Reflections on the current disorder
[This is the edited text of a talk I gave via Zoom, like everything else these days, sponsored by the North Brooklyn chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. It reprises and updates several things I’ve written recently, but it’s hard to be original these days. Video will be posted, but who wants to look at me? The Q&A was quite good though.] Before I get into the body of my talk, I want to celebrate our electoral victories and say how proud I am to be a member of DSA. If… Read More
Sam Gindin on the crisis in labor
[This is a lightly edited transcript of my interview with Sam Gindin, first broadcast on June 14, 2012. The audio is here. Thanks a million to Andrew Loewen for doing the transcription.] My next guest is the excellent Sam Gindin. Sam is an economist who spent more than 20 years in the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) Union, first as a researcher and then as an adviser to the president. He retired from the CAW in 2000 and has since been teaching in the wonderful political science department at York University, Toronto. He… Read More
Against catastrophism
This is the text of my introduction to a panel on catastrophism that (Catastrophism and the Crisis of the Left) that I MC’d at the Left Forum, March 19, 2011, at Pace University, New York. Events in Japan have gotten me thinking about crises in general. At first, I thought that it might promote the realization that finding clean, renewable forms of energy may the most urgent task facing us today. But then I thought back a bit to other energy-related crises. One of my beefs with the peak oilers, aside from… Read More
The Real News, part 2
Part 2 of my interview with The Real News on The Crisis is up: THE LIMITS OF STIMULUS.
Fresh LBO website content
Freshly posted to the LBO website: • How to learn nothing from crisis: careening back to the status quo ante bustum, a well-received piece from #125. • Contents of #126: suboptimal disillusionment • c’mon, Slavoj, tell us the secret! • Greece and the EU crisis • recovery, now what? • CPI-Elderly • buying green makes you nasty. Here’s a little taste of each. If you like what you see and want to keep it coming, instead of adding another victim to the Great Periodical Die-Off, then please subscribe if you don’t already. And if you… Read More
LBO 125 out
Left Business Observer #125 is out! Already emailed to electronic subscribers, and on press for the dead tree contingent. Contents: a risky return to the familiar college: best way to make a buck, especially if you’ve already got a few contemplating exits; Obama’s stingy budget unemployment & GDP: U.S. more savage than usual Tastes here. But why settle for a tease when you can get the real thing for just a few bucks? Support the kind of economic and political analysis you can’t get anywhere else: LBO subscription info.
LBO News from Doug Henwood 