Connexions Resource Centre:
Focus on Economy, Poverty, Work

Recent & Selected Articles

  1. This is a small sampling of articles related to economic issues, work and labour, and poverty issues in the Connexions Online Library. For more articles, books, films, and other resources, check the Connexions Library Subject Index, especially under topics such as economy, economic alternatives, corporations, corporate agenda, fair trade, labour issues, poverty, work, taxation, and working class.
  1. The End of Western Civilization (July 12, 2022)
    Today's New Cold War diplomacy involves extracting economic tribute by pushing foreign economies further into dollarized debt, to be paid by imposing depression and austerity on themselves. This subjugation is depicted by mainstream economists as a law of nature and hence as an inevitable form of equilibrium, in which each nation’s economy receives "what it is worth." Today's mainstream economic models are based on the unrealistic assumption that all debts can be paid, without polarizing income and wealth. All economic problems are assumed to be self-curing by "the magic of the marketplace," without any need for civic authority to intervene. Government regulation is deemed inefficient and ineffective, and hence unnecessary. That leaves creditors, land-grabbers and privatizers with a free hand to deprive others of their freedom. This is depicted as the ultimate destiny of today's globalization, and of history itself.
  2. Russia and the West: between sanctions and war (March 2, 2022)
    On sanctions as economic war.
  3. Super Imperialism: The economic strategy of American empire with economist Michael Hudson (October 19, 2021)
    Economist Michael Hudson discusses the update of his book "Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire" and the financial motivations behind the US new cold war on China and Russia.
  4. Money Is Made Up And We Can Change The Rules Whenever We Want (March 18, 2021)
    Have you ever noticed how online capitalism cultists who condescendingly tell socialists they “just don’t understand economics” are always unable to lucidly defend their own understanding of economics? If you've never pressed such a character to clearly and concisely explain what it is you "don't understand" using their own words, I highly recommend that you try it, because it’s one of the funniest things in the world.
  5. The Real Giants Whose Shoulders We Stand On (December 17, 2020)
    We stand upon the shoulders of giants. Yes, we do. But the giants are not the "great men" like Rich Fancyboi who have received all the acclaim and attention throughout recorded history, they’re the ones doing the actual moving, making, mothering and maintaining in our world upon whose heads the famous figures stand.
  6. De-Dollarizing the American Financial Empire (July 3, 2019)
    A long interview with economist Michael Hudson about Trump's plan to lower interest rates.
  7. Illusion or Advance? Ecosocialists debate the 'Green New Deal' (February 27, 2019)
    Activists from 'System Change Not Climate Change' discuss the strengths and weaknesses of 'Green New Deal' proposals, and how the left should respond.
  8. Is There a Gig Economy? (November 1, 2018)
    A data-heavy analysis questioning whether 'gig-economy' precarious jobs are indeed growing rapidly as reported.
  9. A Marxist History of Capitalism (Book Review) (October 16, 2018)
    A book review of Henry Heller's "A Marxist History of Capitalism" which restores class struggle to a central place in explaining how capitalism arose and grew, and can eventually be overcome.
  10. On Economic Madness (July 1, 2018)
    A mostly positive, informative review of "Marx, Capital, and the Madness of Economic Reason" by David Harvey.
  11. Behind the Money Curtain: A Left Take on Taxes, Spending and Modern Monetary Theory (January 22, 2018)
    Taxes do not fund government spending.That's a core insight of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) whose radical implications have not been understood very well by the left. Indeed, it's not well understood at all, and most people who have heard or read it somewhere breeze right past it, and fall back to the taxes-for-spending paradigm that is the sticky common wisdom of the left and right.
  12. Corporate Coercion and the Drive to Eliminate Buying with Cash (January 5, 2018)
    Consumer freedom and privacy are examined as coercive commercialism quickly moves toward a cashless economy, when all consumers are forced into corporate payment systems from credit/debit cards, mobile phones and perhaps even through facial recognition technology.
  13. How are you going to pay for it? (May 4, 2017)
    Debates on how government will pay for new programs suffer from a fundamental fallacy: the assumption that the government spends other people's money. It doesn't.
  14. Jobs for Climate and Justice: A Worker Alternative to the Trump Agenda (April 1, 2017)
    Jobs for Climate and Justice exposes and challenges the Trump agenda and proposes the kind of economic program we must fight for. It also offers examples of the great organizing efforts around the country – led by working people – that provide the foundation for the a transition to a just and climate-safe economy.
  15. Class is More Intersectional than Intersectionality (November 11, 2016)
    The Left as it exists currently is often ashamed of and apologetic for its class struggle orientation, chasing after demographic-specific oppression issues. An approach that leans toward greater emphasis on a class struggle focus is actually more intersectional than a focus which gives more attention to demographic-specific issues than to class.
  16. Marx on Financial Bubbles: Much Keener Insights Than Contemporary Economists (July 1, 2016)
    While paying homage to Marx for his profound understanding of "the laws of motion of the capitalist mode of production," most contemporary economists argue that, nonetheless, his economic analysis cannot be of much service when it comes to the study of modern banking and big finance, since these are relatively recent, post-Marx developments. I will argue in this essay that, in fact, a careful reading of his work on "fictitious capital" reveals keen insights into a better understanding of the instabilities of today's financial markets.
  17. Panama Papers show that capitalism is working perfectly (April 10, 2016)
    While corporate fraud is gargantuan in its scale, it is not the expression of a system that "isn't working". In fact, this is the way the system is designed to work.
  18. The Panama Papers (April 3, 2016)
    The Panama Papers is a global investigation into the sprawling, secretive industry of offshore that the world’s rich and powerful use to hide assets and skirt rules by setting up front companies in far-flung jurisdictions. Based on a trove of more than 11 million leaked files, the investigation exposes a cast of characters who use offshore companies to facilitate bribery, arms deals, tax evasion, financial fraud and drug trafficking.
  19. The Financial System is a Larger Threat Than Terrorism (March 9, 2016)
    Trillions of dollars have been added to the taxpayers' burden and many billions of dollars in profits to the military/security complex in order to combat insignificant foreign "threats," such as the Taliban, that remain undefeated after 15 years. All this time the financial system, working hand-in-hand with policymakers, has done more damage to Americans than terrorists could possibly inflict.
  20. An Idiot's Guide to Prosecuting Corporate Fraud (February 4, 2016)
    A new group called Bank Whistleblowers United have just pushed out a comprehensive plan they think would put the executive branch in the United States back in the business of enthusiastically identifying, indicting, and convicting financial fraudsters -- restoring accountability while protecting the public.
  21. Radical economics, Marxist economics and Marx's economics (January 6, 2016)
    The major global crises of the mid-1970s and 2008-9 provoked debates among the ruling class about the best economic policies to manage capitalism. For socialists and activists the question was different, and debates about whether and to what extent capitalism could be reformed to avert crisis and instil a more humane and fair system became even sharper.
  22. The Rise of the Illegitimate Authority of Transnational Corporations (December 3, 2015)
