performers. Despite considerable potential, renewable sources (other than hydropower or traditional wood) currently provide less than 1 percent of the energy used in both the U.S. and the world, and the annual increase in the use of most fossil fuels is generally much greater than the total production (let alone increase) in electricity from wind turbines and photovoltaics. Our new sources of “green” energy are simply increasing along with (rather than displacing) all of the traditional ones. If we are to resolve these issues, including the important one of climate change, in any meaningful way, we need to make them again central to education at all levels of our universities, and to debate and even stand up to those who negate their importance, for we have few great intellectual leaders on these issues today. We must teach economics from a biophysical as well as a social perspective. Only then do we have any chance of understanding or solving these problems."

Charles Hall Speaking at ASPO VII in Barcelona, October 2008

June 24th: Presentation on Peak Oil and Geopolitics in Amsterdam (Dutch)

Rembrandt Koppelaar, chairman of peakoil.nl (or the Dutch branch of ASPO) and I, Freek Blauwhof, will hold a joint presentation on peak oil and the effects of increasing resource scarcity on international politics coming wednesday evening. I invite everyone in the neighbourhood at least able of understanding Dutch with some Power Point visual support to come an join the discussion!

Documentary: The Take

In suburban Buenos Aires, thirty unemployed auto-parts workers walk into their idle factory, roll out sleeping mats, and refuse to leave. All they want is to re-start the silent machines. With The Take, director Avi Lewis, one of Canada's most outspoken journalists, and writer Naomi Klein, author of the international bestsellers No Logo and The Shock Doctrine, champion a radical economic manifesto for the 21st century. But what shines through in the film is the simple drama of workers' lives and their struggle: the demand for dignity and the searing injustice of dignity denied.

Interestingly enough, it seems that the current depression is making more and more places take a path similar to Argentina. And indeed Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein are now at the forefront of a growing progressive movement to call for nationalisation and cooperatisation of the American auto industry for example, to put the industry to work for the public good. http://thetake.org/

Shell on Trial and Antonia Juhasz on “The True Cost of Chevron"

These two in depth Democracy Now reports on Shell's and Chevron's practices of 'externalising costs' proved to provide a great deal of the history of these companies' shady dealings in the third world.



A landmark trial against oil giant Royal Dutch Shell’s alleged involvement in human rights violations in the Niger Delta begins this Wednesday in a federal court in New York. Fourteen years after the widely condemned execution of the acclaimed Nigerian writer and environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, the court will hear allegations that Shell was complicit in his torture and execution.



Now Chevron’s annual report reports that 2008 was the company’s most profitable year in history. Just ahead of Chevron’s shareholder meeting, a new report released today tells shareholders more about the hidden and underreported costs of these profits. The alternative annual report is called “The True Cost of Chevron.” It brings together stories from communities across the world—Angola, Burma, Canada, Chad, Cameroon, Ecuador, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, the Philippines and the United States—all directly affected by and in struggle against Chevron’s operations. We speak to the report’s author and James Craig, media adviser for Latin America for Chevron.

Presentation: Ecological Critique of Market Society

I thought I'd post this presentation text I've written for a philosophy department course called 'Concerns of the Market'. It is aimed to be a short introduction into the ecological critique of, as the course called it, 'market societies'.

It refers to a power point presentation that can be downloaded here or viewed here.

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1 Introduction

In this presentation, my aim is to give a short summary of the critique of market society and neoliberalism from the perspective of environmentalists and ecologists like Dennis and Donella Meadows, the authors of ‘The Limits to Growth’. This presentation will require some scientific discussion that is instrumental for a philosophical perspective. I believe that any fruitful philosophical inquiry into the moral problems of sustainability will have to rely on recent scientific discourse in order to ask the right moral questions. For example, questions like future generations’ rights to oil resources are outdated when it seems unlikely that there will be much left for these future generations, even when there is a consistent political-economic move to sustainable consumption. Rights to energy resources more generally might be more appropriate in this case.

I will break down this critique in two parts; the first dealing with the use of ‘sources’, the other with disposal of waste and pollutants in ‘sinks’. [figure 1, 2, 3] By sources is meant all natural resources that are used in an economy, from fishing stock and arable land to water supply and fossil fuels. By sinks are meant the capacities of ecosystems to absorb pollution and waste, from bacteria in rivers that break down sewage to the adaptivity of atmosphere to greenhouse gas emissions.

