VIDEO John Bellamy Foster - The Crisis of Capital: Economy, Ecology and Empire

Professor of sociology and editor of Monthly Review, John Bellamy Foster, talks about the triple crises facing the people of the United State today in the economy, the environment, and in the imperial wars and occupations in Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond.

John Bellamy Foster - The Crisis of Capital: Economy, Ecology and Empire from pdxjustice Media Productions on Vimeo.
by pdxjustice Media Productions

VIDEO Low wage capitalism

Fred Goldstein talks of his new book Low-Wage Capitalism with a compelling analysis of global corporate capitalism, a system demonstrably unfair, irrational, and painfully unstable.

Read Introduction and selected chapters

Low-Wage Capitalism describes in sweeping detail the drastic effect on the working class in the United States of new technology and the restructuring of global capitalism in the post-Soviet era. It uses Karl Marx's law of wages and other findings to show that these developments are not only continuing to drive down wages but are creating the material basis for future social upheaval.

The analysis rests on three basic developments in the last three decades:

• The world's workforce available to exploitation by transnational capitalist corporations doubled in the wake of the collapse of the USSR and Eastern Europe.
• The technological revolutions of the digital age, in both production and communications, have allowed transnational corporations to destroy high-wage jobs and simultaneously expand the global workforce to generate a worldwide wage competition.
• The decline in the economic condition of the workers, driven by the laws of capitalism and the capitalist class, is leading to the end of working-class compromise and retreat and must end up in a profound revival of the struggle against capitalism.

While the book concentrates on changes in the U.S., restructuring is a world phenomenon. Goldstein's general analysis also applies to the imperialist countries of Western Europe and Japan. The book discusses how:

• Advanced processes of production promoted by the corporate giants in low-wage countries have changed the international division of labor within world capitalism.
• The "national wage" is being supplanted by an international determination of wages as worldwide wage competition lowers the floor.
• Since the late 1970s, the vast majority of U.S. workers have seen a decline in wages and living conditions as permanent, high-paying jobs with benefits disappear.
• The rise of the multi-earner family represents a hidden, class-wide wage cut for U.S. workers.
• Restructuring and technology have especially impacted on African-American workers.
• Women have flooded into the workforce, most at low-wage jobs, in order to survive.
• Increased exploitation of Latin@s and other immigrants is an integral part of globalization.
• Highlights from past struggles provide a guide to future action and organization.
• It takes a broad workers' movement to fight for the economic and social needs of all.
• Breaking out of the traditional capital-labor relationship is essential to the defense of the multinational working class in the era of low-wage capitalism.

Presented in May 2008 at the international conference in Cuba on "The work of Karl Marx and the Challenges for the 21st Century." Now expanded into a full book, Fred Goldstein lays a basis for workers to understand and respond to the deep crisis rocking the world economy.

VIDEO SATIRE The elephant in the room

This is so absurd that it has to be politically correct in a grotesque sort of way. Watch out for the elephant in the room.

VIDEO/SATIRE:Neoliberalism As Water Balloon

With simple materials found around the house, you too can conduct an experiment to see what has happened to the economy.

Neoliberalism As Water Balloon from Tim McCaskell on Vimeo.

VIDEO:robots vs luddites

Why would a Luddite break a machine? What is the social significance of software piracy? These questions and more are pondered in this brief discussion of the concept of the "forces and relations of production" in Industrial Revolution and the Information Revolution.

Full text at Kapitalism 101 . This is another great Marxism resource from Brendan Cooney (pictured right) . I agree with Cooney's perspective and the way he poses challenging questions.

We have a lot of work to do in our time. These tectonic shifts in the forces and relations of production have coincided with global economic crisis and environmental crisis. At such times the future is uncertain. Anything can happen. If the left is to seize the initiative in the 21st century it has much theoretical work to do examining the trajectory of these new forces and relations of production and discerning what sort of possibilities they present for radical breaks from the present order.

VIDEO: David Harvey -- The Crisis Now

The ever-engrossing David Harvey, speaking at the UK SWP's 2009 Marxism conference in July, addressing the current status of the global economic crisis.



