capitalism
Production-side environmentalism -- Can we produce less and consume more?
By Don Fitz
Corporate "environmentalism" is consumer-side environmentalism. "Make your dollars work for the Earth." "Buy green!" "Purchase this green gewgaw instead of that ungreen gadget." "Feel guilty about driving your car."Consumer-side environmentalism is loath to discuss production. Consumer-side environmentalism does not challenge the manufacture of cars. Rather, it assumes that producing more and more cars is a sacred right never to be questioned.
Production-side environmentalism places blame on the criminal rather than the victim. It looks at the profits oil companies reap from urban sprawl rather than demeaning people who have no way to get to work other than driving a car. Production-side environmentalism looks at an agro-food industry which profits from transporting highly processed, over-packaged, nutrient-depleted junk thousands of miles rather than the parent giving in to a child bombarded with Saturday morning pop-tart-porn TV.
Production and consumption: A broken connection
Capitalism and sport: Sports for a few
By Vidyadhar Date
The competitive frenzy for winning in sports has been fuelled by aggressive marketing. Together they ensure that while a minority is trained with superlative sports facilities, the majority is deprived of even basic amenities to play and breathe fresh air. In India, market forces have pampered cricket while harming all other games in the process.
India won just three medals at the recent Beijing Olympics, though it did better than in the past. This is seen as a breakthrough by our ruling class, which now wants the nation to gear up for further success at the London Olympics in 2012.
Present-day Russia needs a renewal of the feminist movement
By Anna Ochkina, translated from Russian for Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal
Sign the Belem Ecosocialist Declaration
The following Declaration was prepared by a committee elected for this purpose at the Paris Ecosocialist Conference of 2007 (Ian Angus, Joel Kovel, Michael Löwy), with the help of Danielle Follett.
John Bellamy Foster: The great financial crisis: causes and consequences
The `third slump' and its consequences
By Phil Hearse
Evo Morales on addressing climate change: `Save the planet from capitalism'
By Evo Morales Ayma, president of Bolivia
Making the world's poor pay: The economic crisis and the Global South
[This article is available in Spanish: ‘Que pagu
Native blood: the truth behind the myth of `Thanksgiving Day' (now with video)
Video: Thanksgiving: A Native American View
By Mike Ely
It is a deep thing that people still celebrate the survival of the early colonists at Plymouth — by giving thanks to the Christian god who supposedly protected and championed the European invasion. The real meaning of all that, then and now, needs to be continually excavated. The myths and lies that surround the past are constantly draped over the horrors and tortures of our present.
Nationalisation — a key demand in the socialist program
By Dave Holmes