Obviously central to this critique is the notion of sustainability. I use the word here as meaning natural-economic conditions of necessity for the realisation of any reasonable interpretation of human flourishing for most people over time. Sustainability is often mistaken as some kind of moral value by itself. But, as long as we can agree that human flourishing in the future should also be an aim of political morality, so I can skip a lengthy discussion of Derek Parfit, what other value should political action ultimately have in mind, if not sustained human flourishing for all? Sustainability, then, concerns the natural boundraries for the sustained possibility of this moral end.

The question is whether societies in which markets are the dominant mechanism of allocation of goods and services are, or can be made capable of dealing fairly and effectively with the problems of increasing scarcity of resources and pollution. In other words: is there a morally acceptable capitalist road to sustainability? As I am approaching this question through looking at natural resources and sinks, Herman Daly’s widely used criteria for sustainable use of resources and pollution I think hits the nail on the head [figure 4]. If there are no questions about this definition of sustainability, I would like to proceed with the overview of the ecological critique of market society.

2.1 Sources

In countries where the price of non-renewable resources and unsustainably used renewable resources are set by the market (or are even subsidised), there is a gap between the use value of that resource and its exchange value, the price. As any normal commodity, natural resources are traded in the market, where supply and demand determine price. According to a central justificatory thesis in neoclassical economics, which treats natural resources like any other commodity, the market mechanism ensures efficient allocation of goods; but, of course, in this case we are dealing with depleting natural resources. Once used, they are gone, and somewhere along the way of depletion, (where maximum supply exceeds demand) price is set no longer by supply, demand and marginal production cost, but by natural scarcity and shortage.

So in so far as there are good reasons to assume that the exchange value, as set by the market at times of relative abundance, is much lower than the real use value of the resource, the market mechanisms of supply and demand cannot be relied upon to allocate non-renewable resources and depleting renewable resources efficiently. It follows that a society that allocates non-renewable resources in this market-based way is, from this perspective, wasting the ‘bank account’ of elementary resources considerably.

But the critique can go more fundamental. Market-based societies are also ill-prepared to adapt to depletion and scarcity of vital resources like energy or food that its economy is reliant on. A political-economic tradition of leaving allocation of non-renewables to the market produces a dependent economic infrastructure with the high consumption patterns that result from market underpricing. These infrastructures are the aggregates of long term investment; it takes several decades to replenish without extra costs the stock of cars, ships, factory equipment, electricity plants and so on. A market-based society that finds one of its essential resources depleting can maybe change allocation systems quickly, but it is stuck with the economic infrastructure and capital stock that is accumulated over time. This kind of exposure to resource shocks combined with the highly discussed increase in worldwide inequality can have morally unacceptable consequences- think of stagflation after the oil shocks of the 70s, food or water shortages and even the collapse of civilisation like on the Easter Islands. These are results of what the authors of LtG call overshoot- when a (socio-economic) system passes its external limits.

My own literature research into the depletion of different non-renewable and depleting renewable resources has convinced me there is cause for concern in many cases; oil and natural gas production are in dangerous stages of decline considering the level of dependency of most societies on these resources. [figure 5 and 6] Potable water, fish stocks and soil fertility are, albeit in different ways, at more or less maximum sustainable levels of extraction or beyond these levels. Contrary to a still dominant academic consensus, I found that the models of the Club of Rome have been quite right so far.

The fundamental question for this course is whether sustainable use of these resources can be reached with ‘market based solutions’. My position here is a negative one. Sustainable use of resources seems to be contradictory to a central thesis in neoclassical economics and market-based politics: that supply and demand allocate resources through setting prices. This conclusion I see supported in historical economic and energy policy in capitalist countries. The countries that have made the most considerable steps towards resource sustainability, Sweden, Iceland and Cuba, have done this through direct government involvement and investment. But rather than expanding on my own political opinion now, I invite discussion on this topic after this presentation.

2.2 Sinks

The question of pollution and waste shares many characteristics with the one concerning (renewable and non-renewable) resource depletion. There are sustainable levels of pollution that can be absorbed by ecosystem sinks, but exceeding these levels for a longer time results in problems of overshoot.