David Harvey also teaches a course on Marx's Capital, the video and audio of which are online at his website.

Tip: Red Wombat.

AUDIO: Economic tsunami is still haunting the world's economies

In case you were thinking that the economic crisis was passe here's a tit bit from an insider who tells it a lot differently than our own Wayne Swann.It was recorded by ABC Radio's The World Today on September 15th.

Author and former investment banker, John Talbott, joins The World Today to explain why he believes the President's proposed reforms won't prevent another economic collapse. Mr Talbott's books warned about economic instability, and predicted the US housing market collapse.

Original audio source (20090915-twt-04-john-talbott.mp3)

Cuba Undertakes Reforms in Midst of Economic Crisis

By Roger Burbach

September 20, 2009

Carlos picks me up with his dated Soviet-made Lada at the Jose Marti International Airport on a hot sweltering day in Havana. It’s been eight months since I’ve seen him, last January to be precise, when I came to the island on the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution. “How’s it been?” I ask him as we begin the 20 minute drive to central Havana. With a scowl, he replies: “Not so good, nothing seems to get easier.” He goes on to say that foodstuffs are as difficult as ever to come by, necessitating long waits in line for rationed commodities.

I am not surprised, as I had been reading in the international press that Cuba has been compelled to curtail its food imports. Hit by the global economic crisis, spending by tourists dropped off while the price of nickel, Cuba’s main mineral export, fell by more than half. This meant that Cuba has no choice but to cut agricultural imports from its main supplier, the United States. Credit purchases are not an option, as the U.S. legislation in 2000, opening up agricultural sales to Cuba, requires immediate payment in hard currency.

Read more...

Graph-- Cuban figures:Source: EarthTrends, 2008

SLIDESHOW: From Poor America To Financial Crisis

Presentation by Raphie de Santos (Scottish Socialist Party) on Economic Crisis
More reports and multimedia listed here.

From Poor America To Financial Crisis

View more documents from Ratbag Media.

VIDEO:Marxist Geographer David Harvey on the G20, the Financial Crisis and Neoliberalism

For some analysis on the G20 summit and the financial crisis, Democracy Now speaks to a leading thinker on the global economy. David Harvey is a Marxist geographer and distinguished professor of anthropology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is the author of several books, including The Limits to Capital and A Brief History of Neoliberalism.

• Watch more videos on the LeftClick Video channel

Solutions to the Housing Crisis III

Can we afford a roof over our heads?

That the suburban sprawl is driven by a desire to keep our residential existence separate from our neighbours has more to do with the frontier habit and the aspiration for the very English garden or manor -- a marker of upward mobility. After the Second World War with full employment such homesteading became a mindset and a promise for any working class couple who had the impulse to breed.

But then home ownership was a guarantee of many things, especially, or supposedly, security.It was the best the Lucky Country had to offer -- local and migrant alike. And since it has to some degree been delivered, it's a theme that feeds on itself across generations.

But the sprawl is too big and the price for a share of it too steep to be sustainable -- let alone the environmental consequences as the suburbs spread like treacle.

Town plans adapt just as individual buyers do so that the trend to inner city urban renewal and concentration has slowed the advance on the periphery-- the suburban fringe -- the whole exercise is total madness. While "urban planning" supposedly exists it's not 'planning' at all. At best it's catch up behind a real estate monster that takes up so much of our consumption -- and thus our proletarian earnings -- that the housing industry is always the true mark of where the Australian economy is heading at any one time. The real estate market is Australian capitalism's stalking horse.

Fix the economy.

The tragedy is that unless you can fix the economy -- fix the mercurial nature of peoples' working life and income existence -- there won't be an easy way to create a new suburbia with a much more sustainable town plan. Without that fix, housing is always going to be a casino where some get lucky and some don't -- but the net effect has been the the percentage of Australians who own their own home has been largely unchanged for 40 years.