    Transnational corporations are demanding the right to what they call "competitiveness": lower taxes, control over lawmaking, and the right to sue governments for affecting profits. In her new book, Shadow Sovereigns: How Global Corporations are Seizing Power, Susan George shines a light on the secret corporate coalitions that are influencing critical government decisions and posing a direct threat to democracy.
  23. Top 1 percent own more than half of world's wealth (October 14, 2015)
    A new report issued by the Swiss bank Credit Suisse finds that global wealth inequality continues to worsen and has reached a new milestone, with the top 1 percent owning more of the world’s assets than the bottom 99 percent combined. Of the estimated $250 trillion in global assets, the top 1 percent owned almost exactly 50 percent, while the bottom 50 percent of humanity owned collectively less than 1 percent. The richest 10 percent owned 87.7 percent of the world's wealth, leaving 12.3 percent for the bottom 90 percent of the population.
  24. Parasites in the Body Economic: the Disasters of Neoliberalism (October 5, 2015)
    Michael Hudson discusses his new book, "Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy."
  25. Bubbles Always Burst: the Education of an Economist (September 28, 2015)
    Spouting ostensible free market ideology, the pro-creditor mainstream rejects what the classical economic reformers actually wrote. One is left to choose between central planning by a public bureaucracy, or even more centralized planning by Wall Street’s financial bureaucracy. The middle ground of a mixed public/private economy has been all but forgotten, denounced as "socialism." Yet every successful economy in history has been a mixed economy.
  26. Barter Networks: Lessons from Argentina for Greece (July 17, 2015)
    "How did Argentina survive their economic crisis?"; "Are they doing better now?"; "What happened to the factory takeovers?"; "Did millions of people really participate in the barter network? Did they actually invent new money?" These are some of the many questions I have been asked by Greeks, especially over the past few weeks, related to their economic crisis and the potential for self-organization and survival.
  27. Greece again Can Save the West (July 1, 2015)
    The 'Greek crisis' is not about debt. Debt is the propaganda that the Empire is using to subdue sovereignty throughout the Western world.
  28. Wall Street and the Greek Financial Crisis (July 1, 2015)
    Michael Hudson and Bill Black zero in on some of the key elements of the crisis. They point out that it is not really 'Greece', let alone the Greek people, who have contracted this debt and who have been bailed out until now.
  29. The Greek Debt Crisis and Crashing Markets (June 29, 2015)
    Greece has indeed become an example. But it is an example of the horror that the eurozone's monetarists seek to impose on one economy after another, using debt as a lever to force privatization selloffs at distress prices. In short, finance has shown itself to be the new mode of warfare. Resisting debt leverage andfinancial conquest is as legal as is resisting military invasion.
  30. An Alternative for SYRIZA (June 12, 2015)
    In order to regain sovereignty, a country has to exit not only the EZ, if a member, but the EU itself. Liberated from the noose of the EU treaties and regulations, Greek people will have the freedom to follow a sovereign monetary and fiscal policy and form trade and international alliances to the best of their interests.
  31. Auditing the Greek Debt: Unity of Place, Time, and Action (June 2, 2015)
    The recent debt currently being claimed presents features that make it irregular, illegitimate, illegal, unsustainable, and even odious. Allegedly Greek debts that were accumulated before 2010 were already to a large extent illegitimate and/or illegal.
  32. TTIP: the Corporate Empowerment Act (June 1, 2015)
    The Transatlantic and Transpacific Trade and Investment Partnerships have nothing to do with free trade. "Free trade" is used as a disguise to hide the power these agreements give to corporations to use law suits to overturn sovereign laws of nations that regulate pollution, food safety, GMOs, and minimum wages.
  33. Governments Giving Fossil Fuel Companies $10 Million a Minute: IMF (May 18, 2015)
  34. Will the Greek elections strengthen the hands of the Global South? (January 27, 2015)
    The endorsement of a leftist party is a vote against global lenders imposing governance prescriptions on countries in crisis. If Greece successfully pushes back against its lenders, it will open the door to countries of the Global South to restructure their relationships with lenders such as the World Bank and IMF.
  35. Wealth: Having It All and Wanting More (January 19, 2015)
    Global wealth is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a small wealthy elite. These wealthy individuals have generated and sustained their vast riches through their interests and activities in a few important economic sectors, including finance and insurance and pharmaceuticals and healthcare. Companies from these sectors spend millions of dollars every year on lobbying to create a policy environment that protects and enhances their interests further.
  36. Swiss Leaks: Murky Cash Sheltered by Bank Secrecy (2015)
    HSBC Private Bank (Suisse) offered services to clients who had been unfavourably named by the United Nations, in court documents and in the media as connected to arms trafficking, blood diamonds and bribery. HSBC served those close to discredited regimes such as that of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, former Tunisian president Ben Ali and current Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad. The bank repeatedly reassured clients that it would not disclose details of accounts to national authorities, even if evidence suggested that the accounts were undeclared to tax authorities in the client’s home country.
  37. Washington’s Frozen War Against Russia (December 9, 2014)
    For over a year, the United States has played out a scenario designed to (1) reassert U.S. control over Europe by blocking E.U. trade with Russia, (2) bankrupt Russia, and (3) get rid of Vladimir Putin and replace him with an American puppet, like the late drunk, Boris Yeltsin.
  38. $88 billion a year in subsidies for climate disaster (November 16, 2014)
    Despite pledging in 2009 to phase out public subsidies for the fossil fuel industry, G20 countries have disregarded those promises and are currently spending $88 billion a year in taxpayer money to fund the discovery of new gas, coal, and oil deposits around the world.
  39. A Fossil Fuel Exit Program (May 1, 2014)
    A complete transition away from fossil fuels is necessary within a few decades. The question is how to construct an exit strategy that will accomplish this. James Hansen has provided a starting point for a realistic climate-change exit strategy.
  40. Global inequality, illustrated, described, explained (February 2, 2014)
    Global inequality depitcted through images and quotes.
  41. Book Review: Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism (2014)
    David Harvey has three aims in Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism (SCEC). First and mainly he wants to schematically analyze the contradictions of capital, the 'economic engine' driving the particular social formation capitalism. Second, he seeks to draw-out that analysis's implications for anti-capitalist politics dedicated to creating a world substantially more democratic, egalitarian, and emancipatory than that which capital affords. Third, he aims to address what might cause the end of capitalism and, specifically, whether capital's internal contradictions progressively undermine its conditions of existence.
  42. The Great Corporate Tax Shift (November 20, 2013)
    The great corporate myth-making machine has been hard at work of late, attempting to create the false impression that US corporations are increasingly uncompetitive with their foreign rivals due to the fact they allegedly pay higher corporate taxes.
  43. The Corporate State and Manufactured Dependence (June 7, 2013)
    The 'resistance is futile' mindset that supports plutocrats and the global corporations they own assumes the existing order is the only possible order and the costs of resistance are too great because 'they' have state power and unlimited economic resources on their side.
  44. None of the world's top industries would be profitable if they paid for the natural capital they use (April 17, 2013)