The most global and well-known example of overshoot by polluting sinks is global warming. There are lower levels of greenhouse gas emissions that increase temperature, but will be corrected by the world ecosystems correction mechanisms. After a certain point, however, the ‘positive feedback loops’, or the ecosystem mechanisms that reinforce global warming, become stronger than the balancing correction mechanisms. The current scientific debate concerns when exactly this point is most likely reached. The debate ranges from 350 ppm, which was reached around 1985, to 450 ppm, which would be reached in 35 years at current rates of emission. [figure 7 and 8] This is a very serious issue: if greenhouse gas levels stay above this critical point for a longer time, the genie will be out of the bottle. Humans will have lost their grip on this potential global catastrophe.

Again, the question for this course is whether there is a credible market based road to sustainability on the pollution side of the ecology-economy system. There is one especially prominent market based scheme for reducing emissions, cap and trade. This is the system in place in the EU at the moment, and it is the one that is being proposed by the Obama administration as well. At first sight and with some generous reading of the institutional argument, it seems it could work. All that governments need to do is to set the amount of emission rights, and these can then be allocated by the market in these rights. That would mean that there is a limit for emission, while the market can efficiently decide how exactly these emission targets will be met.

But if one looks a little further into the range of institutions that are involved in these schemes, there are a lot of practical problems with such a solution that I would argue are not just accidental, but institutional and necessary. Emissions can be reduced by all kinds of administrative mechanisms (fe offsetting emissions in seperate projects abroad). Furthermore, markets in emissions rights create a secondary derivative market with its speculative bubbles, and corporations always have an interest in expanding the amount of rights that are actually issued. When the system was just introduced in the EU, for example, the market and lobbying power of big corporations like the German automobile industry was so strong it even accomplished to create rights for more emissions than are produced to begin with. In the ‘70s and ‘80s, emitting corporations universally denied global warming, in a fashion rather like the tobacco industry that denied smoking caused cancer. The history does make one suspect there is a logic in this so called 'partnership of the state and the private sector'. Most environmentalists, and myself included, would argue this is because corporations always have an interest in externalising costs and internalising profits, and will use their resources to obtain their end. This market power of corporations is an institutional fact that directly contradicts any credible move towards sustainability. As long as the market is at the centre stage of environmental policy, this policy will be the result of a tug of war between even the most well-meaning governments and international governmental bodies on the one side, and corporations that externalise the cost of battling against their pollution on the other.

3 Conclusion

If one tries to imagine a credible integrated road to sustainability on all the vital topics adressed and more there seems very little room for market dominance. The most market-based ideas that aim to address these issues in cohesion all emphasise a need for stable and unjeopardised move on the different fronts, requiring price stability for long term investment. A good introduction into these arguments is supplied by Richard Heinberg in 'The Oil Depletion Protocol'. This necessity implies a government setting prices and pushing the market in a sustainable direction. But such a scheme will have to fight the same battle with contradicting economic institutions and mechanisms, like corporate lobbying and externalising of costs. Therefore, considering the actual scientific debates and economic-political practice, I am led to the more philosophical conclusion that capitalism is inherently unsustainable. Real solutions for the problems of an overshooting ecologic-economic system necessarily lie outside market thinking and market practice. Whether this should be a reformist taming of the forces of the market or a radical overcoming of its logic I leave up for discussion. In any case, it seems only a fool could expect that forces from within capitalism itself will save it from its own overshoot.

Nate Hagens on Energy, Resources and Human Demand on a Full Planet

Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6

Nate Hagens is an ex vice president of Lehman Brothers who voluntarily left his business career some years ago out of concerns about 'negative externalities'. Now he is doing his PhD at the University of Vermont Gund Institute for ecological economics, establishing connections in his research between the limits to growth and different possible responses, both in terms of alternative energy sources and change in consumption behaviour. I don't always like his reductionist take on questions of behaviour and ideology, explaining patterns of behaviour in terms of biochemical brain functions, but he has a lot to say about the predicament of the limits to growth.

His university page introduces Nate Hagens in these terms:

Nate is studying the impacts that a decline in liquid fuels will have on planetary ecosystems and society. On the supply side, he is exploring net-energy comparisons of the primary alternate fuel sources to oil: coal, wind, nuclear and biomass. While many new energy schemes will produce profits from a bottoms-up perspective, an EROI (Energy Returned on Energy Invested) analysis from a top-down perspective limits the scope of energetically and ecologically sound replacements for fossil fuels.