• Around 70 per cent of Australian households own or are purchasing their home. The rate of home ownership has remained remarkably stable at this level for over four decades according to data collected by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in its Census of Population and Housing and its Survey of Income and Housing (SIH).
• The proportion of Australian households who own their home outright (that is, without a mortgage) has been far from stable. Based on data from the Census, the rate of outright home ownership fell from 45 per cent in 1947 to 32 per cent in 1976, rising to 43 per cent in 1996 before falling again to 35 per cent in 2006. Data from the SIH for the period 1995 96 to 2005 06 show a similar marked fall in the rate of outright home ownership, falling from 43 to 34 per cent. Home ownership in Australia - data and trends Parliamentary Library , Feb 11, 2009.

Aspiring to home ownership is, in fact, the most Sisyphean task you could tackle.

But the aspiration isn't simply a question of affordability. There is a heavy carbon load on how and where we choose or are forced to live. When you combine residence with issues of infrastructure -- especially energy supply and transport -- a big proportion of national C02 emissions per capita are tied up in our domicile habits or sentences.In fact housing is the axis of the personal carbon utilisation -- in what the homes emit while being constructed, as we live in them in the form of energy used and what we produce traveling to and from them.

While this consumption is the main focus for green washed consumables, climate change spin and personal environmental angst in regard to climate, the real gains in the reduction of C02 emissions are to be had elsewhere; standalone energy, agriculture, and all forms of transport.

Nonetheless, the eco friendly green home is practicable and any number of formulations exist to create it(eg: solar hot water,tank water supplementation,insulation, etc) . All that is required initially is to retro fit what may be accomodating the estimated 7.4 million households in Australia.

But even when you ponder that massive task, the Housing Industry Association estimates that despite the fact that mortgage repayments now account for 29.1 per cent of an average first home buyer’s income – the highest percentage on record. (ref) -- a million new homes need to be built over the next five years to keep pace with the expected population growth.(ref)

Where and how are these houses to be built?

The story so far:

• Solutions for the Housing Crisis I: tips from the Brisbane experience
  
• Solutions for the Housing Crisis II:mobility and living together
  
• Solutions to the Housing Crisis III: affordability
  
• Solutions to the Housing Crisis IV: materials
  
• Solutions to the Housing Crisis IV: public housing
  

It's a corporate crisis: let the corporations pay

By Tim Gooden, Secretary Geelong and Regional Trades and Labour Council

At an Australia Day reception, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said of the economic crisis: ``In these times, employers must do their utmost to protect their workers from dismissal, knowing that these workers will serve them well when times turn good again.''

Tell that to the 1850 workers sacked by Pacific Brands, or the 3300 set to be axed by BHP Billiton or Rio Tinto's 2000 or any of the 23,000 who have been shown the door by corporate Australia since June last year.

Many employers are saying “we are all in the same boat” facing the global economic crisis. But most of the rhetoric from government and big business has been about preparing workers to pay for the crisis.

All the calls have been for wage freezes, shorter working week, cuts to immigration and increases in government subsidies to support industries.

Workers did not create this economic crisis. It's not workers that have been speculating on the futures market. Yet it is workers that spend and create the demand that brings about economic growth.

Unions want to save our members' jobs and ensure they maintain their living standards. The global financial crisis isn’t just clipping the wings of grossly overpaid bank executives and speculators in shonky “financial instruments”. It’s going to hit ordinary working people hard.

Areas where unemployment rates are higher than the national average willbe worst hit. And it won’t be just blue collar workers in traditional manufacturing, like the several hundreds at Ford Geelong. Victoria University in Melbourne’s West recently announced redundancies: 250 staff (19% of teaching and general staff). Meanwhile BHP's decision to close the Ravensworth nickel mine will completely devastate the entire town.

Economic figures show that while productivity increased 79% between 1979 and today, real wages have only increased 12%. Employers took the cream during the boom – now they expect workers to pay for the downturn.

There are a number of things we can do in Geelong. First of all manufacturing employers should be attending the Geelong Manufacturing Council to contribute to workout solutions. There are already good programs and funding to support business transition to more efficient operations and moves to develop sustainable production and the creation of ‘green jobs’. Training and planning for future challenges is critical for long term viability.

