cyu
15th June 2009, 21:00
A lot of useless crap and apparently very little about what Marxism is really about: the poor and the chained, but anyway...
Excerpts from http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/the-18th-brumaire-of-barack-obama/article1179757/
When I announce that I am a socialist, I guess it is no surprise because we are all socialists now. We just bought General Motors … The fact is that we now have Marxism realized. We own the means of production and we did not have to fire a single shot. It is really quite phenomenal what went on today.
– Pat Martin, NDP MP for Winnipeg Centre, in the House of Commons, Monday, June 1, 2009
Last month at Ryerson University, [Panitch] delivered the Phyllis Clarke memorial lecture, in which he explained why Marxism is more relevant today than ever. A version of the speech is the cover story of the latest edition of Foreign Policy magazine, the bible of the Washington political establishment.
In Germany (where they’re thinking of nationalizing banks), sales of Das Kapital, Karl Marx’s masterwork, increased tenfold last year. (To over 1,000) More copies of Prof. Panitch’s Renewing Socialism have sold in the last four months than in the previous seven years. The London School of Economics – the once-leftist school where the professor did his doctorate, although he complains it now offers nary a course on Marx – has invited him back to a conference. Title? “Revisiting Marxism.”
He was invited by none other than Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s President, to discuss whether the financial crisis could reinvigorate socialism as much as the fall of the Berlin Wall collapsed it.
Prof. Panitch has zero patience for the leftish wimpdom of the New Democrats or of Bob Rae, whom Prof. Panitch refers to as a “moral dwarf.”
He saves his deepest scorn for Stephen Harper. The spectacle of the Prime Minister, a free-market economist once bankrolled by the insurance industry, admitting that governments had no choice but to take over the North American car industry was rare redemption for a Marxist.
Canadian taxpayers and the Canadian Auto Workers now own more than $10-billion worth of GM stock. But neither the union nor taxpayers have a real voice on the board, and GM executives in Detroit are still pretending they own the joint
“That shows you how bizarre it is,” Prof. Panitch says, “that we call ourselves a democracy, but we have all these ‘private’ corporations that control our lives. Who owns them? The shareholders? Who are the shareholders in this case? Who owns GM? What’s being taken over by whom? And the fact that that question hasn’t been asked is frightening. Really, it has nothing to do with being a socialist. It has to do with being a democrat.”
And don’t expect Leo Panitch and his ilk to be heaping praise on your man Barack Obama: The new President is just part of the problem.
the finance, insurance and real-estate industries contributed $38-million to Mr. Obama’s election campaign, including a $900,000 chunk from Goldman Sachs. No wonder the Obama administration hasn’t thrown Wall Street to the pigs.
“A lot of people think the country’s being run by a left-wing radical.” But in fact Mr. Obama is “a kind of centre-slightly-left politician” overseeing the resale of America’s financial assets at fire-sale prices to the same private interests that screwed them up in the first place.
Financial-transaction taxes? Taking stakes in outmoded car companies? That’s thinking inside the box.
Even mainstream economists are now making radical, Marx-like noises. Willem Buiter, an economist at the London School of Economics, last week proposed socializing and nationalizing the entire banking system, given that it can’t keep itself afloat as a private enterprise.
Excerpts from http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/the-18th-brumaire-of-barack-obama/article1179757/
When I announce that I am a socialist, I guess it is no surprise because we are all socialists now. We just bought General Motors … The fact is that we now have Marxism realized. We own the means of production and we did not have to fire a single shot. It is really quite phenomenal what went on today.
– Pat Martin, NDP MP for Winnipeg Centre, in the House of Commons, Monday, June 1, 2009
Last month at Ryerson University, [Panitch] delivered the Phyllis Clarke memorial lecture, in which he explained why Marxism is more relevant today than ever. A version of the speech is the cover story of the latest edition of Foreign Policy magazine, the bible of the Washington political establishment.
In Germany (where they’re thinking of nationalizing banks), sales of Das Kapital, Karl Marx’s masterwork, increased tenfold last year. (To over 1,000) More copies of Prof. Panitch’s Renewing Socialism have sold in the last four months than in the previous seven years. The London School of Economics – the once-leftist school where the professor did his doctorate, although he complains it now offers nary a course on Marx – has invited him back to a conference. Title? “Revisiting Marxism.”
He was invited by none other than Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s President, to discuss whether the financial crisis could reinvigorate socialism as much as the fall of the Berlin Wall collapsed it.
Prof. Panitch has zero patience for the leftish wimpdom of the New Democrats or of Bob Rae, whom Prof. Panitch refers to as a “moral dwarf.”
He saves his deepest scorn for Stephen Harper. The spectacle of the Prime Minister, a free-market economist once bankrolled by the insurance industry, admitting that governments had no choice but to take over the North American car industry was rare redemption for a Marxist.
Canadian taxpayers and the Canadian Auto Workers now own more than $10-billion worth of GM stock. But neither the union nor taxpayers have a real voice on the board, and GM executives in Detroit are still pretending they own the joint
“That shows you how bizarre it is,” Prof. Panitch says, “that we call ourselves a democracy, but we have all these ‘private’ corporations that control our lives. Who owns them? The shareholders? Who are the shareholders in this case? Who owns GM? What’s being taken over by whom? And the fact that that question hasn’t been asked is frightening. Really, it has nothing to do with being a socialist. It has to do with being a democrat.”
And don’t expect Leo Panitch and his ilk to be heaping praise on your man Barack Obama: The new President is just part of the problem.
the finance, insurance and real-estate industries contributed $38-million to Mr. Obama’s election campaign, including a $900,000 chunk from Goldman Sachs. No wonder the Obama administration hasn’t thrown Wall Street to the pigs.
“A lot of people think the country’s being run by a left-wing radical.” But in fact Mr. Obama is “a kind of centre-slightly-left politician” overseeing the resale of America’s financial assets at fire-sale prices to the same private interests that screwed them up in the first place.
Financial-transaction taxes? Taking stakes in outmoded car companies? That’s thinking inside the box.
Even mainstream economists are now making radical, Marx-like noises. Willem Buiter, an economist at the London School of Economics, last week proposed socializing and nationalizing the entire banking system, given that it can’t keep itself afloat as a private enterprise.