We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Monday, March 21, 2016

Capitalist trade and its discontents

Click here to access article by David Ruccio from his blog Occasional Links & Commentary.


Economist Ruccio writes:

It doesn’t take a genius to understand that international trade under capitalism creates winners and losers. A few winners and lots of losers.

Generations of heterodox economists have demonstrated exactly that—that, both theoretically and empirically, capitalist trade can and often does have diverging class effects. Mainstream economists, however, persist in arguing exactly the opposite: everyone gains from trade.
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