February 20, 2024
David L. Wilson, author, with Jane Guskin, of The Politics of Immigration: Questions and Answers (2d ed.), and frequent contributor to Truthout.org, writes that the tax bill that just passed the U.S. Senate will “keep America Great” by putting Trump and his billionaire friends and donors first
Copyright, Truthout.org. Reprinted with permission
February 20, 2024
Reports have it that Greece has begun to reenter the European bond market, where it has for the past decade been crucified on what the American statesman William Jennings Bryan once called a cross of gold…. ¶ The election of Syriza in a Europe none of whose other nations had dared to empower a government committed to breaking the stranglehold of the banks was its gesture of defiance. And all Europe took hope from it. Its consequent failure was, as Helena Sheehan’s The Syriza Wave makes clear, a major international event…
February 20, 2024
Howard Ryan is an educationalist and journalist, who has written a handbook that offers ‘theory, strategy and organizing case studies to inform and inspire those who are working to rebuild public education and put an end to the corporate occupation of our schools’. The book can be read as a whole, or can be used as a reference guide to explore some key ideas, as the book is neatly divided up into sections...
February 20, 2024
Don’t expect a whole lot of taste when you sit down to a plateful of commodities. That might be a fitting but unintended lesson for foodies who work through the new book by Eric Holt-Giménez. A Foodie’s Guide to Capitalism will reward a careful reader with lots of insights—but it won’t do much for the taste buds. While A Foodie’s Guide is lacking in recipes or menu ideas, it shines in helping us to understand the struggles of the men and women who work in the farms and packing plants...
February 20, 2024
No consumer, farmer, or activist participates in the food system without also participating in capitalism. To Eric Holt-Giménez, the director of Food First, this is a basic truth that’s too often overlooked in the struggle to change our broken food system. In his new book, A Foodie’s Guide to Capitalism, Holt-Giménez delineates the basic truths of capitalism and how they are connected to the history of our food system. Part history book, part practical guide, the book links many of the injustices associated with food to other inequities, arguing that capitalism fuels and is fueled by oppression. If we better understand “the rudiments of how capitalism operates,” he explains, ‘we can better grasp why our food system is the way it is, and how we can change it
February 20, 2024
Holt-Giménez: “We already produce one and one-half times more than enough food to feed every man, woman, and child on the planet… People go hungry not because there’s not enough food; they go hungry because they can’t afford food…”
February 20, 2024
There is a growing movement of people thinking about how their food is grown, what it contains and its impact on their health and the environment. Often this is tied up with an individualistic view of improving the world – the idea that you can save the world by simply choosing the best food with the least impact on the planet. Eric Holt-Giménez explains he wrote "A Foodie’s Guide to Capitalism" precisely to argue that this approach is inadequate...
February 20, 2024
According to Stephen Bannon and Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt, poor little America got hoodwinked by devious Asians, signing a deal that would wreck the economy and throw millions of people out of work, especially (white) coal miners in Appalachia, whom the president loves dearly. Climate change is an insignificant issue compared to these hardships and injustices. Coal is a fantastic fuel that will return America to greatness. ¶ Contrast this with the closing of Ian Angus’s Facing the Anthropocene: Fossil Capitalism and the Crisis of the Earth System...
February 20, 2024
For years, intellectuals have argued that, with the triumph of capitalist, liberal democracy, the Western World has reached “the end of history.” Recently, however, there has been a rise of authoritarian politics in many countries. Concepts of post-democracy, anti-politics, and the like are gaining currency in theoretical and political debate. Now that capitalist democracies are facing seismic and systemic challenges, it becomes increasingly important to investigate not only the inherent antagonism between liberalism and the democratic process, but also socialism. Is socialism an enemy of democracy? Could socialism develop, expand, even enhance democracy?
February 20, 2024
Steve Early, author of Save Our Unions: Dispatches from A Movement in Distress and Embedded with Organized Labor: Journalistic Reflections on the Class War at Home, looks at the role of labor unions in dealing with sexual harassment and how “to insure that the bullying, harassing, divide-and-conquer behavior of bosses, big and small, doesn’t infect and weaken the ‘house of labor’”...
