Democracy At Work has the post Marxism: From Critique of Capitalism to Alternative System [May 2022].

The title is most appropriately applied to about the last half hour which I originally saw as a stand-alone video. The video below is the whole hour.

I originally wrote the following comments about the last half of this video,

Here is one idea that Richard Wolff is promoting. It is an interesting admission of the problems of early attempts at socialism. I am not convinced that he has the solution, but it is something worth trying. Let’s avoid the mistakes of the past where we had a wholesale adoption of an untested idea. That adoption is a dangerous way to find out what works., or worse, what does not work.

I am not sure China has figured it out. Having a mix of two versions of the same thing may not be the ultimate solution, if there is an ultimate solution.

One problem that I see is in the perversion of democracy that we now have in our government. How do we know that democracy in the work place won’t suffer from the same perversion?

The Canadian Patriot has the article Sleepwalking Into Fascism: Why CIA/NATO’s Foreign Policy Has Been Consistent for the Past 77 years

[This is the final installment to a five-part series. Refer here for Part 1, Part 2 goes over how Ukrainian Nationalism was bought and paid for by the CIA post-WWII, Part 3 goes over NATO’s Operation Gladio, Part 4 goes over the role of the CIA and NATO in the global heroin trade, Miami as the new center of International Fascism and how President Kennedy’s murder is connected to this.]

Even part 5 was too long for me to read in one sitting. I will post the article here, and the links to the other parts, in case I ever get the time to read all of it.

One other excerpt, I posted on my Facebook page.

One CIA analyst judged that, “some form of nationalist feeling continues to exist [in the Ukraine] and… there is an obligation to support it as a cold war weapon.”

Pepe Escobar has written the article Russia Rewrites the Art of Hybrid War that FB does not want you to see.

Russia is winning not only militarily but also to a large extent geopolitically – 88% of the planet does not align with NATOstan hysteria – and of course in the economic/financial sphere…Serial Western sanctions package hysteria ended up triggering Russia’s so far quite successful counter-financial moves. Hybrid War is being fought predominantly in the economic/financial battleground – and the pain dial for the collective West will only go up: inflation, higher commodity prices, breakdown of supply chains, exploding cost of living, impoverishment of the middle classes, and unfortunately for great swathes of the Global South, outright poverty and starvation.

If you want to post a link to this article that bypasses the FB censorship, here is an image of a tiny url that works. Only paste the image, not the actual link.

Garland Nixon has this interview on YouTube – SATURDAY MORNING LIVE WITH SCOTT RITTER AND RAY MCGOVERN

This is the first interview with Scott Ritter that I have seen recently where he has had a chance to account for the realities of what is happening in the Ukraine. He is starting to recognize some shortcomings in the Russian battle plan. We are pushing Russia into more of a corner than they had anticipated. That could have serious negative consequences for the USA.

The Multipolarista channel on YouTube has the video Economist Michael Hudson discusses the decline of the US dollar, the sanctions war on Russia, his concept of “free-trade imperialism,” and financial parasitism..

We talk about these concepts explored in his new book “The Destiny of Civilization: Finance Capitalism, Industrial Capitalism or Socialism.”

The book is to go on sale on May 11,2022.

At this point, I don’t know whose predictions will turn out to be more correct. Only time will tell. Meanwhile we are all hostage to what our government will bring to our future. Are you going to do anything to protect yourself, or are you all-in on the USA?

Vanessa Beeley has posted the interview Zionism in Ukraine allied with Nazism – the history of the ‘Great Reset’.

How does Israel and one of the largest and most powerful Ultra Orthodox Zionist cults merge with Ukrainian nationalism and state-sanctioned Nazism? – Conversation with historian Matt Ehret We look at the emergence of the Chabad Lubavitch sect that was established before Zionism came into existence and has its origins in Ukraine – now with 10,000 emissaries in 100 countries at the cutting edge of Zionist expansionism. This group is believed to be responsible for the majority of the price tag attacks in occupied Palestine, denies the right to return for all Palestinians and leads the ideological war against non adherents of Judaism.

