Speaking Freely: Vol. 1: John Perkins

[Human Lefts]

Anyone seen Speaking Freely: Vol. 1: John Perkins? I recently saw it and was impressed. What are your thoughts?

[Mr. Natural]

I read Perkins' Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, and it was crap. Perkins believes the crimes of capitalism can be eliminated by a "good, true" capitalism, but capitalism's imperialism and enslavement of labor are not optional. Capitalism is a crime; capitalism is predator drones and assassinations and invasions and ...

Read Joel Kovel's Enemy of Nature (2003), instead. I find it's the best current, popular work on capitalism in the US, and Kovel outlines an "ecosystemic," grassroots revolutionary process that I believe is close to what we actually need to develop.

My red-green best.

[Human Lefts]

^
I haven't read the book. The movie is basically a ~1 hour interview of him telling his stories about his career. I don't remember him prescribing a solution. Maybe he did and I tuned it out. Thanks though! I'll get to that book whenever I get the chance.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

I read Perkins' Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, and it was crap. Perkins believes the crimes of capitalism can be eliminated by a "good, true" capitalism, but capitalism's imperialism and enslavement of labor are not optional. Capitalism is a crime; capitalism is predator drones and assassinations and invasions and ...

Read Joel Kovel's Enemy of Nature (2003), instead. I find it's the best current, popular work on capitalism in the US, and Kovel outlines an "ecosystemic," grassroots revolutionary process that I believe is close to what we actually need to develop.

My red-green best.

I'm a bit surprised, I've also read "Confessions..." and I thought it was quite interesting. Perkins lays out how he deliberately entangled Third World leaders into massive debt, which their people than had too pay off, to the advantage of his employees.Class A viscous economic exploitation.Perkins politics are naive, he's not a leftist, but its possible to get useful information from a wide variety of sources.

The guy definitely isn't a Marxist. After he wrote the book he became involved in some kind of shaman group in Latin America.

I thought the book actually would make a good action movie.

[Mr. Natural]

Lenina, You are one of the posters who always make me reassess when we disagree. Our "disagreement" on Perkins and Confession is minor, though.

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man was an interesting read at times, and I was especially interested in the matter of the alleged CIA hit on Omar Torrijos of Panama. However, I don't find the book broke any new ground on the functioning of imperialism in the Americas.

My beef with Perkins is that he became the darling of left-liberals for awhile, and I became real tired of hearing liberal denunciations of "bad capitalism" and espousals of a "good capitalism." As such nonsense is as far left as the airwaves get in the US, you are encouraged to feel sorry for poor Mr. Natural.

My red-green, sorry-assed best.