We need a single office front that can support all workers and businesses that are going through transition -- a single point that can identify what jobs are coming and going and any skill gaps in those changes in order to make sure the correct training and support programs are in place to meet the needs of workers and businesses.

Unions should also be campaigning for government intervention that is aimed at job-rich spending. The government has a responsibility to spend money to keep people employed and provide services, not to stimulate profits. Neither should the government be looking to cut public sector jobs – that will only make things worse. Long-term investment in public transport infrastructure and the transition to environmentally sustainable production is a must. The Government should focus on real practical changes such as:

• Giving pensioners and the unemployed a living wage now, at the very least 35% of average weekly earnings.
• Speed up public spending on sorely needed infrastructure. Invest in rail, renewable energy, and decent public housing, health and education
• Nationalise the banks and run them in the community interest, beginning with the re-nationalisation of the Commonwealth Bank.

This might seem an “extreme” policy to some, but l the US and British governments have already conducted crisis nationalisations.

Some companies will go broke, indeed some already have. When this happens, a factory closure must be stopped until the unions and the government sees what part of such a plant could be used and retooled to carry out socially useful alternative production Let's hear the union leaderships really demand this approach from governments who say they put "working families first.

The Australian manufacturing base as a whole should be kept running, if necessary by worker/union control to force the Federal government and state governments to take a stand. Big business should be forced to make special payments to help fund the operation.

Finally, let's see the ACTU and our union leaderships fight for industrial legislation that tears up Work Choices. Only decent, enforceable employment laws will prevent workers from further exploitation. The corporations made the current economic mess: working people and their organisations need all the strength they can command to help clean it up.

Tim Gooden - Secretary Geelong and Regional Trades and Labour Council. This commentary was originally published in the Geelong Times

A local economic recession is no longer guess work

The Graph for the UK

By Dave Riley

The BBC has a short discussion on one salient fact:

The UK economy has shrunk for the second successive quarter meaning that the country is now technically in recession.

And like the days of the "Thatcher Divide" incomes are suffering more in the regions than the area around London.

Only this week the "r" world is being bandied about in Australian economic discouse in the wake of the falling omph in the Chinese economy and in succession a round of layoffs have been announced -- David Jones, BHP/Billiton -- with some companies like Harvey Nomann waving frantically that they are indeed in big trouble.

How this stacks up isn't at all clear as all the stats aren't in, but it's clear that when Rudd was paying out for a Xmas spend up the signals were well and truly flashing despite the government rhetoric at the time. Now the hazard guess is of 250,000 job losses over the next year.

'The truth is 2009 will be one of the toughest years Australia's faced in decades as the global financial crisis wreaks havoc on Australian jobs,'' Rudd said in Sydney this week. ''Growth will slow, unemployment will rise. And given the deteriorating global outlook, we must acknowledge that conditions could get worse.'

Could?

Richard Wolff: real wages and the current economic crash

from Tribeca Radio Podcasts » Steal This Radio

Marxist economist Richard Wolff explores the underpinnings of the crisis the capitalist system is facing today.

Tune in to STEAL THIS RADIO, hosted by Mitchel Cohen and broadcast only over the internet at NYTalkRadio.net (Click on “Listen Live”) on Friday, December 19th at 11 am, and repeated Tuesday, December 23rd at 8 pm.

Rick Wolff explains that real wages have not increased in the U.S. in almost 40 years, and that the capitalist class offered easy credit to compensate for that, which was a key factor in leading to the current crash. You can also read one of Prof. Wolff’s recent articles online

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Original audio source

Video:The Capitalist Economic Crisis

Click To Play

This is an exploration of the background and causes of the Capitalist Economic Crisis and what should be the response from workers and pensioners. I had composed it initially in powerpoint and then followed that up with reviews and re- editing.

