[David Harvey] In this RSA Animate, celebrated academic David Harvey looks beyond capitalism towards a new social order. Can we find a more responsible, just, and humane economic system? Find out more about the RSA at http://www.thersa.org Continue reading Video: Crises of Capitalism
[David Harvey – New Left Review 53, 2008] We live in an era when ideals of human rights have moved centre stage both politically and ethically. A great deal of energy is expended in promoting their significance for the construction of a better world. But for the most part the concepts circulating do not fundamentally challenge hegemonic liberal and neoliberal market logics, or the dominant modes … Continue reading The Right to the City
[Vandana Shiva, 2013] Limitless growth is the fantasy of economists, businesses and politicians. It is seen as a measure of progress. As a result, gross domestic product (GDP), which is supposed to measure the wealth of nations, has emerged as both the most powerful number and dominant concept in our times. However, economic growth hides the poverty it creates through the destruction of nature, which in … Continue reading How economic growth has become anti-life
[Jessica Conrad, March 2014] At half past three in the morning, Alec Johnson rolls out of bed, puts on his uniform, and walks a block to one of Nice Ride’s bike sharing stations in the Seward neighborhood of Minneapolis. He unlocks a neon green bike and pedals down the Midtown Greenway, a former railroad corridor that now features biking and walking paths, to his job … Continue reading The Next New Economy. How a global phenomenon takes off in one city
[David Harvey – prologue of “Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism” (Profile Books, 2014)] Crises are essential to the reproduction of capitalism. It is in the course of crises that the instabilities of capitalism are confronted, reshaped and re-engineered to create a new version of what capitalism is about. Much gets torn down and laid waste to make way for the new. Once-productive landscapes … Continue reading The Crisis of Capitalism This Time Around
[David Korten] Economists debate whether the economy is recovering from the financial crash of 2008. Scientists debate whether Earth will recover from an economy that is destroying Earth’s capacity to support life. An unconscionable gap between rich and poor – between the profligate and the desperate – grows at an alarming rate. Economists assure us that faster economic growth will provide the technology and financial … Continue reading A New Story for a New Economy: To Find Our Human Place in a Living Universe
[Pablo Solon, 8 March 2014] The race of globalisation is leaving the majority of the world’s population far behind. According to Unicef, the richest 20% of the population gets 83% of global income, while the poorest quintile has just 1%. This trend is getting worse. A new UNDP report called “Humanity Divided: estimates that 75% of the population lives in societies where income distribution is … Continue reading Deglobalisation is the way to reduce inequality
[Razmig Keucheyan, 6 March 2014] As long as the conditions for investment and profit remain, the system will adapt. Which is why we need a revolution. The sums spent by governments on catastrophe have risen to unprecedented levels, putting public budgets at risk. Arguably the single most important mistake the revolutionary movements of the 60s and 70s made was to overlook the resilience of capitalism. … Continue reading Not even climate change will kill off capitalism
[David Harvey, 2013] Editor’s note: This is an excerpt from an interview that ran in Red Pepper and the Irish Left Review in which Harvey sets out some ideas from his new book on the contradictions of capital. He says creating a post-capitalist world requires changing the monetary system and creating a common property regime. Q. Is the era of finance capitalism which has developed … Continue reading David Harvey interview: The importance of postcapitalist imagination
[Peter Rosset, 2009] The recent world food price crisis highlights what many have thought for a long time: the world’s food and agriculture system is broken. Few winners remain in the aftermath of the severe crisis, in which prices for basic food commodities (corn, wheat, rice, soybeans) increased dramatically in 2007 and 2008, only to fall rapidly in the second half of 2008. Although down … Continue reading Fixing our Global Food System: Food Sovereignty and Redistributive Land Reform
[Joel Kovel and Michael Lowy, Sept 2001] Versión en español Introduction The idea for this ecosocialist manifesto was jointly launched by Joel Kovel and Michael Lowy, at a September, 2001, workshop on ecology and socialism held at Vincennes, near Paris. We all suffer from a chronic case of Gramsci’s paradox, of living in a time whose old order is dying (and taking civilization with it) while … Continue reading An Ecosocialist Manifesto
[UNICEF] A Rapid Review of Income Distribution in 141 Countries. This working paper: (i) provides an overview of global, regional and national income inequalities based on the latest distribution data from the World Bank, UNU-WIDER and Eurostat; (ii) discusses the negative implications of rising income inequality for development; (iii) calls for placing equity at the center of development in the context of the United Nations development … Continue reading Global Inequality: Beyond the Bottom Billion
[Vandana Shiva, 2012] Hunger and malnutrition are man-made. They are hardwired in the design of the industrial, chemical model of agriculture. But just as hunger is created by design, healthy and nutritious food for all can also be designed, through food democracy. We are repeatedly told that we will starve without chemical fertilisers. However, chemical fertilisers, which are essentially poison, undermine food security by destroying … Continue reading The Real Hunger Games
[Richard Heinberg] Introduction: The New Normal (Versión en español) The central assertion of this book is both simple and startling: Economic growth as we have known it is over and done with. The “growth” we are talking about consists of the expansion of the overall size of the economy (with more people being served and more money changing hands) and of the quantities of energy and material … Continue reading The End of Growth
[UNDP Report] The report makes the basic point that in spite of the impressive progress humanity has made on many fronts over the decades, it still remains deeply divided. Key messages of the report are: During the last two decades, income inequality has significantly increased in many countries. On average — and taking into account population size — income inequality increased by 11 percent in developing … Continue reading Humanity Divided: Confronting Inequality in Developing Countries
[David Harvey, World Social Forum 2010] The historical geography of capitalist development is at a key inflexion point in which the geographical configurations of power are rapidly shifting at the very moment when the temporal dynamic is facing very serious constraints. Three percent compound growth (generally considered the minimum satisfactory growth rate for a healthy capitalist economy) is becoming less and less feasible to sustain … Continue reading Organizing for the Anti-Capitalist Transition
[Ariel Salleh, 2011] On 11 March 2011, the Fukushima nuclear electricity plant in Japan was hit by a powerful earthquake and tsunami. An undetermined land area remains uninhabitable; thousands of people are trying not to breathe, touch, eat or drink, the toxic levels of radiation in their environment. It is believed that BHP Billiton’s Olympic Dam and Rio Tinto’s Ranger mine exported uranium from Australia … Continue reading Fukushima: A Call for Women’s Leadership
[Pablo Solón, April 2011] (1) Victor Hugo, the author of Les Misérables, once wrote: “How sad to think that nature speaks and mankind doesn’t listen.” Although we often forget it, human beings are a force in nature. In reality, we are all a product of the same Big Bang that created the universe, although some only see wood for the fire when they walk through the forest. … Continue reading It’s the time of the Rights of Mother Earth
[François Houtart, November 2011] “…a complete theoretical rethinking is necessary, on the one hand dealing with all the elements that have led the world into a systemic crisis situa- tion and with the wearing out of a historical model; and on the other hand, redefining the objectives of a new social construct that is respectful of nature and capable of ensuring human life as a … Continue reading From “Common Goods” to “The Common Good of Humanity”
[Focus on the Global South, 2013] What is Vivir Bien? Vivir Bien is a Spanish word that refers to the way of life of indigenous peoples in South America. The Aymara people call it sumaqamaña, the Quechua, sumakkawsay, the Peruvian Amazon, Kametsa Asaiki and the Guaraní, ñandereko. It can also be translated as “living well,” “good life,” “knowing how to live,” “inclusive life,” “sweet life,” … Continue reading From Latin America to Asia Learning from our roots A conversation on Vivir Bien
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