Goods

Capital movements are no

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Capital movements are no longer necessarily related to the production of goods and services. Through the financial markets of the world, capital movements today are overwhelmingly concerned with the capture of and trade in property rights, the ownership of assets that magnify a corporation’s wealth, power, and control. It is what John Maynard Keynes described … Read more

I’m really still a

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I’m really still a child of the Forties. I still think about it a lot, about the repercussions of armed conflict. Until 1953 we had rationing. We couldn’t buy meat, we couldn’t buy pleasurable goods like cigarettes and sweets. I didn’t starve – my family were lucky – but I knew what it was like … Read more

A triumphalist corporate capitalism,

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A triumphalist corporate capitalism, free at last of the specter of Communism, has mobilized its economic power to relentlessly marginalize all nonmarket values; to subordinate every aspect of American life to corporate \”efficiency\” and the bottom line; to demonize not only government but the very idea of public service and public goods. Ellen Willis

Under present conditions, people

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Under present conditions, people are preoccupied with consumer goods not because they are brainwashed but because buying is the one pleasurable activity not only permitted but actively encouraged by our rulers. The pleasure of eating an ice cream cone may be minor compared to the pleasure of meaningful, autonomous work, but the former is easily … Read more

I become one of

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I become one of those people who walks alone in the dark at night while others sleep or watch Mary Tyler Moore reruns or pull all-nighters to finish up some paper that’s due first thing tomorrow. I always carry lots of stuff with me wherever I roam, always weighted down with books, with cassettes, with … Read more