Author: wsm_matt
Colour prejudice
The description of the aristocracy as blue-bloods was very much based on class where fair skin highlighted a person’s blue veins which showed that they did not toil in the outdoors in the fields like the peasants. Today the problem is confused by the idea of race which human beings impose on themselves, an issue…
Out of Africa
Emigration from Africa has increased dramatically in the last three decades, going from just 1 per cent in the 1990s to 31 per cent by the 2000s. Migration by people has been a fact of life throughout their evolution. At this point in history, we should look at the reasons for such numbers of migrants…
The strange world of Fully Automated Luxury Communism (FALC): a consumer fantasy?
The conquest of scarcity Aaron Bastani, co-founder and senior editor at the alternative media organisation Novara Media, argues in his book Fully Automated Luxury Communism (published by Verso this month) that current technological advances are on the way toward overcoming scarcity and making ‘luxury communism’ – a society of abundance for all – possible for the first…
Latter-day Neros
‘The politics that’s needed to prevent the climate catastrophe—it doesn’t exist today. We need to change the system, as if we were in crisis, as if there were a war going on’. Teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg, who shot to global prominence in 2018 by missing school days to go on strike alone outside the…
Climate change: capitalism can’t cope
Last October the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published a report on what they consider would have to be done, and by when, to avoid average global temperature rising by the end of the century by more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. They concluded that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions would have to be…
A view on Trump
“His cupboard bare; his vision hardwired” – Wire, ‘Internal Exile’ As some wag tweeted after the presidential election, orange is the new black: Trump the Terrible will soon replace Oleaginous Obama as the leader of the world’s most powerful nation. Trump’s white nationalist supporters and hangers-on are naturally ecstatic – and some of them may…
Boeing: the fatal price of competition
Boeing Boing Capitalism’s supporters are always telling us that competition brings out the best in human beings. It is supposed to encourage efficiency and creativity and promote innovation. We are also informed that capitalism’s drive for profit creates high quality goods that most people desire at a competitive price. However, as we have shown time…
Collateral damage in Flint
The wheels of justice turn slowly, and the effects of lead poisoning are also slow and pernicious. The city of Flint’s water crisis began in April 2014. In a cost-saving measure to save around $5m the state-appointed city manager changed the city’s water source from treated Detroit Water and Sewerage Department water, sourced from Lake…
Una sociedad dividida en dos clases sociales
Si usted le pregunta a un sociólogo moderno de cuántas clases sociales existen en nuestra sociedad. Ellos contestarían que son seis, o tal vez tres, o doce, o cualquier otro número que tenga en su fantasía. Existen muchas definiciones de lo que es una clase social. Por lo general esas definiciones son falsas e inútiles…
Elections and the WSP (India)
The class ownership of the means of production and their use to make profits is the basis of modern, capitalist society. It means there are two opposed classes: those who own and those who because they don’t own must work for those who do. Mere democratic reform that leaves untouched this class basis of society…