So for the experience, I transposed the presentation into video format. It scrubbed up rather nicely I think and I'm sure to be doing more of the same(Although -- make note of please David -- I should have created a larger file for better image quality)

• Watch video on YouTube
  

The RatbagMedia Channel

The Enigma of Capital

Source:The Enigma of Capital

City University of New York Graduate Center

Presentation by David Harvey
November 14, 2008
1 hour 2 minutes

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Original audio source

I.O.U.S.A. – the 30-Minute Version

I.O.U.S.A. – the 30-Minute Version from IOUSA the Movie on Vimeo.
I.O.U.S.A. – the 30-Minute Version from IOUSA the Movie on Vimeo.

I.O.U.S.A. is a film that examines the rapidly growing US national debt and its consequences for the United States and its population. It comes from a conservative perspective but it reviews the financial context very well. The key question is: who is gonna pay? Them or us?

...And they say socialism can't work!

Marx and the Credit Crunch - István Mészáros

These three videos are Marx and the Credit Crunch, by István Mészáros.

Marxism 101 :The Labour Theory of Value

INTRODUCING Mr Karl Marx's Labor Theory of Value & an exploration of “Surplus Value” with a special guest appearance by Finance Capital
by Dave Riley
I had to give a talk on Marxism today as it related to the current capitalist crisis. I delivered this presentation after screening Brendan Cooney's excellent video on 'Capitalist Equilibrium'.

It's very dense material but if you work hard enough comprehending the basic concepts/definitions you're on your way.

An Introduction Marxist Economics

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: capitalism economics)

We ran the seminar beginning with an overview of the crisis followed by the above as an exploration of underlying Marxian concepts. We then concluded with a review of solutions from a socialist perspective.

While I said my piece in my limited time (as we had to rush back from a local Indigenous rally and march over Lex Wotton's case) in my summing up I tried to present capitalism's perspective from hereon.

The conundrum seems to be that any and all bailouts can only feed greater financialisation of the capitalist economy which would be further complicated by inflation as demand drove up the prices of investment detritus in the finance sector . But underlying that phenomenon, and formatting it, the productive economy will still be as stagnant as it has been for the last thirty years.

While it should be possible to assume that the market collapses over the past 25 years -- such as in 1987, that of the " Asian Tigers" and the 2000 fall -- should impact on debt accumulation, the phenomenon has been that while debt accumulation is dented briefly it continues nonetheless to rise despite that proven volatility.

So on what basis will any bailout strategy impact on the practices and consequences that now rule the finance markets? In essence it merely rewards it , like with like, while fostering opportunities for greater monopolisation as bigger banks , insurance companies, etc buy up smaller ones as they all take a bath.

So if that approach can't work what's the way out of the mess? The 'way out', is straightforward: for the greater good(and in one sense, to also 'save' the economy) you need to produce stuff and the stuff that warrants being produced has to be primarily use values rather than commodities. So if capitalism wanted to pursue a way out, the one workable option is for governments to mount a massive program of public works and the like . Of course unless there's a profit in it that's hardly something that would survive for very long under capitalist scrutiny.That, nonetheless, is a primary element in any socialist program of 'recovery' -- especially one which aggressively turns the economy towards environmental sustainability.

While there's a self evident logic in that approach, to comprehend the underlying dynamic -- which essentially has to be a turning away from capitalism -- you need to brush up on Marxist economics. And if you don't take your socialism all the way the capitalists will simply carry the economy back to the horrific practices that we now are trying to deal with.

Catching up with the CAPITALIST ECONOMIC crisis

(Psst:It's not just 'financial'!)

If you are keen to keep abreast of the times there's no better place to start that with some of the economic analysis being published on Links.

The key markers are these tags:

• Economics
• Capitalism
• Marxist Theory
• Marxist Economics: a handbook of basic definitions

There's enough there already for a month of Sundays.

To supplement that, there's the rough aggregation of reports here on delicious.

And , for my money, the best everyday commentary on the crisis from an Australian POV is Stephen Long on The World Today. Long offers very frank analysis of the markets and the economy in easy-to-follow dialogue. They do dialogue very well on TWT.