    The notion of "externalities" refers to costs imposed by businesses that are not paid for by those businesses. Roberts argues that, although the term is useful in folding ecological concerns into economics, it has its downsides.
  45. Secrecy for Sale: Inside the Global Offshore Money Maze (2013)
    Big players are taking unprecedented steps to stop offshore abuses, but financial crime fighters worry reforms don’t go far enough.
  46. Book Review: Marxism without Marx: Recent Interpretations of the Economic Crisis (June 3, 2012)
  47. The Microfinance Delusion (March 13, 2012)
    By celebrating self-help and individual entrepreneurship, and by implicitly discrediting all forms of collective effort, such as trade unions, social movements, cooperatives, public spending, a pro-poor ‘developmental state’ and – most of all – collective moves to ensure a more equitable redistribution of wealth and power, microfinance fits in well with the ideology of neoliberal policy-makers.
  48. The Sky is Always Darkest Just Before the Dawn (January 14, 2012)
    We can safely assert that for most working people, the "recession" has never ended, and is about to get worse.
  49. How The Oligarchy Gets Politicized (November 15, 2011)
    The political activism of the elite is striking in times of crisis, when the latter takes the form either of severe economic contraction or of working-class militancy, or both.
  50. Connexions Archive Case Statement (September 24, 2011)
    Working together to secure a future for the past
  51. Some Big Things Ha-Joon Chang Doesn't Tell You About Capitalism (June 14, 2011)
    Chang exposes deadly falsehoods in many of the prevalent neoliberalism's supposedly self-evident "free market" truths. But Chang's book is plagued by key difficulties that belie its claim to iconoclasm, suggesting Chang's own conservative adherence to dominant Western power structures and doctrines.
  52. A World at Financial War (June 6, 2011)
    The crisis for Greece – as for Iceland, Ireland and debt-plagued economies capped by the United States – is occurring as bank lobbyists demand that “taxpayers” pay for the bailouts of bad speculations and government debts stemming largely from tax cuts for the rich and for real estate, shifting the fiscal burden as well as the debt burden onto labor and industry. The financial sector’s growing power to achieve this tax favoritism is crippling economies, driving them further into reliance on yet more debt financing to remain solvent.
  53. Europe's New Road to Serfdom (June 3, 2011)
    The conditios for Greece's new loan package is that Greece must initiate a class war by raising its taxes, lowering its social spending – and even private-sector pensions – and sell off public land, tourist sites, islands, ports, water and sewer facilities. This will raise the cost of living and doing business, eroding the nation’s already limited export competitiveness. The bankers sanctimoniously depict this as a “rescue” of Greek finances.
  54. Seven Reasons Why Capitalism Can't Recover Anytime Soon (December 6, 2010)
    There is a larger disease in the international economic system, a disease that cannot be cured by politicians who swear allegiance to this deteriorating system and to the wealthy elite who benefit from it.
  55. The Class War at Home (October 25, 2010)
    There is a class war – the war of the rich on the poor and the middle class – and the rich are winning.
  56. What Bhopal Started (June 15, 2010)
    Bhopal marked the horrific beginning of a new era. One that signalled the collapse of restraint on corporate power. The ongoing BP spill in the Mexican Gulf -- with estimates ranging from 30,000 to 80,000 barrels per day -- tops off a quarter of a century where corporations could (and have) done anything in the pursuit of profit, at any human cost.
  57. The Historical Moment That Produced Us (June 9, 2010)
    As we emerge, hopefully, from this dismal period of rollback, we recall Rosa Luxemburg's remark, shortly before her murder in 1919: "The revolution says: I was, I am, I shall be!" We assert the ongoing reality of communism, "the real movement developing before our eyes," as Marx put it in the Manifesto. Like Hegel's "knights of history," we locate our identities not in any immediacy but in the emerging new universal that must be the cutting edge of the next global offensive.
  58. The Greeks Get It (May 24, 2010)
    Here's to the Greeks. They know what to do when corporations pillage and loot their country. They know what to do when Goldman Sachs and international bankers collude with their power elite to falsify economic data and then make billions betting that the Greek economy will collapse. They know what to do when they are told their pensions, benefits and jobs have to be cut to pay corporate banks, which screwed them in the first place. Call a general strike. Riot. Shut down the city centers. Toss the bastards out. Do not be afraid of the language of class warfare: the rich versus the poor, the oligarchs versus the citizens, the capitalists versus the proletariat. The Greeks, unlike most of us, get it.
  59. The Heresy Of The Greeks Offers Hope (May 24, 2010)
    Greece is a microcosm of a modern class war rarely reported as such.
  60. The People v. the Bankers (May 11, 2010)
    The Greek "bailout" is actually a bailout of the international banks.
  61. Consumer Hell (January 4, 2010)
    The problem with gross domestic product is that there are no deductions involved: all economic activity is accounted as if it were of positive value. Social harm is added to, not subtracted from, social good. A train crash which generates £1bn worth of track repairs, medical bills and funeral costs is deemed by this measure as beneficial as an uninterrupted service which generates £1bn in ticket sales.
  62. Obama's "We Got No Money" Rap (December 7, 2009)
    Obama is deliberately precipitating another crisis on the advise of his chief lieutenants. Summers and Geithner are steering the economy back into recession so they can implement the same austerity measures and "structural adjustment" programs which have been used throughout the developing world. It's "starve the beast" all over again. As the stimulus dries up, revenue-depleted states will be forced to auction off public lands, resources, parks and other assets to the highest bidder. The banksters and robber barons will feast on the country's treasures while the middle class is crushed by the freefalling dollar, lost home equity, and persistent high unemployment.
  63. Connexions Archive seeks a new home (November 18, 2009)
    The Connexions Archive, a Toronto-based library dedicated to preserving the history of grassroots movements for social change, needs a new home.
  64. The Paradox of Wealth: Capitalism and Ecological Destruction (November 1, 2009)
    A growing army of self-styled “sustainable developers” argues that there is no contradiction between the unlimited accumulation of capital and the preservation of the earth. The system can continue to expand by creating a new “sustainable capitalism,” bringing the efficiency of the market to bear on nature and its reproduction. In reality, these visions amount to little more than a renewed strategy for profiting on planetary destruction.
  65. Impossibleism (October 29, 2009)
    Impossibleists want unrestrained sustainable growth in the face of its inevitable impossibility. It is a mystery how they think this way, knowing as they surely do that eventually the bill will come due, and the engine will run out of gas - literally. Think about it - growth that never stops, ever. Even with limitless resources, it is simple intuition that eventually, somewhere, sometime....
  66. Goodbye "Norma Rae" (September 24, 2009)
    Crystal Lee Sutton was a genuine hero. She will forever be remembered as one of the champions of organized labor, right up there with the Joe Hills, Bill Haywoods and Emma Goldmans.
  67. "Local" Goes Loco (September 23, 2009)
    Buying "local" has become a popular movement in American agriculture and commerce. Some corporations, however, are taking "local" a step farther.
  68. The great 'success' of a carbon trading failure (September 18, 2009)
    The right to pollute has never been more affordable. Energy companies and market speculators can buy a tonne of carbon for less than the cost of a cup of coffee. The low cost gives an incentive for companies to pollute more in the short-term and prices renewable energy alternatives out of the market.