This had my mind boggled for much of it, even though I have read many things that corroborated what they were saying.

One of the things that I have read about that they did not address was the fact there were Zionists who appreciated what the Nazis were doing to the Jews because the Zionists felt it would justify the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine.

Richard Wolff has published the article The Different Ways That the U.S. and Chinese Governments Use Their Power to Regulate Capitalism.

However, the socialist left does so with the knowledge of what happened to those experiments in socialism that turned out to be and still are forms of state capitalism. Hopefully, 21st-century socialism will not need to repeat those experiments. It can attend to what they lacked, namely the transition at the micro level of workplace organization. That means transitioning enterprises (factories, offices, and stores) from the employer-versus-employee organization to the democratic community (or worker cooperative) organization. The state that achieves that transition will thereby accomplish the end of the capitalist social order. With it might then come that decline of a social necessity for the state that Vladimir Lenin theorized as its “withering away.”

This is a good explanation of a point of view. Since I am a “what worksist”, I always want to know if something will work before I endorse it. So far, I see what Wolff proposes as an interesting idea, but I don’t know if it will work. The safest way that I can think of testing it is for the scheme to be enabled (remove roadblocks to its trial), and continue to monitor the results to see if it works or can be made to work.

Right away, I see a problem with applying democracy. It seems to be human nature, observable right now, that a small number of zealots can use democracy to get their way over the objections of a larger number of people who can see nuances of good and evil in any system. Maybe a solution to the zealot problem can be discovered by philosophers in the 21^st century.

The MMT Podcast with Patricia Pino & Christian Reilly has this great episode #131 Fadhel Kaboub: Free Trade Isn’t Free: Food Sovereignty And Why It Matters.

Here is is from YouTube #131 Fadhel Kaboub: Free Trade Isn’t Free: Food Sovereignty And Why It Matters.

Patricia and Christian talk to economist and President of the Global Institute For Sustainable Prosperity Professor Fadhel Kaboub about how global food and energy systems have been fostered to benefit the global north at the expense of the global south, and how understanding modern money is vital to untangling the mess.

Another great interview with Fadhel Kaboub. The more I listen to the podcasts the more details I learn about the topic. Don’t expect to learn everything by listening to only one podcast.

What has always worked to enhance my learning about any subject is to get some exposure to the topic by reading a book, listening to a lecture, listening to a podcast. In between listening, think about what you have learned, develop questions about what you didn’t understand, and then go back to a source for more information. You get more out of it each time you have put some thought to it, and have a deeper appreciation for what you are hearing.

When I talk about developing questions that is the opposite of just accepting what you hear. Maybe upon first listening, you think you have understood, but I don’t think you really understand until you notice there are holes in your understanding.

Sheer Post has the article Ellen Brown: The Coming Global Financial Revolution: Russia Is Following the American Playbook.

No country has successfully challenged the U.S. dollar’s global hegemony—until now. How did this happen and what will it mean?

I am not a particular fan of Ellen Brown, but I think this article by her is pretty decent. It also has some links I might want to follow if I haven’t already seen the referenced article.

Here is one of the links Michael Hudson: The American Empire self-destructs. I am a huge fan of Michael Hudson. He is the original thinker that other people refer to.

Matt Stoller has posted the article Peeing in the Economists’ Pool.

Antitrust Division chief Jonathan Kanter told a roomful of fancy lawyers and economists that their day of controlling the law through tricky language is over.

Matt Stoller gives you some details of how the corporations and the courts have twisted the anti-trust laws into something with loopholes big enough to drive a monopoly through. If there were any non-corrupt leaders in any of the branches of government, this should have been stopped decades ago. One economist, Michael Hudson, focuses on how the financialization of the USA economy is eventually going to make the USA a losing economy. This is not just an academic argument. The 99% of us are going to be hurt badly if this continues.