The Neoliberal Road to Serfdom ~~ Branko Marcetic

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/03/neoliberalism-totalitarianism-surveillance-hayek-socialism?fbclid=IwAR3574vPPFWTXyt4Z9xkXeSJQfd-IfJ6v4ZQSkdhlvu_MKff8zwoRNVs38w

~~ Posted for Collectivist ~~

The fear of socialism is mostly based on one idea: that the end of the road of bigger government is the totalitarian horror of the early twentieth century.

Sure, there are other objections, usually involving muttered words like “market” and “efficiency.” But for the fathers of neoliberalism like Friedrich Hayek, what it really came down to was the fear that every increase in the role of the state was just one more step toward the chimneys of Dachau: power concentrated among a know-it-all elite deaf to the problems facing its people; ever-present surveillance of the population, whether “suspect” or not; a vast, armed bureaucracy ready to stamp out dissent; countless bodies locked and tortured in prisons; and a state that asserts the power to treat its citizens as mere subjects while demanding secrecy and impunity for itself.

Elections: What’s the economy got to do with it? And what we can do about it ~~ Gary Wilson

https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2020/10/29/elections-whats-the-economy-got-to-do-with-it-and-what-we-can-do-about-it/

~~ Posted for Collectivist ~~

Oct. 28 — In the final days of campaigning before the 2020 elections, every form of media is saturated with advertising for the Democratic and Republican candidates in local, state and national elections.

The focus is mainly on the presidential campaigns. The far-right Trump campaign is openly racist and white supremacist, with Trump’s call-out to the neofascist Proud Boys to “stand by.” The campaign’s slogan is, in the words of the New York Post endorsement of Trump, “Make America Great Again, Again.”

The Taylor System—Man’s Enslavement by the Machine - V. Lenin

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/mar/13.htm

Capitalism cannot be at a standstill for a single moment. It must forever be moving forward. Competition, which is keenest in a period of crisis like the present, calls for the invention of an increasing number of new devices to reduce the cost of production. But the domination of capital converts all these devices into instruments for the further exploitation of the workers.

The Taylor system is one of these devices.

The General Strike ~~ Bill Haywood

https://archive.iww.org/history/library/Haywood/GeneralStrike/

Among the best parts are in the questions and answers at the end.

Only Class War Can Stop Climate Change ~~ PARIS MARX

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/10/class-war-climate-change-overpopulation-carbon

~~ posted for Collectivist ~~

A new report shows that the world’s top 1 percent is responsible for double the emissions of the entire bottom half of the planet. The message is clear: to fight climate change, we have to fight the ruling class.

Competing with Nature: COVID-19 as a capitalist virus ~~ Ashley Smith

https://mronline.org/2020/10/20/competing-with-nature-covid-19-as-a-capitalist-virus/

~~ posted for Collectivist ~~

The COVID-19 pandemic shows no signs of abating as the death toll climbs ever higher around the world. Spectre’s Ashley Smith interviews epidemiologist Rob Wallace about the global capitalist roots of the current pandemic, the likelihood of future pandemics, and the types of organized resistance necessary to prevent them.

Rob Wallace is an evolutionary epidemiologist with the Agroecology and Rural Economics Research Corps. He is author of Big Farms Make Big Flu and the just-released Dead Epidemiologists: On the Origins of COVID-19. He has consulted with the Food and Agriculture Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.