Category Archives: Economics

“We shall seek to portray this as simply and popularly as possible, and shall not presuppose a knowledge of even the most elementary notions of political economy. We wish to be understood by the workers.” — Karl Marx, Wage Labor & Capital

Breaking With the Economic Beatitude: Refutations of Some Prevailing Notions Against the Basic Income

Posted on 31/03/2013 by Jerome Nikolai Warren

I’ve written elsewhere on the subject of immaterial hurdles facing the argument for the basic income guarantee [µ]. I want to shortly summarize the sentiments constituting these hurdles, and outline the counter-arguments I’ve given against these views. In my prior … Continue reading →

Posted in Cultural analysis, Economics | Tagged , | 2 Comments

New Age Marxism

Posted on 15/02/2013 by Paul Cockshott

I have started reading Heinrich’s ‘An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx’s Capital’. I decided to read it after I was told that this was probably the most influential work published by what are termed the ‘value form’ … Continue reading →

Posted in Economics | 3 Comments

Interview: Paul Cockshott on Econophysics and Socialism

Posted on 06/02/2013 by Gavin Mendel-Gleason

Paul Cockshott is a Scottish computer scientist and a reader at the University of Glasgow. His major areas of work include array compilers, econophysics and the physical foundations of computability. He has written a number of books including Towards a … Continue reading →

Posted in Economics | 4 Comments

The Legend of US Manufacturing Decline

Posted on 03/02/2013 by Gavin Mendel-Gleason

It is a well known fact that the US is suffering from high unemployment and under-employment. This fact creates a host of social problems: it exacerbates poverty, increases inequality, weakens workers’ bargaining hand when looking for jobs and generates social … Continue reading →

Posted in Economics, History | Comments Off on The Legend of US Manufacturing Decline

Dreaming a New Freedom

Posted on 18/10/2012 by Alistair Davidson

Capitalism is in crisis… again. There is a glaring need for alternative visions of society, but few are being presented, and none taken seriously. The old alternative, the communist dream of a free and equal society, has been in a … Continue reading →

Posted in Economics | 3 Comments

Limited liability: why we should want more of it

Posted on 30/08/2012 by modulus

On my previous post on corporate personhood I intended to also deal with the matter of limited liability–hence the URL of the post. However, I couldn’t do that in that post, so here it goes. Limited liability is a privilege … Continue reading →

Posted in Bourgeois politics, Economics, History, Politics, Proletarian politics | Comments Off on Limited liability: why we should want more of it

Planning and its complexities

Posted on 07/08/2012 by Gavin Mendel-Gleason

The system of planning in the Soviet Union was unique in both its scope and complexity  and it would be no exaggeration to call it a grand experiment, one which has given us an entirely unusual data point in the … Continue reading →

Posted in Economics, History | Comments Off on Planning and its complexities

Changing the mode of production

Posted on 31/07/2012 by Gavin Mendel-Gleason

The idea of a mode of production has its genesis amongst the political-economy theorists of the 19th century, a subject which was attracting so much interest was capitalism.  Capitalism – quite a new system – represented a sharp change from … Continue reading →

Posted in Economics, History | Comments Off on Changing the mode of production

Interest rates and fraud

Posted on 19/07/2012 by modulus

The exploding LIBOR scandalis already bad enough, but there are more general problems with the inter-bank offered rates. When something like LIBOR comes up, the responses from the establishment are so predictable as to contain no information: “exceptional cases”, “bad … Continue reading →

Posted in Economics | Comments Off on Interest rates and fraud

The crisis in Spain: a public-private partnership

Posted on 01/07/2012 by modulus

There’s a conventional wisdom on the right that the basic problem of the European economies now in trouble lies with excessive public spending. Sometimes this gets a bit more nuanced–but only a bit–and there comes the talk about competitiveness, labour … Continue reading →

Posted in Economics, History | Comments Off on The crisis in Spain: a public-private partnership

Which way the Economic Revolution?

Posted on 28/06/2012 by Gavin Mendel-Gleason

All socialists hold that capitalism is not the best of all possible worlds in terms of organising production and consumption when viewed from the position of the vast majority of society. However, socialists have often been pretty vague about what … Continue reading →

Posted in Economics, Politics, Proletarian politics | Comments Off on Which way the Economic Revolution?