Tag: money

Capitalism, socialism, and everyday life in the twenty-first century

sanjay perera

by Jeff Noonan
With new technologies, younger generations are shaped in their sense of self by the changed work and social relationships of on-line environments, so nineteenth and twentieth century forms of working class consciousness and struggle seem impossible to revive. Continue reading Capitalism, socialism, and everyday life in the twenty-first century

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Taking notes 28: The next step for digital currency

sanjay perera

by Charles Eisenstein: Today’s national and supranational currencies have become a blight on this planet. Created through interest-bearing debt, controlled by financial elites, tracked by the surveillance state, and necessitating endless growth, money as we know it is a primary agent of inequality, injustice, and ecocide. What to do? One response is to attempt to transform the money system; another is to create alternatives that may supplant it when, as is inevitable, the present system stops working. The most famous of these alternatives is the digital currency Bitcoin. It was designed to mimic gold in both its sourcing and its … Continue reading Taking notes 28: The next step for digital currency

Money and the turning of the Age

sanjay perera

by Charles Eisenstein As the economic meltdown proceeds to its next phase, we begin to see the unreality of much that we thought real. The verities of two generations become uncertain, and despite a lingering hope that a return to normalcy is just around the corner — in “the third quarter of 2009” or “by the middle of 2010” — the realization is dawning that normal is not coming back. When faced with an abrupt shift in personal reality, whether the death of a loved one, or the Gestapo coming into town, human beings usually react first with denial. My … Continue reading Money and the turning of the Age

Redesigning money for well-being and happiness

sanjay perera

by Mark Anielski “One must make a new system that makes the old system obsolete.” — Buckminster Fuller The greatest threat to the pursuit of genuine happiness and well-being is our current debt-money system. In the face of an international debt-crisis, it is remarkable that there is no serious discussion about the nature of money, or about how, and who creates our money. While meaningful conversations about alternative measures of progress (e.g. Gross National Happiness, Genuine Progress Indicators) are now under way, these efforts will ultimately fail without understanding that the current debt-based money system must be fundamentally restructured. The … Continue reading Redesigning money for well-being and happiness

An infernal machine: A new reading of Capital

sanjay perera

by Fredric Jameson My title promises a preview of my forthcoming book, Representing Capital, a commentary on Volume I of Marx’s Capital, which I read somewhat differently than many of the standard interpretations. So I will tell you something about that and then draw some practical conclusions about Marxism today and its political and intellectual mission. I am anxious that this work of mine not be understood as a “literary” reading of Capital: not only have those few such attempts been either weak generic classifications or fairly obvious notes on style and metaphor: indeed, the very term literary in this … Continue reading An infernal machine: A new reading of Capital