A friend just sent this to me. It’s an English folk poem, circa 1764, so he says.
They hang the man and flog the woman
That steal the goose from off the common,
But let the greater villain loose
That steals the common from the goose.
The Law demands that we atone
When we take things we do not own
But leaves the lords and ladies fine
Who take things that are yours and mine.
The poor and wretched don’t escape
If they conspire the law to break;
This must be [...] read more >
History of Thought
A poem
Posted by jtellerelsberg on January 22nd, 2008Econ-Atrocity {special History of Thought series} Karl Polanyi: Freedom in a complex society
Posted by emilykawano on May 19th, 2004By Yahya Mete Madra
The 1990s saw a revived interest in the writings of Karl Polanyi (1886-1964). Given that capitalism is still in the process of being re-instituted everywhere across the globe; given that the expansions and contractions of capitalism cause endless social dislocation; given that the
recent wave of financial liberalization, labor market deregulation, and privatization has led to grave socio-economic costs; this revived interest should not be surprising. Those who wanted to understand and devise alternatives to capitalism have found [...] read more >
Econ-Atrocity {special History of Thought series} Henry George’s “Single Tax”
Posted by emilykawano on April 21st, 2004 (4/21/04)
By Alanna Hartzok, Co-Director, Earth Rights Institute
One day, while riding horseback in the Oakland hills, merchant seaman and journalist Henry George had a startling epiphany. He realized that speculation and private profiteering in the gifts of nature were the root causes of the unjust distribution of wealth. The insights presented in Progress and Poverty, George’s masterwork, launched him to fame. His policy approach was known at that time as the “single tax” – meaning that taxation should be [...] read more >
Econ-Atrocity {special History of Thought series} C.L.R. James: The Future in the Present
Posted by emilykawano on April 14th, 2004By Geert Dhondt, Staff Economist
Madness surrounds all of us. Luckily the world is full of contradictions. While capitalism, barbarism and madness might seem all around us, so is its opposite, its negation. Thus, if we look hard enough we can recognize the new society in the present and we will be able to see the emergence of revolutionary possibilities. In the U.S., C.L.R. James was one of the first to clearly articulate the importance of independent Black struggles in creating [...] read more >
Econ-Atrocity {special History of Thought series} Resurrecting the Radical Keynes
Posted by emilykawano on April 7th, 2004By Jim Crotty, CPE Staff Economist
The Keynesian economics that Paul Samuelson popularized in the United States after World War II was a sanitized version of the radical critique of capitalism offered by Keynes himself. John Maynard Keynes’s deep-seated attack on free-market economics led him to call for direct government control of the lion’s share of investment spending, industrial policy, a confiscatory wealth tax, strict control over cross-border financial flows and managed trade. But US “Keynesians” defanged his attack, arguing that [...] read more >
Econ-Atrocity {special History of Thought series} Leon Trotsky, Theorist and Revolutionary
Posted by emilykawano on March 31st, 2004By Alejandro Reuss
Mention the name of Leon Trotsky and you might be asked, “Didn’t he have an affair with Frida Kahlo?” (He did.) Or, “Wasn’t he murdered with an ice pick?” (He was.)
He was also, however, known to dabble in revolutionary politics.
The triumph of Stalin and his falsification of history have obscured Trotsky’s importance, writing him out of the Russian Revolution and airbrushing him from photos of the era (especially those showing him with Lenin). Trotsky was a principal leader [...] read more >
Econ-Atrocity {special History of Thought series} Y.C. James Yen and His Rural Reconstruction Movement
Posted by emilykawano on March 24th, 2004By Zhaochang Peng
Y.C. James Yen (1893-1990), a Chinese educator and social activist, developed a fourfold “rural reconstruction” approach to rural development in China during the 1920s. A resurgence of interest in his approach to development is currently underway in China, while his work has been continuously promoted by the institute he established in the Philippines in 1960.
James Yen’s Rural Reconstruction Movement promotes an integrated program of education, livelihood, public health and self-governance, which targets the interlocking problems of illiteracy, poverty, [...] read more >
Econ-Atrocity {special History of Thought series} Prince Kropotkin
Posted by emilykawano on March 17th, 2004By Suresh Naidu, CPE Staff Economist
Piotr Kropotkin is famous within two groups that one never sees at the same party. The biologists and evolutionary anthropologists who derive inspiration from Kropotkin’s research into the evolution of human sociality rarely intersect with the anarchists and political theorists who respect Kropotkin’s views on revolutionary change and the abolition of the state and private property. However, there was no disparity for Kropotkin, who derived many of his political beliefs from his studies of human [...] read more >
Econ-Atrocity {special History of Thought series} Richard Ely and Aristotelean Economics
Posted by emilykawano on March 11th, 2004By Gerald Friedman, Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
The strength of conservative economics comes from methodological individualism. By treating economic outcomes as the product of individual choice subject to constraint, conservatives treat all social interference, either by government or by concentrations of private power, as illegitimate interference with individuals’ choices. Any reformist economics must begin by challenging this individualist premise.
Beginning in the 1880s, Richard Ely (1854-1943) articulated a different vision for a reformist economics built on Aristotle’s dicta that [...] read more >
Econ-Atrocity {special History of Thought series} Small Is Beautiful: An Introduction to E. F. Schumacher
Posted by emilykawano on February 5th, 2004By Noah Enelow
Few economists of the last fifty years have offered more striking alternatives to mainstream economic thinking than Ernest Friedrich Schumacher. Born in Germany but spending the bulk of his working life in England, Schumacher’s career afforded him the ability to critique the economic system from within, and propose alternatives – not primarily through policy prescriptions, but through a radically different attitude towards life. He spent twenty years as the Chief Economic Advisor to the National Coal Board of [...] read more >