  69. Company Secretary To Replace Inspector (September 14, 2009)
    If all goes to plan, India Inc would no longer have to deal with labour inspectors turning up at their premises to check compliance with 43 central and myriad state labour legislations. Instead, firms can submit a certificate from a company secretary that validates their compliance with the numerous employment laws.
  70. Woman Leads Tribals Against World's Steel Maker (September 12, 2009)
    The fight against the world's biggest steel maker, ArcelorMittal, is being waged from a tiny tea stall in Ranchi, eastern India.
  71. From villages to New Delhi to Geneva: Indian farmers protest against the WTO (September 8, 2009)
    The "liberalization" and 'corporatization' of agriculture under the World Trade Organisation would put at risk the livelihoods of more than 2/3 of India's 1 billion people.
  72. Growing Poverty And Despair In America (September 4, 2009)
    Increasing homelessness and hunger highlight the growing problem as, in the face of deteriorating economic conditions and growing human needs, administration policies are indifferent, counterproductive, uncaring and hostile.
  73. How the World Depression Hits Orissa (July 13, 2009)
    The recession in the West is having a profound impact on the deep rural interior of Orissa.
  74. Tax Havens; Undermining Democracy (July 12, 2009)
  75. From Self-managed Solidarity Unionism to a Self-managed Society (June 15, 2009)
    Capitalism is built on various forms of oppression and structural inequality. But the subordination and exploitation of the working class remains at the heart of the system. A liberatory program and strategy for a remake of society needs to explain how workers can escape the class cage.
  76. Mondragon Worker-Cooperatives Decide How to Ride Out a Downturn (June 5, 2009)
    The Mondragón Cooperative Corporation (MCC), the largest consortium of worker-owned companies, has developed a different way of doing business - a way that puts workers, not shareholders, first.
  77. Educate, agitate, occupy! (June 3, 2009)
    An account of the occupation Visteon factory in Enfield, London.
  78. The Real Expenses Scandal (May 26, 2009)
    One of the consistent features of Private Finance Initiatives (PFI) is that the projects are reverse-engineered to meet the demands of corporate investors. This, for example, is how the £30m public scheme to refurbish Coventry's two hospitals became a £410m private scheme to knock them both down and rebuild one of them - containing fewer beds and fewer doctors and nurses.
  79. Grassroots Power and Non-Market Economies (May 1, 2009)
    People are organized across many sectors that have never chosen to step out into the popular movement before. For example, indigenous peoples in the last 10 years or so have made a determination that they could no longer organize just as indigenous but had to become part of the so-called anti-globalization movement.
  80. For a Workers Recovery Plan - The Causes and Cures of a New Great Depression (January 17, 2009)
    Economics is now not just for the experts. If anything is clear from the panic that started in mid- September, 2008, it is that workers must understand the economy. For clearly the 'experts' have no idea what they are doing.
  81. The God That Failed (October 13, 2008)
    Perhaps the most striking fact revealed by the global financial crash -- or rather, by the reaction to it -- is the staggering, astonishing, gargantuan amount of money that the governments of the world have at their command. In just a matter of days, we have seen literally trillions of dollars offered to the financial services sector by national treasuries and central banks across the globe.
  82. The Biggest 'October Surprise' Of All: A World Capitalist Crash (October 1, 2008)
    Today we see the Western bourgeoisie, disarmed by its own neo-liberal ideology, falling back in a flash on Keynesianism, injecting hundreds of billions of dollars into the banking system to stave off collapse, and dusting off forgotten laws and powers from 70 years ago to push through their emergency measures.
  83. 'Creative Destruction' - The Madness of the Global Economy - Part 2 (February 7, 2008)
    The dominant system of economics is unstable, inimical to social justice and lethally damaging to the environmental support systems on which we all depend. A major failure in professional journalism has been the refusal to analyse this; or even to report that real growth rates in the developed world have been declining since the 1970s.
  84. Creative Destruction: The Madness of the Global Economy (February 5, 2008)
    The current system of economics, particularly the latest stage of 'turbo-capitalism', known inoffensively as 'neoliberalism', is built upon painful boom-and-bust cycles fuelled by corporate greed and maintained by cynical deception of the public. The costs to the planet - in terms of human suffering and environmental collapse - are staggering.
  85. Social Reproduction for Beginners: Bringing the Real World Back In (2008)
    We can grasp the social reproductive dimension of the post-1973 crisis in various phenomena in the U.S., but none stands out more sharply than the disappearance of the one-paycheck working-class family.
  86. On Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine" (September 23, 2007)
    Capitalism has always been a shock doctrine of selfish predation, as one can discover from Hobbes and Locke, Marx and Weber, none of them saluted by Klein. However there are huge third world economies that have been ravaged by neoliberalism that haven't endured "the shock doctrine" as defined by Klein. Ultimately Klen's analysis is limited and she is too gloomy and pessimistic about the power of capitalism.
  87. Starving the Poor (May 15, 2007)
    Chomsky demonstrates how deficits in the international order and its policy-making can lead to negative effects, especially for the poor. One such example is the promotion of biofuels.
  88. Tearing Down the Seven Pillars of Neoliberalism (2007)
    With the beginning of the 1980s, we entered a new era of capitalism, the era of neoliberalism. This project systematically destroys all political, social and ecological restrictions for the activity of capital. Its methods are universally known: transformation of all relations into commodity relations, freedom of action for businesses and investors and expansion of the hunting area for transnational corporations over the whole planet.
  89. 1973 Redux?: Continuity and Discontinuity in the Decline of Dollar-Centered World Accumulation (2006)
    The world today is poised between the U.S. and East Asian centered phases of capitalist expansion.
  90. Wealth, Income, and Power (September 1, 2005)
    This document presents details on the wealth and income distributions in the United States, and explains how we can use these two distributions as power indicators.
  91. Patent Absurdity (June 20, 2005)
    If patent law had been applied to novels in the 1880s, great books would not have been written. If the EU applies it to software, every computer user will be restricted.
  92. China in the Contemporary World Dynamic of Accumulation and Class Struggle (2005)
    The Chinese ruling elite is riding the whirlwind precisely because its own necessary reforms are quite visibly setting in motion social processes that could completely overwhelm it, namely a working-class and peasant insurrection which would necessarily assume a truly socialist content.
  93. Fictitious Capital and the Transition Out of Capitalism (2005)
    To understand the weight of fictitious capital in the current context, it is necessary to look beyond the merely economic to the class struggle. Despite the colossal efforts of ideology to deny or trivialize social antagonism, everything today is shaped by class struggle, both the one-sided class struggle waged for 30 years by the capitalist class, and even more so the potential threat of a two-sided struggle to re-emerge into the open.
  94. Marx and Makhno Meet McDonald's (2005)
    Over the last several years, a revolving network of militants in Paris, France, have developed a strategy and tactics for winning strikes by marginal, low-paid, outsourced and immigrant workers against international chains, in situations where the strikers are often ignored by unions to which they nominally belong, or are actually obstructed by them.
  95. The 'Dollar' Crisis, and Us (2004)
