Politics, Globalization, and Food Crisis Discourse by
Bernard Joseph Esposo Guerrero is a welcome addition to FTL because it adds a global dimension to the forum on combating globalization. During these times of global economic crisis, Guerrero’s analysis offers us a chance to understand events from the point of view of developing nations.
This information is vital to developing our ability to think globally while acting locally.
Read the entire essay and comment.
The CATO Institute has fired the first shot in the battle for the hearts and minds of America. This conservative think tank that aided and abetted the neoconservative takeover of US politics in the 1980s and 1990s recently ran a full page ad in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and other major newspapers across the country. The ad openly challenges the Keynesian economic principles behind President Obama’s economic stimulus package.
In the text of the ad the CATO Institute offers its solution to the economic meltdown of the US economy–more of the same free market policies, tax breaks, and privatization of social services that caused the meltdown!
The newspaper ad was signed by almost 250 academic economists, including 2 Nobel prize laureates, from universities and colleges across the country. Given a conservative estimate of 100 students per professor, we can be sure that at least 25,000 American students will be exposed to this conservative economic free market dogma and be required to repeat it ad nauseam.
That’s how captive audiences are treated in academia. Classrooms from kindergarten on up have always been the ideological boot camps of capitalism.
The CATO institute itself targets students with a dedicated website called CATO on Campus that offers academic contests rewarded with CATO publications and full scholarships to CATO University in San Diego.
As the nationwide newspaper ad campaign and massive website indicate, The CATO Institute is well funded for the battle to preserve capitalist rule.
The left needs to develop a clear alternative that focuses on the needs of working people. And we need to do it quickly.
Marx’s Capital in near the top of the bestseller list around the world. The amazing thing about this rediscovery of Capital is that the majority of the current buyers of the book are financial speculators who are trying to figure out how to profit from the ongoing global meltdown!
It is time for people who are interested in solving economic problems rather than profiting from them to study the works of Karl Marx.
We do not advise newcomers to Marx to dive straight into Capital–it is deep stuff. A better approach is through Isaiah Berlin’s Karl Marx, an excellent political biography that examines Marx’s major works in historical context, or through Marx for Beginners by Rius, a rollicking cartoon book that actually communicates the basics.
Both of these excellent books are still in print and readily available. Marx’s Kapital for Beginners, a companion volume to Marx for Beginners, appears to be out of print, but I recently picked up a copy at a local 1/2 Price Books.
Once you master the basics of Marx’s analysis you can access and download his entire works online for free.
The British Ministry of Defense has warned the rulers of the western world about the threat that a revival of Marxism poses to their various regimes but, largely because of the Internet, there is nothing that any of them can do about it.
If you are unfamiliar with the works of Karl Marx, take the plunge and become part of the solution to today’s dangerous problems.
Remember the quotation that is inscribed on Marx’s tomb in London’s Highgate Cemetery:
“Philosophers have previously offered various interpretations of the world. Our business is to change it.”