capitalism versus socialism, capitalism versus freedom

Anyone who thinks Capitalism differs from Socialism in being "free", without repression, encouraging democracy, etc., is just not listening....

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=9737

compare and contrast: capitalism and communism

Once upon a time, when a country called "Czechoslovakia" existed, my teacher
told me about a man, a surrealist.  She told me that he performed the necessary
work which he had to do----and I assumed then it was some kind of menial labor assigned to him as a punishment for his intellectual independence---and, then, after that, he went on to do his own work---which I took to mean his creative accomplishments. 

Compare that story of repression and gray life with the following;

Just today, I've gotten another job notice about a job at a university in California,
and, once again, there are words to the effect:  We are looking for candidates who will continue to think about the job outside of the classroom......

So, if (contrary to fact and totally impossibly) our Czech surrealist had gotten such a job at a California university, he might not have had the time to produce the books and poetry which he did produce........ (And while he was not writing poetry, he would have been expected to smile and say "I love what I am doing.")

Is this progress?

NOTE/CORRECTION  (added 1 June 2013)
I neglected to mention that the jobs in question (and there have been many) are part-time and/or temporary!  So, you are expected to work part-time, presumably without health insurance---and when you are not officially working, you are still working!  Now, that's a new form of slavery.

memory-mix

Warning Label:

Memories mix. They blend.  People mix.  They blend. 
 I cannot always be sure who said what. 

--- But, usually, I think I know what I think.

 

I seem to recall,
that a student told me,
when I asked,
that "No", he really didn't like,
a certain economist,
because she liked or supported or was somehow positive toward
Labor Unions,
which an economist was not supposed to do.

And around about the same time,
I seem to recall,
the same student launched a defense of Capitalism,
on the grounds that during the 1960's or thereabouts,
it was doing quite well.

And, later I recalled,
that during the 1960's or thereabouts,
workers had enjoyed relatively full-employment and other benefits,
which mostly came about through the efforts of Labor Unions,
or what you might call a struggle between Labor and Capital......

irreverence toward markets

The market of the economystifiers' imagination doesn't exist.

The market is a mythological creature, a unicorn, like God and His angels,

---or The Devil.


People exist,

and people want Goodness (not merely goods) and justice,

Which Mere Markets will never bring us.

Czech politics

My colleagues (so far as I can tell) largely found the current President of the Czech Republic too repulsive to vote for him.

I, on the other hand, found the notion that someone is a wealthy aristocrat an equally enormous turn-off.  I think of George Bush, the younger, as a child, going to school in a chauffeur-driven limousine.
And I think of the VAT tax I pay----for food, books, and coffee.  That's a regressive tax that hurts working people more than the wealthy.  And I imagine a man who has, all of his life, been surrounded by helpers, servants.......A person like that is no democrat......and could never identify with or represent working people. (And, what's more, I don't want someone to merely represent me.)

Anyway, my colleagues find Zeman repulsive in somewhat the same way educated people used to react in horror to George Bush, the younger (or, indeed, Ronald Reagan).

So, now, the President of the USA is less obnoxious than Bush.  However, very little has been accomplished.  Wars still rage, and the war against working people (called "austerity" or "fiscal responsiblity") continues.

(For a more sympathetic view of Obama, see Robert Paul Wolff's Blog.)

austerity in 1996

This blog is very personal.  And, in that it continues a trend which began long ago, a trend which allows all of us to speak.  No longer must we listen to the tales of kings and queens and mythological creatures.  Nor must we hear the propagandistic re-telling of the trite and imaginary tale of the "creative enterpreneur" who worked day-and-night to bestow upon the world some new product, some new trifle, some much-desired and clamoured-for technological innovation, while slaves laboured underground to put the pieces together, and he gloried above in the unending praise of the slavish media.....No such uglinesss here!

Austerity today is a cruel weapon.  But, in one sense, austerity began in my life on a day back in 1996, when something like the conversation indirectly indicated in the following lines occurred:

You can have a job,

until the boss comes,

and tells you that you've got no job,

unless,

and here he scrapes his foot and gets uncomfortable,

suggesting you really wouldn't want this,

but he's got to mention it,

although if you really wouldn't want it,
unless you'd like to throw an old dog a bone,
But,

why is he mentioning it then,
if he knows you really wouldn't want it?

--Well, go ahead,
and say it,
you think,
And he mentions it anyway---

Unless, perhaps, he says,

you'd like to work at one-third or one-fourth

the salary you had before,

while doing the same work.

 

In the language of American universities, what is described above is the opportunity to make a transition from a "Visiting Assistant Professor" (a full-time job with benefits) to the postion of "Adjunct" (a part-time job without benefits, and paid at a much lower rate).  When faced with that choice, I left the United States. 

The Irrelevance of Economics

A quote from Robert Paul Wolff, (Cut and pasted from his blog, "The Philosopher's Stone"---NOT :"The Philosopher's stoned"........)

"I am reminded of a famous remark made in 1957 by Paul Samuelson, the first person ever to win   the newly established Nobel prize in Economics, and widely considered the greatest living economist. Samuelson observed that in a General Equilibrium system with perfect competition, it does not matter whether capital hires labor or labor hires capital. He was quite correct about his model, as we would expect him to be, and generally speaking, folks who heard or read this remark took it as evidence of the irrelevance to economic theory of any moral condemnations of exploitation or of the tyranny of capital over labor.

But I read the remark quite differently. That capital hires labor is the simplest, most obvious, most universal, most indubitable fact about capitalism. Any model that purports to reveal the structure of capitalism and yet fails to capture that elementary fact is obviously completely inadequate! One might as well offer a model of American politics that has no place in it for the fact that periodically Americans hold elections."

(color not in original)

http://robertpaulwolff.blogspot