    A capitalist crisis like the current one resembles a poker game where the table is swept clean and all cards and chips must be redistributed for the game to continue at all. This could happen as an 'orderly bankruptcy proceeding' but it will most likely happen (as it has always happened in the past) chaotically, through economic blowout, class confrontation, and war.
  96. Billionaires, Crime, and Corruption (2001)
    What does it really mean when somebody claims to own hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars? What is a billionaire like David Rockefeller really telling us? He's saying that land he may never have set foot on, but which thousands of other people spend their lives farming, belongs to him alone. He's saying that buildings and machinery which he probably has never seen and certainly has never worked at, but which whole communities of people spend their lives working at to produce goods like clothing and automobiles, belong to him alone.
  97. Glaberman and Faber's Working for Wages - Book Review (May 1, 1999)
    Working for Wages: The Roots of Insurgency by Martin Glaberman and Seymour Faber (Dix Hills, NY: General Hall, Inc., 1998) $26.95 paperback. OVER THE LAST few years I have been privileged to teach a number of basic economics courses to trade unionists-"privileged" because in every case the students' experience, their awareness and critical understanding of what goes on in their lives, has provided a rich fund of knowledge of which I have become in my turn a grateful student.
  98. Causes and Consequences: Inside The Asian Crisis (1998)
    What is happening now is more than the collapse of several Asian economies, it is the unraveling of a development model that these two major capitalist institutions, the World Bank and the IMF, had widely touted as demonstrating the virtues of export-led, free-market capitalism.
  99. Jubilee 2000 (1998)
    Asserting that debt is a social and ideological construct, not a simple economic fact, Chomsky examines various qualifications for the Jubilee 2000 that called for international debt cancellation.
  100. The Deficit is No Accident (July 1, 1997)
    The deficit and national debt were created intentionally by politicians of both parties, to destroy social programs which give working people some protection against unrestrained corporate power
  101. Reporting the Realities of Poverty (July 1, 1997)
    Review of Everybody Loves a Good Drought: Stories from India's Poorest Districts, by P. Sainath.
  102. Let's Be Practical (1997)
    Building a movement to destroy capitalism and create a society which truly reflects the aspirations of most people, though it may sound scary, is actually more practical than trying to reform a union.
  103. Market Democracy in a Neoliberal Order (1997)
    Noam Chomsky illustrates the importance of considering doctrine against the background of reality. He reveals that the political and economic principles that have prevailed are often remote from those that are proclaimed.
  104. The Passion for Free Markets (1997)
    Chomsky discusses the reasons for being skeptical of the WTO and its use as the forum for the export of American values.
  105. Workers have to deal with their own reality and that transforms them (1997)
    I think self-activity is the response of working people to the nature of their lives and work. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad, sometimes it's quiet. Part of the reality is that we're going through a considerable technological revolution, which means that experiences, even jobs, that people depended on and know about, begin to disappear. To expect workers to say, "Yesterday, they automated my factory; today, I know exactly what to do about it," is Utopian. It takes a while. It takes a generation. Workers will learn.
  106. Wildcat I (1994)
  107. The Junk Food Economy (February 1, 1992)
    Young people entering the workforce face a junk food economy.
  108. Privatization: Fiction Versus Fact (February 1, 1992)
    The corporate sector is the big winner from privatization.
  109. We Can Save Social Programs (February 1, 1992)
    We can save social programs by removing unwarranted tax subsidies for corporations and wealthy investors.
  110. Ethical Mutual Funds, Screening the Screens (January 1, 1991)
    Ethical Mutual Funds are important to the growth of social programs and services in Canada.
  111. Globalizing the Left (January 1, 1991)
    The Canadian trade union movement has to put greater emphasis on using its global ties to prevent multinational companies from shifting their operations to low wage countries.
  112. Seven Public Sector Myths (1991)
    Fact and fiction about the public sector.
  113. Winter of Discontent (January 1, 1991)
    Whole communities are being plunged into a poverty culture that is very difficult to escape.
  114. The Need for Alternative Employment (December 1, 1989)
    An alternative economy would enable movement people to integrate their bread labour with their social change work.
  115. Connexions Annual Overview: Economy, Poverty, Work (October 1, 1989)
    To effect desired change, it is necessary to have the power to set a different agenda, and therefore to challenge the current concentration of economic and political power. One of the keys to building an effective movement is mutual acts of solidarity, inspired by the principle that `an injury to one is an injury to all'.
  116. A Targeted Approach to Worker Co-op Development (February 1, 1989)
    Targeted strategies offer advantages: First, expertise which permits the rapid assessment of prospective deals. Second, by concentrating on businesses which have some similarities, it is possible to build links, formal and informal, and in so doing, create the potential for common problem-solving and economies of scale in the purchase of goods and services.
  117. A Critique of Kim Moody's An Injury to All (1989)
    Moody's book is no academic study, but looks at the labor movement "from the bottom up"; the author has witnessed and to some extent participated in the many defeats and handful of victories of the past 15 years.
  118. Working in an office -- for a while (May 1, 1978)
    The first thing that strikes one about working in this particular office is how little actual work ever gets done.
  119. A Tale of Two Offices (July 1, 1977)
    Daily life and offices politics viewed through the experience of working in two libraries with very different management styles.
  120. Hierarchy of salaries and incomes (January 1, 1974)
    The official ideology's justification of hierarchy does not coincide with either logic or reality.
  121. Public Ownership and Common Ownership (1947)
    Under public ownership the workers are not masters of their work; they may be better treated and their wages may be higher than under private ownership; but they are still exploited.
  122. Introduction to Capital (1932)
    Marx's book on capital, like Plato's book on the state, like Machiavelli's Prince and Rousseau's Social Contract, owes its tremendous and enduring impact to the fact that it grasps and articulates, at a turning point of history, the full implications of the new force breaking in upon the old forms of life. All the economic, political, and social questions, upon which the analysis in Marx's Capital theoretically devolves, are today world-shaking practical issues, over which the real-life struggle between great social forces, between states and classes, rages in every corner of the earth.
  123. Socialization (September 13, 1919)
    Socialization according to Bauer's recipe is legal expropriation without economic expropriation, it is what any bourgeois government might propose. The capitalist value of enterprises will be paid to the employers in compensation and henceforth they will receive in interest on bonds what they formerly received in profit. This socialization replaces private capitalism with State capitalism; the State takes on the task of sweating profits from the workers and giving it to capitalists.
  124. The Boycott (November 23, 1901)
    The boycott, which the bourgeoisie regards with sentimental tenderness when directed against the trade of its commercial rival, it considers as a crime when employed by the workers in defence of their livelihood. The mere blacklisting of a workshop by a trade union is an offence, in Europe as well as in America, punished by law and the infliction of civil damages, calculated to exhaust the treasury of the union and break down the power of resistance of the workers.

