Economics

1 December 2008Review

Pluto, 2008; ISBN 978 0745327501; 360pp; £12.99

Last year, an intelligent and committed activist confessed to me that they did not really understand what “capitalism” meant. More recently, another friend bemoaned to me the high level of coverage given over to the current financial crisis in the papers – not for lack of appreciation of the subject’s importance, but because most of the coverage was either unintelligible or uninformative.

Fortunately, help is now on hand for both of them. Well-structured, straightforwardly written,…

1 November 2008Feature

Noam Chomsky, one of the world’s leading radical commentators, was interviewed about the financial crisis, Obama and Palin by Simone Bruno for ZNet on 13 October.

Simone Bruno I would like to talk about the current crisis. How is it that so many people could see it coming, but the people in charge of governments and economies didn’t, or didn’t prepare?

Noam Chomsky Since financial liberalisation was instituted about thirty-five years ago, there has been a trend of increasing regularity of crises and deeper crises, and the reasons are intrinsic and understood.

So, for example, if you and I make a transaction, say you sell me a…

1 October 2008News

Transition towns are a new and fast spreading initiative on how our communities can cope with climate change and the decline of oil supplies. One important aspect is that of local finance.

Lewes, birth-place of Thomas Paine (1737-1809), author of the Rights of Man, a popular text book of republican principles, has issued its own currency, the “Lewes Pound”.
The money can be exchanged at issuing points round the town including the Farmers’ Market and the Town Hall. Over a…

3 July 2006Comment

The Defence Committee's first report on Trident replacement was much better than I had dared hope for.

Of course it didn't oppose a replacement, but the fact that it listed abolition as one of the options on the table was positive in itself. Most importantly , at this moment in the political process, it added its voice --with considerable force--to the demand for a full debate,with proper government participation. But ever larger numbers of people are actually now explicitly…

1 December 2005Review

Wild Goose Publications, 2003. ISBN 1 901557 76 6; 232pp; £9.99

Margaret Legum has written a good and interesting book, but not the one she set out to write.

Part of the problem is that the book emerged from a set of lectures given at a University of Capetown Summer School. There is therefore an expectation that the reader already has a relatively clear understanding of the social and ecological costs of unfettered capitalism. While this is true for South Africa, other parts of the world still have a (diminishing) cushion of illusion. I fear that…

1 February 2005Review

English language; running time 144mins; at cinemas on limited release

Imagine Coca-Cola, Wal-Mart, Microsoft and Nike as real people. This is how The Corporation – the latest political documentary to hit our cinema screens – begins. In taking a look at the psychological profile of a modern day corporation – its self-interested nature, its inability to feel guilt and its uncaring stance – the film reveals that our favourite brands fit precisely the medical definition of a psychopath. Unfortunately, as the documentary explains, under today’s laws, a corporation…

1 December 2004Review

Oneworld Publications 2004; ISBN 1 8516 8342 9; 192pp; £9.99

This useful summary and overview is part of a series of beginner's guides published by Oneworld. I'd like to see the others also - on Genetics, PalestineIsrael and particularly Postmodernism, a subject on which I shall always be a beginner.

Tormey presents a well-organised schematic look at the modern anti-capitalist movement in recent years. He believes that the last five years since WTO Seattle in 1999 calls for a redefinition of anti-capitalist movements - essentially the hopeful…

1 September 2003Feature

Paul Ingram unravels the economic subsidies made in support of the British arms trade.

The Defence Systems Equipment International (DSEi) is the highly-visible tip of a very large murky iceberg of UK government financial support for arms exports. Two years ago, in July 2001, the Oxford Research Group teamed up with Saferworld to publish The Subsidy Trap, which outlined how £420m of taxpayers' money was being used directly and indirectly annually to support the export of arms from Britain. That amounted to £4,600 for every job supported in defence…

1 September 2001Review

Earthscan, 2000. ISBN 1 853836 12 5. 290pp £10.99

This is a revolutionary book; but Colin Hines doesn't believe in revolution.

The book's main point - that capitalist globalisation of the economy must be replaced by business and production based on the local - is a radical one, but he does not see a social shake-up on the cards.

Most of his argument seems to be directed at the supporters of the free market to convince them that localisation is necessary and possible. Chapter titles such as “Localisation will Bale Out the…

1 March 2001Feature

With the fall of the PRIafter 75 years in government there is some hope that Mexico may change its military operation in Chiapas and withdraw forces to pre- 1994 positions. In light of possible changes in military posture, combined with the new presidents, commitment to neo-liberal economic policy, Harry Cleaver argues that human rights advocates must shift their understanding of repression in such a manner as to grasp economic as well as police and military based repression.

President Foxs order for a withdrawal of military forces from Zapatista communities should not only be seen as a step in the right direction toward the reversal of the Mexican governments terrorist policies in Chiapas it must also be seen, and appreciated, as a victory for the Zapatista communities that have held out with so much courage during these long years of repression.

Whatever happens next, these current actions, that reportedly include the dismantling of military checkpoints…

1 March 2001Comment

When we made the decision to put this issue of Peace News together we did so because we knew that many of the issues being tackled by the so-called new breed of anti-globalisation activists are directly and undeniably linked with militarism. But that in many ways the international peace movement has been quite slow and ineffective at making those links visible. This issue of Peace News is one attempt to further expose and highlight those links.

We spent time attempting to pin down exactly what we would focus on, and in the end rejected creating an issue which focuses on globalisation however topical. Instead, while acknowledging the context provided by the ease with which capital, goods and services have been enabled to flow around the world, we decided that what we were really doing was creating an issue which would look at the economies of militarism.

To this end, PN 2442 has tried to focus on four distinct areas:

The…

1 March 2001Feature

The nuclear industry has always been intrinsically bound up with state militarism and in the globalised marketplace. Now some companies are happily crossing national boundaries with these most sensitive of commodities. Janet Kilburn looks at British government contracts for nuclear weapons production.

In the post-Thatcherist political landscape of British society we continue, in a truly British fashion, to maintain the notion of the level playing field, meanwhile progressing the ethos of protectionist privatisation with a ruthless and self-serving agenda.

New phrases (and concepts) such as public-private-partnership and private finance initiative are commonplace in the political language of modern Britain under Tony Blair's personal version of caring capitalism.

A cynical…

1 March 2001Feature

Military occupation creates new economies, andin countries devastated by war prostitution offers women an opportunity to earn a living. Sian Jones looks at the commodification of women by and for soldiers, aid workers and the traffickers.

When I was finally sold here in Brcko I was sold for DM 4,000. I heard that when you are sold once you are going to be sold many times again and you will never be able to earn the money to pay the original price. I thought that I would never be able to return home and never be able to pay the money to get me home.1

Since at least the 19th century, the military has sought to regulate the lives of prostitutes and other women working around military bases, and in so doing recreated…

1 January 2001Review

AK Press/Alternative Tentacles, spoken-word CD, 54 mins. Available from radical bookshops, or see http://www.akpress.org or http://www.alternativetentacles.com

This interesting, engaging and often humorous CD is the edited recording of a lecture given in the summer of 1997 at Colorado College in the US by radical activist and academic Angela Davis.

At the core of this fairly simple lecture is the exposing of links between capitalism, racism and the prison system - and this is done fairly eloquently on the whole.

Drawing on her own prison experience and the experiences of her friends and comrades, combined with a professed ex-…