Because of this, real progress on the human and planetary scale issue will likely come from a reduction in consumption. On the demand level, Nate is studying the evolutionary mechanisms that cause humans to seek novelty, act impulsively, and value the present over the future (steep discount rates). Specifically, our neural plasticity combined with a culture promoting growth and consumption results in biochemical positive feedback loops akin to addiction. We can however, be happier, healthier and more sustainable by consuming less, if we are provided with a different cultural carrot. Nate’s thesis lies in modeling sustainable scale solutions to the future decline in EROI by researching ways to reduce the steepness of our discount rates, thus giving more weight to the planet’s future.

Slavoj Žižek in Roda Viva

In this excellent interview with Slavoj Žižek, the thinking of this fascinating philosopher is nicely introduced as Žižek is confronted with questions from different sides; he explains why he is a marxist in political economy and Freudian, Lacanian and Hegelian in matters of ideology.

Books by Slavoj Žižek

The Anarchist FAQ

As i was watching one of mr. 1001 Nights' video discussions on the labour theory of value, by the same guy who made the documentary "The Evilness of Power", I saw he reffered to an FAQ page on anarchism. It turned out to be quite a nice and above all, orderly overview of answers to a broad range of philosophical and scientific subjects that come up in debates on capitalism, ideology, and authority. It spans the board across ecology, authority and statism, neoclassical economics, history of the russian revolution, dissemination of the different kinds of anarchism, human nature arguments; you name it, it's there. So click on the link above if it piqued your curiosity as well.

Michael Ruppert's Come Back

Just when most followers of Fromthewilderness.com thought Michael Ruppert was never going to get active again, here he is with a new book, called 'A Presidential Energy Policy'now available on Amazon, and a new documentary, Collapse.

I'm intruiged by this former detective who followed and spoke out about CIA drugs dealing for decades. He wrote an 700-page optimally court admissible case for prosecuting Cheney on 9/11, and during his investigations took up the issue of peak oil as it played a part in the motives for 9/11 and what followed. He predicted the burst of the housing bubble as early as 2005 and told all his listeners in the US to get out of debt. Now, he wrote a book about the radical essentials of energy policy. We should be paying attention. Obviously, I haven't read the book yet, but Colin Campbell and Cynthia McKinney, to name a few, have already had a peek:
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Michael Ruppert does not mince his words writing a stirring and uncompromising book on a vital issue. He addresses some simple but widely ignored concepts relating to the critical role of oil and gas in the modern world. First, they are finite resources, formed in the geological past, being therefore subject to depletion. Second, they have to be found before they can be produced, such that the peak of discovery, which is long past, must deliver a corresponding peak of production.(..)

It is a perceptive, stimulating and very readable book covering a subject of critical importance. It deserves a place on the bookshelves of everyone from the school teacher to the chief executive; from the bishop to the politician and world leader.

Colin Campbell, Ph.D.
Former Oil Exploration Geologist (Texaco, British Petroleum)
Former Exploration Manager, Total
Former Consultant to Shell, Statoil, Mobil and Amerada
Former Executive V.P. Petrofina
Author, many books and publications on Oil and Gas depletion
________________________________________

All I can say about A Presidential Energy Policy is, "Yikes!"

This is a book everyone should read.

Mike Ruppert is my friend. And, sometimes I remind him, in a way that only a friend can, that my perspective is colored by my own distinct experiences as an informed woman of color in the United States. And frankly, that means that some of what is between these covers makes me cringe; but it is exactly this substance, actively suppressed in proposed national and international gatherings, that we human beings must debate and resolve, or else, we will find Dr. King's admonition, once again, to be true: "We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools."

We know Mike Ruppert because he became a whistleblower and told us some inconvenient truths. About crack cocaine, 9/11/01, and now this -- how to step back from the brink of human disaster.

It is clear that Mike and I are headed toward the same destination, despite our differences. A Presidential Energy Policy lands Mike exactly where I am -- outside of the box of political orthodoxy, but well within the space of policy advocacy that is representative of critical thinking, rational analysis, and authentic leadership. Mike Ruppert dares to go where our elected leaders seem afraid to take us. In the end, however, if we are to salvage our own human dignity, either our "leadership" must catch up with us or we must become and nurture a new generation of leaders.

