Communism will work

Seongjin Jeong’s paper on the faultlines of Soviet planning was revealing. Two things here: first that the most important development under an economy moving towards communism is raising the productive forces to levels that quickly enable goods and services to be provided free at the point of consumption (ie transport, education, health, energy, basic foodstuffs etc). But that could not be applied for some time for all goods and services, so there would have to be planned production and distribution.

Jeong argues that such planning should be based on labor time calculation. But the Soviet economy of 1917–91 was not a labor-time planned economy. Although input-output tables are essential to the calculation of the total labor time needed to produce goods and services and were available to Soviet planners, they never seriously considered using them and instead depended on material balances. However, with the development of AI, algorithms, big data and quantum power, such planning by labor time calculation is clearly feasible. Communism will work.

50 years of radical political economy Michael Roberts

Soviet planning and the labor-time calculation model: implications for 21st-century socialism Seongjin Jeong

Costa Rica’s General Strike Enters Fourth Week

San Jose, Oct 1 — The strike against the fiscal reform enters today its fourth week and could turn into a more serious social conflict, after the meeting between trade union leaders and representatives of the Government of Costa Rica failed.

Costa Rica’s General Strike Enters Fourth Week Prensa Latina

World Bank warns Gaza economy facing “immediate collapse”

The Gaza Strip’s economy is in “free fall,” a report from the World Bank warned Tuesday, calling for urgent action by Israel and the international community to avoid “immediate collapse.” According to the report, Gaza’s economy contracted by 6 percent in the first quarter of 2018. It said unemployment is now over 50 percent — and over 70 percent among Gaza’s youth.

The World Bank cited various factors, starting with Israel’s decade-long blockade against the territory’s militant Hamas rulers, for the precarious downturn. It also cited budget cuts by the rival Palestinian Authority and a reduction in international aid to the Palestinians, particularly from the United States.

World Bank warns Gaza economy facing “immediate collapse” CBS

Catalan separatists clash with police as tensions mount

More than a dozen people were injured in Barcelona on Saturday after Catalan separatists clashed with riot police and engaged in a showdown with rival protesters. The violence reportedly erupted after police formed a barrier around a rally by Catalan separatists demonstrating ahead of the one-year anniversary of the region’s referendum on secession, which ended in arrests and bloodshed last year. Protesters responded by hurling eggs, paint, and colored powder at police officers, leaving their uniforms and vehicles coated in bright colors. Catalan separatists also reportedly tried to enter a main square where a competing rally was underway for supporters of the Spanish police, yelling, “Get out of here, fascists!” and “Independence!” Witnesses reported seeing numerous fights break out between separatists and demonstrators supporting the police, with some police sympathizers reportedly chased into a nearby police station. At least six people were arrested and 14 were injured, authorities said.

Catalan separatists clash with police as tensions mount AP

Lynching the Past

When loyalty to the tribe is more important that truth, fact or justice—a tribalism on display in the hearings for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh—an open society is extinguished. Reparations for African-Americans are not only just, they are the only way we as a nation, as with Germany’s reparations to the Jews, can build a shared history based on truth, atone for the crimes of the nation and reverse the legacies of white supremacy. The Southern cause, as Ulysses S. Grant wrote in his laconic memoirs, was “one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse.”

Lynching the Past Truthdig

Remastered version of 1980 film on CIA – “On Company Business” – available on-line

From Kim Scipes:

There is a new version of a 1980 film on the CIA called “On Company Business” that is now posted at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyRUlnSayQE. It is a history of the CIA told by men and one woman who have worked for the CIA and later turned against it. There is a lot of amazing real-time video included. I have heard about this for years, but never found a copy, so I watched it for the first time today. It is, in my opinion, something that every American and every progressive person in the world should watch. It is long–almost 3 hours–and has been put in three sections. I know–from years of my own research–about a lot of these things; I’ve read books by these people and even met John Stockwell one time back in the 1980s. As a former Marine sergeant who turned around while on active duty (1969-73); as author of “AFL-CIO’s Secret War on Developing Country Workers” (Lexington Books, 2010) with many years of researching and writing on these events; and currently as a Professor of Sociology at Purdue University Northwest in Westville, Indiana, I think this is an incredible video, and well worth your time to watch. Please spread this message widely! And watch the video!

Facebook’s New Propaganda Partners

Media giant Facebook recently announced it would combat “fake news” by partnering with two propaganda organizations founded and funded by the US government: the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the International Republican Institute (IRI). The social media platform was already working closely with the NATO-sponsored Atlantic Council think tank.

Facebook’s New Propaganda Partners FAIR

Comparing Crises: 1929 with 2008 and the Next

The business and mainstream press this month, September 2018, has been publishing numerous accounts of the 2008 financial crash on its tenth anniversary. This month attention has been focused on the Lehman Brothers investment bank crash that accelerated the general financial system implosion in the US, and worldwide, ten years ago. Next month, October, we’ll no doubt hear more about the crash as it spread to the giant insurance company, AIG, and beyond that to other brokerages (Merrill Lynch), mid-sized banks (Washington Mutual), to the finance arms of the auto companies (GMAC) and big conglomerates (GE Credit), to the ‘too big to fail’ banks like Bank of America and Citigroup and beyond. These ‘reports’ are typically narrative in nature, however, and provide little in the way of deeper historical and theoretical analysis.

Comparing Crises: 1929 with 2008 and the Next Counterpunch

The racist history of Chevy Chase, Maryland, home to power players like Brett Kavanaugh

As late as 1976, the New York Times noted that the Chevy Chase Club golf course and country club — where President William Howard Taft once played and whose members include Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. — permitted “blackskinned members of the diplomatic corps” but not “black American residents of the area, not even the black mayor of the nation’s capital.”

The racist history of Chevy Chase, home to power players like Brett Kavanaugh Washington Post