Economy Economics Focus

Connexions Resource Centre:
Focus on Economy, Poverty, Work

Recent & Selected Articles

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.

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.
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.
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....
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Tax Havens; Undermining Democracy (July 12, 2009)
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.
Mondragón 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.
Educate, agitate, occupy! (June 3, 2009)
An account of the occupation Visteon factory in Enfield, London.
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.
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.
For a Worker’s 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.
Don’t socialize the losses—take the whole thing! (November 1, 2008)
A demand that a few weeks ago would have seemed leftist utopianism is now entirely reasonable and indeed the only practical solution. If ALL the financial institutions—banks, insurance companies, saving and loans, pension funds—become state property, their worthless loans to each other can be wiped off the books as the mere paper that they are.
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.
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.
A Biological Walk Down Wall Street (September 30, 2008)
Wall Street today, with the collapse of Freddie Mac, Fanny Mae, AIG, Lehmann Brothers, Washington Mutual and the rest as to come, is highly reminiscent of that scene in ‘Alien’ where the parasite begins to burst out. The host is the free market. Feeding the parasitoid more, in sense of allowing it to nourish on public funds as new host, will have the same denouement, only this time the host will not just be a particular market, but the whole market, and the society reliant upon it.
"Just Say No!" to the Robin Hood-in-Reverse Bailout (September 29, 2008)
The reverse Robin Hood deal to bail out the rich cannot be allowed to stand. It’s time to take to the streets.
'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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Fictitious Capital for Beginners (2007)
Rosa Luxemburg's framework enabled her to see how capitalism could ultimately destroy society — barbarism, in her words, or the “mutual destruction of the contending classes” as the Communist Manifesto put it in 1847 — by being required to turn more and more to primitive accumulation and non-reproduction, a prophecy we see materializing before our eyes today.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Progressive Frames for Taxes (2005)
As progressives, we do not believe that taxes are necessarily an affliction. Instead, we think of taxes as investments that give us dividends.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Competition Myth - The Real Meaning of the Last Twenty-five Years (July 1, 1997)
The problems which working people have suffered in the last twenty-five years are not problems which the ruling elite are trying to solve but weapons they have devised to attack working people in a class war.
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
Reporting the Realities of Poverty (July 1, 1997)
Review of Everybody Loves a Good Drought: Stories from India's Poorest Districts, by P. Sainath.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Patent Folly (1995)
The misuse of patents rights and associated dangers.
Wildcat I (1994)
The Junk Food Economy (February 1, 1992)
Young people entering the workforce face a junk food economy.
Privatization: Fiction Versus Fact (February 1, 1992)
The corporate sector is the big winner from privatization.
We Can Save Social Programs (February 1, 1992)
We can save social programs by removing unwarranted tax subsidies for corporations and wealthy investors.
Welfare: The Fragmented Self (March 1, 1991)
Are welfare recipients treated as if they are part of a Canadian social experiment?
Ethical Mutual Funds, Screening the Screens (January 1, 1991)
Ethical Mutual Funds are important to the growth of social programs and services in Canada.
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.
Seven Public Sector Myths (1991)
Fact and fiction about the public sector.
Winter of Discontent (January 1, 1991)
Whole communities are being plunged into a poverty culture that is very difficult to escape.
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.
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'.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Hierarchy of salaries and incomes (January 1, 1974)
The official ideology's justification of hierarchy does not coincide with either logic or reality.
A Parable of Pigs (August 1, 1972)
There once was a pig farm that was operated by an old farmer, his son, and a hired man. The farmyard was filled with hundreds of pigs of all sizes, and they all ate their swill from a huge trough.
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.
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.
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.
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

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.
The Corporate Web
Information about the corporations which make political contributions to, and benefit from, the Harris Conservative government in Ontario.
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.
Crocodyl
Crocodyl is a collaboration sponsored by CorpWatch, the Center for Corporate Policy and the Corporate Research Project. Our aim is to stimulate collaborative research among NGOs, journalists, activists, whistleblowers and academics from both the global South and North in order to develop publicly-available profiles of the world's most powerful corporations. The result is an evolving compendium of critical research, posted to the public domain as an aid to anyone working to hold corporations increasingly accountable.
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.

