Tidbits - October 22, 2015 - Are You a Capitalist?; Sanders; Clinton; The Grassroots; Afghanistan; Puerto Rico; Palestine; Announcements; and more....

Portside
Reader Comments: Sanders forces question - Are You a Capitalist; Media and Country Debate Socialism like no time in a hundred years; Clinton; GOP Crackup; Afghanistan; Puerto Rico; Palestine; Leonard Peltier; Readers Debate Tipping; Rosalyn Baxandall Announcements: Marxist classes and book talks in New York; Paul Robeson play in Peekskill; Palestine Solidarity and Paid Family Leave events in New York

Piketty says "Tax the Rich"

Thomas Piketty AfricaFocus Bulletin
In a speech challenging both national and global inequality, with a particular focus on France and South Africa, economist Thomas Piketty concluded with calls for taxes on wealth, and a public global registry of financial assets to make that possible. The speech evoked a frenzy of comment - from praise to denunciations of Piketty's analysis as Marxist or alternately, unrealistic, to those who criticized him for having a flawed analysis that disregarded Marxist insights.

5 Vital Lessons from American Labor's Rise and Fall

James M. Larkin The Nation
America's unions have been in retreat for decades - but can history point toward some fresh starts? Steve Fraser's book The Age of Acquiescence reminds us that America's worker movement-100 years ago-was a rather militant creature compared to today. Then, it was worker militias, "bread and roses," and unabashed class conflict; now, it's defense and dwindling membership, and disappointing Democrats. How did we get here? Is there still power in a union?

labor

We Are All Greeks Now

Chris Hedges Truthdig
The Greeks and the U.S. working poor endure the same deprivations because they are being assaulted by the same system—corporate capitalism. There are no internal constraints on corporate capitalism.And the few external constraints that existed have been removed.

Culture Isn’t Free

Miranda Campbell Jacobin
Expecting artists to work for free hands the reins of cultural production to ruling elites.

Why It's so Hard to Regulate Fracking

Justin Miller The American Prospect
The initial scope of the EPA fracking study was ambitious, though certainly not unachievable. The inherent problem, however, with technical studies of complex industry practices is that the EPA relies heavily on the willingness of the industry to give the agency access.

books

Harvey on Harvey: The Most Dangerous Book I Ever Wrote

David Harvey Reading Marx's Capital With David Harvey
In defining a clear and comprehensive anti-capitalist politics and offering rational and compelling reasons for operating as anti-capitalists, highly readable Marxian scholar David Harvey goes beyond listing contradictions of capital to engage in a systematic account of the web of 17 relationships for what are usually treated as isolated aspects of crisis. Many of the contradictions are manageable, but some in combination also contain the seeds of systemic catastrophe.

Record Profits, Record Stock Buybacks: Another Looming Crisis?

Sam Gindin Socialist Project
"The enormous gap in American infrastructural needs, the availability to the U.S. of cheap capital, and the unrelenting and appalling growth in inequality, all clinch the case for massive government infrastructural developments alongside progressive tax reform and steps to raise wages at the bottom of the labour market." In this article the author questions why those on the left are not organizing to confront the central questions of captalism.
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