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Showing posts with the label “US economy”

Capitalism in the Age of Digital Technology

An old article, but a very interesting one . “It’s sort of a supreme irony here that we now have the technology such that not that many people have to work and we can produce a lot. We have the technology that would allow us to address the vexing environmental problems with probably far less of a cost than we’re going to have to end up paying. We have the technology so that we could have a much higher standard of living. The output per worker is radically higher than it was fifty years ago. Yet the standard of living for most people is lower. There are endless calls for cutbacks, and stagnation at the same time. This is an enormous paradox, and it’s only understood by understanding the contradictions built into the way capitalism works.” A fascinating and a deep analysis indeed. However, I suggest that we abandon the dichotomy ‘capitalism’ and ‘democracy’. They are not two, but one called capitalist democracy.   “This tension between capitalism and democracy,” as McChesney puts it...

Israel and Imperialism

Israel is a unique case in the Middle East; it is financed by imperialism without being economically exploited by it… It is obvious that the readiness of the US government to forward these sums [of money] depends on what it gets in return. In the particular case of Israel this return is not economic profit. —The Class Nature of the Israeli Society by Haim Hanegbi, Moshe Machover and Akiva Orr, NLR Jan/Feb 1971 During the 1990s … there emerged, perhaps for the first time, a major cleavage within the elite. On the one hand, there is the ‘reactionary’ Zionist faction which hopes to freeze the world of yesterday. On the other hand, there is an increasingly powerful, ‘progressive’ faction, which seeks to ‘normalise’ the country, yet whose commitment to such normalisation weakens as its investment outside the country increases. This ruling class conflict doesn’t bode well for most Israelis, and for the Middle East as a whole. — Nitzan and Bichler The Global Political Economy of Israel , 2002...