Selected Websites and Organizations

  1. This is a small sampling of organizations and websites concerned with economic issues, work and labour, and poverty issues in the Connexions Directory. For more organizations and websites, check the Connexions Directory Subject Index, especially under topics such as economy, economic alternatives, corporations, corporate agenda, fair trade, labour issues, poverty, work, taxation, and working class.
  • Break Their Haughty Power
    Articles on capitalism, socialism, and revolution, from a left-Marxist perspective.
  • Canadian Association of Labour Media
    A network of union publications and editors that provides labour-friendly stories and graphics and training for labour communicators.
  • The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
    Many articles, fact sheets and background papers and analyses, on Canadian and international issues, from the CCPA, which promotes research from a progressive point of view.
  • Connexions Library: Community & Urban Focus
    Selected articles, books, websites and other resources on community and urban issues.
  • The Corporate Consensus
    A detailed guide to the institutions and corporations which occupy the commanding heights of corporate power in the world today.
  • Corporate Watch (UK)
    Radical research and publishing group supporting activism against large multinational corporations.
  • CorpWatch
    Corporate Watch provides news, analysis, research tools and action resources to respond to corporate activity around the globe and also talks with people who are directly affected by corporate abuses as well as with others fighting for corporate accountability, human rights, social and environmental justice.
  • CrocTail
    CrocTail provides an interface for browsing information parsed from SEC filings about several hundred thousand U.S. publicly traded corporations and their foreign subsidiaries. Information from company filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has been parsed and annotated by CorpWatch to provide a way for Crocodyl.org users to research and add issues related to corporate subsidiaries.
  • Global Unions
    Standing Together for the Rights of Workers.
    Global Unions are international trade union organisations working together with a shared commitment to the ideals and principles of the trade union movement. They share a common determination to organize, to defend human rights and labour standards everywhere, and to promote the growth of trade unions for the benefit of all working men and women and their families."
  • International Labor Rights Forum
    An advocacy organization dedicated to achieving just and humane treatment for workers worldwide.
  • LaborNet
    Exists to build a democratic communication network for the labor movement.
  • LabourStart
    A major site with information about labour activities throughout the world.
  • Work and Labour

