Search Results for: Material World

The Rise of Capitalism

The capitalist system is the most productive mode of production in the history of humankind. In the space of a few centuries the world has been transformed beyond all recognition. Average life expectancies have more than doubled. Technological developments occur at a rate that would have been previously unimaginable. More food, clothing and shelter can be produced using less labour than ever before. It would seem that the material problems of survival have finally been solved.
 
Yet capitalism is a system at odds with itself. The need for constant accumulation is the driving force of society, determining where and in what way human energies will be used. Instead of humankind controlling the fulfilment of its own development, humanity is at the mercy of an economic system which it has itself created.

Africa – Starvation and Speculation

Starvation – the inability to buy the things to sustain life – is still stalking Africa.
 
George Soros is one of the great men of capitalism. He’s the Chairman of Soros Fund Management, a Hedge Fund that is estimated to have assets of approximately $27 billion, and the vehicle that has enabled him to become the 35th richest person in the world. He’s admired in the financial world as the “The Man Who Broke the Bank of England” when he pocketed a reported $1 billion in 1992 from the Black Wednesday UK currency debacle. He’s renowned for his philanthropy and as a supporter of liberal ideas. He has been described as a “distinguished thinker”.

Inflation: the Endless Farce

July 29, 2011

Every Prime Minister since the War has pledged himself or herself to tackle inflation as a top priority but rising prices have been with us continuously for half a century. Every year since 1938 prices have gone up and are still going up. The price level on average is about 24 times what it was before the war.

It was not always so. From 1850 to 1914 prices were stable; there were moderate fluctuations but the price level in 1914 was almost exactly the same as it had been 64 years earlier. And in 1919 the government decided to bring prices down and there was a fall of over 30 per cent between 1920 and 1925.

What Socialism Is

Socialist society will be a classless, wageless, democratically-run society where goods are produced to satisfy human needs instead of being sold for profit. The administration of such a society will be decided by its citizens, basing their decisions on the needs of the community, available resources, and technology.

Book Review: ‘To End Poverty – The Starvation of the Periphery by the Core’

Green backwoodsman

To End Poverty: The Starvation of the Periphery by the Core by Richard Hunt. Alternative Green, 20 Upper Barr, Cowley Centre OX4 3UX. 1997.

To end poverty we need to know how it began. Because, according to Richard Hunt, poverty is a relatively recent phenomenon unknown to our “primitive” forbears and that by looking at the kind of society in which they lived, we can detect clues that can guide us to that goal.

They Shoot Cowards, Don’t They?

Eighty years ago, some ten million lives were lost in World War One. Among these countless casualties was a small group of about three hundred and fifty who are not remembered each November when the dignitaries assemble at the Cenotaph and lay their patronising wreaths of poppies.

Book Reviews: ‘Workers Against Lenin’

Laying the foundations

Workers Against Lenin. Labour Protest and the Bolshevik Dictatorship 1920-22. By Jonathan Aves. IB Taurus.

A so-called Workers’ State that oppressed the workers was not just a feature of Russia under Stalin. It also existed under Lenin and Trotsky; in fact, it was they who laid the foundations for the reinforced dictatorship Stalin later built up.