Other Links & Resources

Business & Economics Topic Index in Sources Directory of Experts
A subject guide to experts and spokespersons on topics related to business and economics in the Sources directory for the media.
Catalyst
A campaigning think tank for the labour movement and the left, committed to developing and promoting practical policies for the redistribution wealth, power, and opportunity. Catalyst is not aligned to any political party, but we are an organisation of the left, of democratic socialists, with a clear statement of purpose and an Editorial Board comprising individuals who have all made substantial contributions in the fields of politics, economic and social policy.
Centre for Research on Work and Society
University-union-community research centre doing activist research on work and labour.
Connexions Library: Labour and Unions Focus
Selected articles, books, websites and other resources on labour and unions.
Connexions Library: Transportation Focus
Selected articles, books, websites and other resources on transportation.
Connexions Library: Work Focus Page
Selected articles, books, websites and other resources on work.
International Forum on Globalization
An alliance of activists, scholars, economists, researchers and writers formed to stimulate new thinking, joint activity, and public education in response to economic globalization.
Labour Topic Index in Sources Directory of Experts
A subject guide to experts and spokespersons on topics related to labour in the Sources directory for the media.
Labour WebRing: hub
Featuring trade unions/trade unionists, labour/labor organizations and union activists worldwide.
Left Business Observer Home Page
Left Business Observer is a newsletter on economics and politics. This site collects some sample articles and background information.
Marketing Topic Index in Sources Directory of Experts
A subject guide to experts and spokespersons on topics related to marketing in the Sources directory for the media.
Radical Statistics Group
We believe that statistics can be used to support radical campaigns for progressive social change. Statistics should inform, not drive policies. Social problems should not be disguised by technical language.
Researching Companies On-Line
Information on how to research companies online
Sawt el-Amel/The Laborer's Voice
An independent grassroots organisation founded by Palestinian Arab workers in Nazareth to defend and promote the rights of Arab citizens is Israel to work and social security. In order to reach its objectives, Sawt el-Amel takes legal action, educates the public, coordinates grassroots organising and engages in international solidarity work and advocacy.
Taxation Topic Index in Sources Directory of Experts
A subject guide to experts and spokespersons on topics related to taxation in the Sources directory for the media.
Trade Topic Index in Sources Directory of Experts
A subject guide to experts and spokespersons on topics related to trade in the Sources directory for the media.

Books, Films and Periodicals

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.

The Accumulation of Capital
Author: Luxemburg, Rosa
Rosa Luxemburg's analysis of the inherent contradictions of capitalist accumulation.
Beating Back the Corporate Attack
Socialism and the struggle for global justice
Author: Clement, Chris; La Botz, Dan; Luce, Stephanie; Post, Charlie
Our movement is calling for a new direction -- for democratic control of our political life, and for democratic control over the most important aspects of the economy. Why should handful of the super-rich run the planet, and, moreover, run it into the ground?
Behind Closed Doors
How The Rich Won Control of Canada's Tax System... And Ended Up Richer
Author: McQuaig, Linda
Building Sustainable Communities
Tools and Concepts for Self-Reliant Economic Change
Author: Morehouse, Ward (ed.)
The major sections of the book deal with community land trusts and other forms of community ownership of natural resources, worker-managed enterprises and other techniques of community self-management, and community currency and banking.
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.
China in the Contemporary World Dynamic of Accumulation and Class Struggle
Author: Goldner, Loren
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.
A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
Author: Marx, Karl
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.
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.
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.
The Economy of Cities
Author: Jacobs, Jane
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 u. Capitalism and its by-rpoducts -- imperialism, war, neoliberal globalization, racism, poverty, and the destruction of community -- are all playing apart in the destruction of our ecosystem.
Flying Without A Net
The "Economic Freedom" of Working Canadians in 2000
Author: Brown, Amanda; Stanford, Jim
Reports on a project to construct a quantitative index summarizing the multi-dimensional economic status of working people in Canada, based on variations in 14 different component indicators of economic and social well-being.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Inventing Tax Rage (excerpt)
Misinformation in the National Post
Author: Patriquin, Larry
The propaganda campaign to invent "tax rage".
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.
Matewan
Author: Sayles, John
A film based on events in Matewan, West Virginia in 1920.
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.
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.
The No-Nonsense Guide to Globalization
Author: Ellwood, Wayne
The No-Nonsense Guide to World Poverty
Author: Seabrook, Jeremy
Open Veins of Latin America
Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent (25th Anniversary Edition)
Author: Galeano, Eduardo
A political economy, a social and cultural narrative, and a powerful description of primitive capital accumulation.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Shooting the Hippo
Death by Deficit and Other Canadian Myths
Author: McQuaig, Linda
An examination of how economic policy systematically favours the interests of the rich while pretending to be for the common good.
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.
Toward Sustainable Communities
Resources for Citizens and their Governments
Author: Roseland, Mark
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.
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.
The Wealthy Banker's Wife
The Assault on Equality in Canada
Author: McQuaig, Linda
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.

Media Names & Numbers - A comprehensive directory of Canada's print and broadcast media. (CX5857).

Search Connexions

Connexions Library

Connexions Directory
of Associations & NGOs

Selected Resources by
Subject Area

Donate or Volunteer

Quotes

Connexions Resource Centre:
Focus on Economy, Poverty, Work

Search Connexions

Connexions Library

Connexions Directory of Associations & NGOs

Selected Resources bySubject Area

Donate or Volunteer

Quotes

Connexions Resource Centre: Focus on Economy, Poverty, Work

Connexions Directory
of Associations & NGOs

Selected Resources by
Subject Area

Connexions Resource Centre:
Focus on Economy, Poverty, Work