Other Links & Resources

May Day, Everyday


Books, Films and Periodicals

  1. This is a small sampling of books related to economic issues, work, and labour in the Connexions Online Library. For more books and other resources, check the Connexions Library Subject Index, especially under topics such as economy, economic alternatives, corporations, corporate agenda, fair trade, labour issues, poverty, work, taxation, and working class.
  1. The ABCs of the Economic Crisis
    What Working People Need to Know
    Author: Magdoff, Fred; Yates, Michael D.
    Rich, powerful people created the economic crisis of 2008-09, while hundreds of millions of working people suffer the consequences -- lost homes, lost jobs, rising insecurity, and falling living standards. How could this happen?
  2. The Accumulation of Capital
    Author: Luxemburg, Rosa
    Rosa Luxemburg's analysis of the inherent contradictions of capitalist accumulation.
  3. Behind Closed Doors
    How The Rich Won Control of Canada's Tax System... And Ended Up Richer
    Author: McQuaig, Linda
    A stinging indictment of Canada's tax system and the people who shape it.
  4. Ben Norton aka Multipolarista interviews Michael Hudson: Destiny of Civilization
    Author: Hudson, Michael; Norton, Ben
    The decline of the US dollar, the three 'systems', the sanctions war on Russia, on the eve of the publication of Prof. Hudson's new book: The Destiny of Civilization: Finance Capitalism, Industrial Capitalism or Socialism.
  5. Business as Usual
    The Economic Crisis and the Future of Capitalism
    Author: Mattick, Paul Jr.
    In Business as Usual Paul Mattick explains the recession in jargon-free style, without shying away from serious analysis. He explores current events in relation to the development of the world economy since the Second World War and, more fundamentally, looks at the cycle of crisis and recovery that has characterized capitalism since the early nineteenth century. Mattick situates today’s crisis in the context of a capitalism ruled by a voracious quest for profit.
  6. Das Capital, Volume 1
    A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production
    Author: Marx, Karl
    Marx's great work sets out to grasp and portray the totality of the capitalist mode of production, and the bourgeois society that emerges from it. He describes and connects all its economic features, together with its legal, political, religious, artistic, philosophical and ideological manifestations.
  7. Capitalism: A Crime Story
    Author: Glasbeek, Harry
    Harry Glasbeek explains how liberal law strives to reconcile capitalism with liberalism, while giving corporate capitalism privileged treatment under the law.
  8. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
    Author: Marx, Karl
  9. Corporate crime wave
    New Internationalist July 2003
    A look into corporate crime, people who have been involved, and what happens to the money. Also discusses what can be done to stop corporate crime.
  10. Corporate influence Inside business How corporations make the rules
    New Internationalist July 2002
    A look into how corporate democracy works and facts regarding corporate influence. Also looks into a short history of corporations.
  11. Corporate Power and Canadian Capitalism
    Author: Carroll, William K.
    Carroll looks at the accumulation of capital in Canada since the Second World War. Most of the book is devoted to tracing actual patterns of corporate ownership and intercorporate relationships.
  12. The Corporation
    The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power
    Author: Bakan, Joel
    Makes the case that corporations function as a psychopathic entity. A companion to Mark Achbar's 2003 documentary of the same name.
  13. The Corporation
    Author: Achbar, Mark; Abbott Jennifer
    The Corporation explores the nature and spectacular rise of the dominant institution of our time.
  14. The Debt System: A History of Sovereign Debts and their Repudiation
    Author: Toussaint, Éric
    A history of national debt and the international power structures it supports. Calls for the repudiation of illegitimate debt.
  15. The Destiny of Civilization
    Finance Capitalism, Industrial Capitalism or Socialism
    Author: Hudson, Michael
    The Destiny of Civilization presents an overview of Michael Hudson's geo-political perspective: analysis which integrates economics, history, politics, archaeology and psychology.
  16. The Economy of Cities
    Author: Jacobs, Jane
    Ideas about what makes cities rich or poor, how cities grow, and how city growth affects national economies.
  17. The Enemy of Nature
    The End of Capitalism or the End of the World?
    Author: Kovel, Joel
    We live in and from nature, but the way we have evolved of doing this is about to destroy you. Capitalism and its by-products -- imperialism, war, neoliberal globalization, racism, poverty, and the destruction of community -- are all playing a part in the destruction of our ecosystem.
  18. Essays on Marx's Theory of Value
    Author: Rubin, Issak Illich
    A discussion of concepts at the root of Marxism: the theory of value and commodity fetishism.
  19. For the Common Good
    Redirecting the Economy Toward Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable Future
    Author: Daly, Herman E. and Jr. Cobb , John B
    The authors argue that America's growth-oriented, industrial economy has led to environmental problems and propose an alternative economic paradigm.
  20. Green Production
    Toward an Environmental Rationality
    Author: Leff, Enrique
    Explores the environment and sustainability development with a Marxist approach and provides an alternative vision for ecotechnology.
  21. In and Out of Crisis
    The Global Financial Meltdown and Left Alternatives
    Author: Panitch, Leo; Gindin, Sam; Albo, Greg
    Political economists Albo, Gindin and Panitch lay bare the roots of the crisis, which they locate in the dynamic expansion of capital on a global scale over the last quarter century – and in the inner logic of capitalism itself.
  22. Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy
    Author: Marx, Karl
    When we speak of production, we always have in mind production at a definite stage of social development.
  23. Inventing Tax Rage
    Misinformation in the National Post
    Author: Patriquin, Larry
    How the National Post created an agenda for the tax cuts that mostly benefits the wealthy.
  24. Inventing Tax Rage (excerpt)
    Misinformation in the National Post
    Author: Patriquin, Larry
    The propaganda campaign to invent "tax rage".
  25. Killing the Host
    How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy
    Author: Hudson, Michael
    In Killing the Host, economist Michael Hudson exposes how finance, insurance, and real estate (the FIRE sector) have seized control of the global economy at the expense of industrial capitalism and governments.
  26. Limits of Capital
    Author: Harvey, David
    An exposition and development of Marx's critique of political economy. Harvey updates his text with a discussion of the turmoil in world markets today.
  27. Marxism and Bourgeois Economics
    Author: Mattick, Paul
    Just as the proletariat opposed the bourgeoisie, so Marx confronted bourgeois economic theory: not in order to develop it, or to improve it, but to destroy its apparent validity and, finally, with the abolition of capitalism, to overcome it altogether.
  28. Matewan
    Author: Sayles, John (director)
    A film based on events in Matewan, West Virginia in 1920.
  29. The New Bureaucracy
    Waste and Folly in the Private Sector
    Author: Hardin, Hershel
    Hardin shows that the private sector is a huge and wasteful bureaucracy; he looks at major corporations, the stock market, the advertising and marketing industry, consultants, money managers, think tanks, the media, etc.
  30. The No-Nonsense Guide to Fair Trade
    Author: Ransom, David
    Ransom suggests that fair, environmentally-conscious trade is not only a viable alternative to unfair free trade, but that it is the way of the future.
  31. The No-Nonsense Guide to Global Finance
    Author: Stalker, Peter
    An incisive introduction to global finance – where money comes from, the current mechanisms and the need for control and reform.
  32. The No-Nonsense Guide to World Poverty
    Author: Seabrook, Jeremy
  33. The No-Nonsense Guide to Globalisation
    Author: Ellwood, Wayne
  34. Open Veins of Latin America
    Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent
    Author: Galeano, Eduardo
    A political economy, a social and cultural narrative, and a powerful description of primitive capital accumulation.
  35. Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - April 9, 2015
    Resisting Neoliberalism
    Author: Diemer, Ulli (editor); Khan, Tahmid (production)