Cynthia McKinney
6-term Member, U.S. House of Representatives
Green Party Presidential Candidate, 2008

Richard Heinberg on Peak Oil and Energy Policy

Ecologist Richard Heinberg of the Post Carbon Institute presents at the Conference on Michigan's Future: Energy, Economy and Environment in November 2008. Heinberg is one of the world's formost peak oil educators, having authored four unique and compelling books on the subject. In this presentation, Heinberg discusses the history of human's control of energy and what can be done to prepare for the energy challenges of the future. Heinberg reviews peak oil depletion and takes an overall view on what we need to do to find the path to sustainability.

'Peak Everything', 'The Oil Depletion Protocol', and other books by Richard Heinberg

Journalist and author Paul Roberts talks about the commercial food industry and the need for a broader systemic approach for confronting the global food challenges facing the world today. He had before been a regular contributor to Harper's Magazine and writes primarily about "the complex interplay of economics, technology, and the natural world".

'The End of Oil', 'The End of Food', and other books by Paul Roberts

In this lecture given by Michel Chossudovsky in 2003, in the early years of the neoconservative Bush administration and the war on terror, he blows away the smokescreen put up by the mainstream media, that 9/11 was an attack on the US by "Islamic terrorists". As this speech is a few years old, we should of course add to it what we know happened afterwards. Through meticulous research, he has uncovered both a military-intelligence ploy behind the September 11 attacks, and a cover-up and complicity of key members of the Bush Administration. According to Chossudovsky, the "war on terrorism" is a complete fabrication based on the illusion that one man, Osama bin Laden, outwitted the $40 billion-a-year American intelligence apparatus. But Chossudovsky does not fit the stereotype of 'truthers' who do nothing else then meticulously going over the details of the events of 9/11. In stead, he puts 9/11 in a wider context of geopolitics, one that allows insight in the shadow side of actual states. In this lecture, he argues that the "war on terrorism" is a war of conquest. Globalisation is the final march to a "New World Order", dominated by Wall Street and the U.S. military-industrial complex. September 11, 2001 provides a justification for waging a war without borders. Washington's agenda consists in extending the frontiers of the American Empire to facilitate complete U.S. corporate control, while installing within America the institutions of the Homeland Security State.

Michel Chossudovsky is currently professor of economics at the Universtiy of Ottawa. He has taught as visiting professor at academic institutions in Western Europe, Latin America and Southeast Asia, has acted as economic adviser to governments of developing countries and has worked as a consultant for international organizations including the United Nations Development Programme, the African Development Bank, the United Nations African Institute for Economic Development and Planning, the United Nations Population Fund, the International Labour Organization, the World Health Organisation, the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. In 1999, Chossudovsky joined the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research as an adviser. Chossudovsky is the past president of the Canadian Association of Latin American and Caribbean Studies. He is a member of research organisations that include the Committee on Monetary and Economic Reform, the Geopolitical Drug Watch and the International People's Health Council. He is an active member of the anti-war movement in Canada, and has written extensively on the war in Yugoslavia. After the September 11 terrorist attacks he has also been involved in highlighting the historical relationship between the US government, Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. He is a frequent contributor to Le Monde diplomatique, Third World Resurgence and Covert Action Quarterly. His publications have been translated into more than twenty languages. His latest book is titled America's "War on Terrorism".

War and Globalisation and other books by Michel Chossudovsky

I've found this two hour but very instructive lecture on how to read 'Das Kapital', by one of the world's foremost Marx interpreter professor David Harvey. After decades of experience with the text he has an unique ability to understand what exactly Marx was doing in its entirety.
He is the world's most cited academic geographer (according to Andrew Bodman, see Transactions of the IBG, 1991,1992), and the author of many books and essays that have been prominent in the development of modern geography as a discipline. His work has contributed greatly to broad social and political debate, most recently he has been credited with helping to bring back social class and Marxist methods as serious methodological tools in the critique of global capitalism, particularly in its neoliberal form.

Marx's Capital with David Harvey
An open course consisting of a close reading of the text of Volume I of Marx's Capital in 13 two-hour video lectures by Professor David Harvey.



He appeared today in an interview at Democracy Now to analyse the G20 summit and the state of the economy. See the interview here.

