Category: Uncategorized

Fahrenheit 451 redux

sanjay perera

by Henry A. Giroux “The great strength of the totalitarian state is that it forces those who fear it to imitate it…. A violently active, intrepid, brutal youth—that is what I am after… I will have no intellectual training. Knowledge is ruin for my young men.” — Adolf Hitler “They that start by burning books will end by burning men.” – Heinrich Heine Every once in a while events flash before us that might at first seem trivial or commonplace given how in tune they are with the political and ideological temper of the times; but in reality they sometimes … Continue reading Fahrenheit 451 redux

Lenin for the 21st century

sanjay perera

by Sanjay Perera
We are approaching the world historical moment that gives us the end of capitalism. So it is not a surprise to see a resurgence in the ideas of Karl Marx. But to say there should also be a widespread interest in Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, or Lenin, usually conjures up notions associated with the slide of Marx’s ideas into violence and revolutions gone wrong Continue reading Lenin for the 21st century

Re-envisioning utopian thinking

sanjay perera

by Stevphen Shukaitis 2012 preface: this essay was written in 2003 as a response to concerns coming out of the anti-globalization movement. Movement activists were confronted, much in the same way those involved in the Occupy movements are today, with a demand to move on from a protest against something to articulating alternative social arrangements. “Yes, I understand what you’re against, but what are you for? What’s your vision of how things should work?” Most often this demand was used in attempts to argue against the protest movements, either by claiming that they had no alternative vision or that this … Continue reading Re-envisioning utopian thinking

Anarchist economics

sanjay perera

by Uri Gordon  It cannot be enough to criticize capitalism, even from a distinctly anarchist point of view. Nor will it do to merely construct models of free and equal economic arrangements, no matter how inspiring and realistic. In addition to these, the discussion of anarchist economics must also involve a look at ways of getting from here to there. In other words, it requires that we examine anarchist economics in terms of concrete, present-day practices and assess their role within the more general context of anarchist revolutionary strategy. In this chapter I attempt to initiate such a discussion, by … Continue reading Anarchist economics

A new age of reason

sanjay perera

by Ali Shehzad Zaidi There is no better time, in this age of global warming and mass extinction of species, to rediscover the liberating thought of Thomas Paine, which recalls that of mystics and poets of many ancient cultures. In his iconoclastic The Age of Reason, published in 1794, Paine transfers the locus of the sacred from religious texts to the material Book of Nature, since “it is in this word, which no human invention can counterfeit or alter, that God speaketh universally to man” (Age 29). With these words, Paine anticipates the emergent romanticism of his times by envisioning … Continue reading A new age of reason

Resistance is not futile

sanjay perera

by Henry A. Giroux Within the last few months, we have seen an outpouring of student protests from all over the globe demonstrating an unrelenting fidelity to justice and to future generations.  Young people have been protesting in the streets in London, mobilizing against a society in which social services, jobs, and hopes for the future are disappearing.  At the same time, young people in the United States and in many Western countries are marching against cuts to student funding and fee increases,” while further demanding a radical economic, social, and political restructuring of the globe.[1] Students in France, Spain, … Continue reading Resistance is not futile

Global economic justice

sanjay perera

by Daniel Little My subject here is the role of ethical principles in the conduct of economic development planning and strategy. Bluntly, what does justice in development involve, and why should policy makers care? The field of “development ethics” has been around for at least fifty years, since the publications of Gunnar Myrdal (Myrdal, 1968). But it has received more focus and attention in the past thirty years, led by the brilliant work of Amartya Sen. Sen has many qualifications for theorizing about the ethics of development. He is a Nobel prize winning economist, he is an Asian by birth, … Continue reading Global economic justice

Alternatives to capitalism

sanjay perera

by Gregory Albo It is said so frequently now that socialism is dead that even socialists no longer notice.  This view is based, in good part, on the end of the political formations that came to represent socialism through the twentieth century (tiny Cuba notwithstanding).  The statist command economies of Eastern Europe, the diverse state-led national liberation projects of the South, and the social democratic welfare statism of Western capitalism have all fallen victim either to internal collapse or external de-stabilization.  The old joke of the Soviet leadership that the central question facing the US was the prospects for capitalism … Continue reading Alternatives to capitalism

Taking notes 2

sanjay perera

With the recent downgrading of almost ten Eurozone states by Standard & Poor’s from their so-called triple-A ratings thanks to their debts, sage Euro policymakers have railed against them and the other two agencies, Moody’s and Fitch. The claim by these staunch Europeans is that these credit rating agencies were too quick in downgrading their debt ridden countries from their much coveted ‘AAA’ status despite these chronic economies succumbing to ‘bailouts and austerity programmes’. Coincidentally, as if by the magic of the ‘free market’ some new characters have appeared on the scene called Berger and Krall to launch a European … Continue reading Taking notes 2

Why socialism?

sanjay perera

by Albert Einstein Is it advisable for one who is not an expert on economic and social issues to express views on the subject of socialism? I believe for a number of reasons that it is. Let us first consider the question from the point of view of scientific knowledge. It might appear that there are no essential methodological differences between astronomy and economics: scientists in both fields attempt to discover laws of general acceptability for a circumscribed group of phenomena in order to make the interconnection of these phenomena as clearly understandable as possible. But in reality such methodological … Continue reading Why socialism?