The author of Winners Take All assesses the relationship between philanthropy and antiracism in an era of growing wealth among elite changemakers Anand Giridharadas: ‘What wealthy people do is rig the discourse’ by Christopher Petrella, The Guardian, Feb 28, 2019, Excerpt… Socialist Cedric Robinson’s idea of racial capitalism as “ruling-class dance moves”… On the commonsense language we unwittingly or reflexively employ with respect …
What cities and the executive branch should be doing to get to good, fair internet access for everyone. Book review: Fiber: The Coming Tech Revolution — And Why America Might Miss It.
What cities should be doing? We celebrate Chattanooga and Lafayette and Wilson…so many of these cities that are heroes now have depended on their existing municipal electric utilities as a first step towards breeding fiber, but there are only a few thousand cities in the United States that have a municipal electric facility available, so there has to be a broader …
Creating an Ecological Society: Under capitalism, people are at the service of the economy, as workers and consumers of goods and services. In contrast, the economy of an ecological society will be at the service of humanity and its needs
How does capitalism impede the development of an ecological society? By its very nature capitalism operates in ways that harm people and the broader environment. The purpose of capitalism is to produce something (a good or a service) using hired labor, raw materials and machinery and sell it for more than the production cost. The motivating and driving force of the …
How to Hide an Empire
The word “empire” has a distinct place in the American lexicon: readily applicable to other countries but rarely, if ever, to the United States itself. Even in the spring of 2003, when American forces were occupying Iraq and Afghanistan and government officials were writing torture memos, the defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld seemed almost offended when a reporter asked whether the United States was …
Book of the Day: Elinor Ostrom’s Rules for Radicals,Cooperative Alternatives beyond Markets and States
Originally published in Pluto Press. Elinor Ostrom was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize for Economics. Her theorising of the commons has been celebrated as groundbreaking and opening the way for non-capitalist economic alternatives, yet, many radicals know little about her. This book redresses this, revealing the indispensability of her work for green politics, left economics and radical democracy. …
Review of The Songs of Trees: A Biologist’s Lyrical Ode to How Relationships Weave the Fabric of Life
The Songs of Trees: A Biologist’s Lyrical Ode to How Relationships Weave the Fabric of Life “Trees speak to the mind, and tell us many things, and teach us many good lessons,” an English gardener wrote in the seventeenth century. “When we have learned how to listen to trees,” Hermann Hesse rhapsodized two centuries later in his lyrical love letter …