    Resisting neoliberalism: "free markets" and "free trade" are an ideological cover for what is actually a form of state capitalism in which working people subsidize and bail out corporations and the rich. In this edition of Other Voices, and more extensively on the Connexions website, we look at both neoliberalism and the resistance to it. The version of capitalism which became dominant by the 1980s has been given the name neoliberalism. The term refers to the global economic restructuring which has taken place, and to the accompanying shifts in the structures of power under which local and national governments have seen their ability to act independently curtailed by international treaties and by institutions which owe their ultimate allegiance to corporate capital. The essence of neoliberalism has been an unending campaign of class struggle by the rich against the rest. Yet resistance continues, and indeed continues to grow.
  36. Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - July 3, 2015
    Greece and thd debt crisis
    Author: Diemer, Ulli (editor); Rickwood, Darien Yawching (production)
    Our spotlight this issue is on the debt crisis facing Greece. To understand the crisis, one has to look beyond the mainstream media to alternative sources of information. We've done that, with articles that set out to analyze the nature of the debt burden that has been imposed on the citizens of so many countries, not just Greece. Also: celebrating Grace Lee Bogg’s 100th birthday.
  37. Poor No More
    Author: Deveaux, Bert (Director)
    In the present economic crisis, many Canadians are destititute and many others are on the brink. Against this climate, a couple of Canadians go on a road trip to Ireland and Sweden, with comedian Mary Walsh as their guide, and get a chance to see how other countries have helped people like themselves.
  38. The Price of A Bargain
    The Quest for Cheap and the Death of Globalization
    Author: Laird, Gordon
    Describes a world where the economy's collateral damage includes oil spills and the poisoning of developing nations' working poor; the low wages and illegal labour practices of corporations leading to the ultimate collapse of a system based on minimizing costs, high volume sales and low profit margins; and a world where debt is the cornerstone of the economy.
  39. The Price We Pay
    Author: Crooks, Harold
    This documentary, inspired by Brigitte Alepin's book La Crise fiscale qui vient, shines a light on the dark history and dire present-day reality of big-business tax avoidance, which has seen multinationals depriving governments of trillions of dollars in tax revenues by harbouring profits in offshore havens.
  40. The Privatization Putsch
    Author: Hardin, Herschel
    According to Hardin, privatization is the expression of the ideology of a right wing, corporate agenda: business wants to gets its hands on public funds and politicians are more than willing to hand over publicly owned enterprises and public services to business friends, nearly always on terms that are immensely favourable to the corporations involved.
  41. Privatization The great privati$ation grab
    New Internationalist April 2003
    The effects of privatization on public services. Discusses who is responsible and why they are doing this.
  42. Rising from the Ashes
    Labor in the Age of "Global" Capitalism
    Author: Wood, Ellen Meiksins; Meiksins, Peter; Yates, Michael D.
    Takes on the issues of changing composition of the international working class, patterns of work under contemporary capitalism, the relationship of race and gender to class, the promise and limitations of recent eruptions of labour militancy, and the strategic options available to working people in an age of "global" capitalism.
  43. Shooting the Hippo
    Death by Deficit and Other Canadian Myths
    Author: McQuaig, Linda
    An examination of how economic policies systematically favour the interests of the rich while pretending to be for the common good.
  44. The Silent Takeover
    Global Capitalism and the Death of Democracy
    Author: Hertz, Noreena
    A combination of globalisation and the growing power of major corporations is rendering democratic governments impotent for influencing key decisions that affect the lives of ordinary people.
  45. Super Imperialism
    Author: Hudson, Michael
    This study of U.S. financial diplomacy explores the faults built into the core of the World Bank and the IMF at their inception. Forensic detail reveals how the world's core economic functions were sculpted to preserve US financial hegemony. Difficult to detect at the time, these problems have since become explicit as the failure of the international economic order has become apparent; the IMF and World Bank were set up to give aid to developing countries, but instead many of the world's poorest countries have been plunged into insurmountable debt crises.
  46. Toward Sustainable Communities
    Resources for Citizens and their Governments
    Author: Roseland, Mark
    The way our urban communities develop will largely determine our success or failure in overcoming environmental challenges and achieving sustainable development. Toward Sustainable Communities offer practical suggestions and innovative solutions to a wide range of municipal and community problems.
  47. The Trouble With Billionaires
    Author: McQuaig, Linda; Brooks, Neil
    The glittering lives of billionaires may seem to be a harmless source of entertainment, but authors Linda McQuaig and Neil Brooks argue that such financial power not only threatens everyone's economic and social well-being but also upsets the very functioning of democracy. Our society tends to regard great wealth as evidence of exceptional talent or accomplishment. Yet spectacular fortunes are often attributable to luck, ruthlessness, cheating, or advantageous positioning that allow some to build on the work and insights of others who have paved the way.
  48. 24 Days in Brooks
    Author: Inkster, Dana (Director)
    Centred on the 24-day Lakeside Packers strike, this film is a nuanced portrait of people working together for change. They are people like Peter Jany Khwai, who escaped war in Sudan and Edil Hassan, a devout Muslim born in Somalia.
  49. Unequal Freedoms
    The Global Market as an Ethical System
    Author: McMurtry, John
    McMurtry's central argument in this work is the global market can be an ethical thing if a civil commons is put into place. The civil commons is a economic system in which individuals, not a handful of corporations, take part in a equal opporutinity framework of supply and demand.
  50. The Wealthy Banker's Wife
    The Assault on Equality in Canada
    Author: McQuaig, Linda
  51. What Every Environmentalist Needs To Know about Capitalism
    A Citizen's Guide to Capitalism and the Environment
    Author: Magdoff, Fred; Foster, John Bellamy
    A manifesto for those environmentalists who reject schemes of “green capitalism” or piecemeal reform. Magdoff and Foster argue that efforts to reform capitalism along environmental lines or rely solely on new technology to avert catastrophe misses the point. The main cause of the looming environmental disaster is the driving logic of the system itself, and those in power — no matter how “green” — are incapable of making the changes that are necessary.
  52. You, Me & the SPP: Trading Democracy for Corporate Rule
    Author: Manly, Paul (Director)
    What do secrecy, police provocateurs, an assault on democracy and infringements on citizens' rights have in common? The Security and Prosperity Partnership.



Learning from our History


Marx and Makhno Meet McDonald's - Over the last several years, a revolving network of militants in Paris, France, have developed a strategy and tactics for winning strikes by marginal, low-paid, outsourced and immigrant workers against international chains, in situations where the strikers are often ignored by unions to which they nominally belong, or are actually obstructed by them.


Resources for Activists

The Connexions Calendar - An event calendar for activists. Submit your events for free here.

Media Names & Numbers - A comprehensive directory of Canada’s print and broadcast media. .

Sources - A membership-based service that enables journalists to find spokespersons and story ideas, and which simultaneously enables organizations to raise their profile by reaching the media and the public with their message.

Organizing Resources Page - Change requires organizing. Power gives way only when it is challenged by a movement for change, and movements grow out of organizing. Organizing is qualitatively different from simple “activism”. Organizing means sustained long-term conscious effort to bring people together to work for common goals. This page features a selection of articles, books, and other resources related to organizing.

Publicity and Media Relations - A short introduction to media relations strategies.

Grassroots Media Relations - A media relations guide for activist groups.

Socialism gateway - A gateway to resources about socialism, socialist history, and socialist ideas.

Marxism gateway - A gateway to resources about Marxism.