His latest books:

An Introduction to Capital (forthcoming 2009)
The Communist Manifesto- New Introduction Pluto Press (2008)
The Limits to Capital New Edition (2006)
Spaces of Global Capitalism: Towards a Theory of Uneven Geographical Development (2006)
A Brief History of Neoliberalism (2005)
Paris, Capital of Modernity (2003)
The New Imperialism (2003)

China Replacing Dollar in International Trade

While trying to set up an SDT based world currency alternative for the dollar, China is laying the practical basis for such a system by replacing the dollar in large scale international trade. If succesful, this plan will allow China to increasingly opt out of the dollar system as bankroller of US debt. Forbes hinted to this development today in an article on the recent 10 billion dollar currency swap with Argentina.

"Facing a precipitous slide in exports and tens of millions of unemployed migrants, China is hoping to lubricate financing for emerging markets to buy its goods, in the process symbolically raising the yuan's profile on the global economic stage.

In the first such move involving a Latin American country, China struck a 70 billion yuan ($10.2 billion) currency swap agreement with Argentina that would allow the latter to put in yuan-denominated orders for Chinese imports and thereby avoid using the U.S. dollar in bilateral trade. Analysts expect China to pursue more bilateral currency swaps with emerging markets in order to give a boost to its ailing export sector.

The agreement with Argentina marked China's sixth bilateral currency swap. Beijing extended a 100 billion yuan ($14.6 billion) swap line to Indonesia last week and a 20 billion yuan ($2.9 billion) swap line to Belarus earlier this month. China has also reached swap arrangements with South Korea, Malaysia and Hong Kong. The swaps, totaling 650 billion yuan ($95.1 billion), will last for three years."

The Mondragon Cooperatives

A lot of writers that I have cited or linked to here have deep criticisms of capitalism, which should raise questions about what might replace it. I think this is a topic that should be far more debated than it is today, because it deals with possible answers on how life might be better if organised in a different way.

The worker cooperative 'business model' is one promising practical example of how people might reclaim their democracy in the work place and become an empowered community; and Mondragon in Spain is one of the places which can show us how it's done.

So to approach economic democracy in a practical way, I thought I might link to a documentary and a speech on the Mondragon Cooperatives, which are one of the largest federations of cooperatives in the world. Learning about their integrative system is seriously inspiring because it works so beautifully. It is a group of democratically governed businesses helping each other to get ahead. They take care of the creation of new coops in the neighborhood through coop banks using refined development strategies. If they run a profit, the workers generally share 70% amongst themselves as dividend because the workers ARE the shareholders. 20% goes into reinvestment, necessary for productive capital, and 10% goes into community services, from a research university to medical care and cultural activities. Empowered by this well-designed system, these people are in a constant process of figuring out how to live democracy in their daily lives.
The coops coordinate to ensure no member worker goes unemployed for long. If some do, they are guaranteed 80% of their original wage under the coops' social security funds. The system has been so successful that from its quiet birth in 1955 under the Franco fascist regime, it has grown into a network providing more than 100.000 jobs and countless services in the Basque country. After seeing this, who can claim capitalism is the only possibility?

Mondragon Website in English

"The Mondragon Experiment" is a BBC documentary produced in the 70s, which documents the founding and rise of the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation. Tracing its birth back to the time of the Civil War in Spain and its remarkable success since then, combined with an analysis of the actual structure of the company, The Mondragon Experiment makes a strong case for industrial democracy as an alternative to the present economic order.



Praxis Peace Institute Founding Director, Georgia Kelly discusses the unique collaborative business model of the Mondragon Cooperatives located in the Basque country of Spain. This presentation will cover the ethics and vision of Mondragón as well as unique success stories that are an inspiration to those seeking alternatives to business-as-usual. The goal of the Mondragón Cooperatives is to create community through economic relationships and to transform society through conscious economic practices. (Video a little bad, sound is no problem though)



Books on the Mondragon Cooperatives

Philosopher, historian and linguist Noam Chomsky spoke to Paul Jay yesterday on the Obama - Geithner plan. Chomsky says that "they're simply recycling the Bush-Paulson measures and changing them a little, but essentially the same idea: keep the institutional structure the same, try to kind of pass things up, bribe the banks and investors to help out, but avoid the measures that might get to the heart of the problem." The discussion ends in a conversation about what democratisation of the economy might look like.