real utopias

In case you haven’t noticed…. the world as we once knew it has changed… We are now capable of viewing the world through others eyes from sharing information/videos/pictures etc… online…. What we call a Social Revolution!

From a political point of view people still believe in nostalgic and dangerous ideas like "objectivity" "reality", "truth" and "values" as a precondition for democracy. But believers in absolutes forget a crucial lesson borne out of the historic record namely, that the tide of secularisation is irreversible and remains inextricably bound-up in the human condition. This reality necessarily checks and harnesses the search for fanatical, absolute truth-claims that, we maintain, are contrary to the very nature of democracy.

 

Occupy Economics, a strand of the global movement to reform the banking industry born on Wall Street in late 2011, is calling for government to "end bank welfare."

What is a revolution? We used to think we knew. Revolutions were seizures of power by popular forces aiming to transform the very nature of the political, social, and economic system in the country in which the revolution took place, usually according to some visionary dream of a just society. Nowadays, we live in an age when, if rebel armies do come sweeping into a city, or mass uprisings overthrow a dictator, it’s unlikely to have any such implications; when profound social transformation does occur—as with, say, the rise of feminism—it’s likely to take an entirely different form. It’s not that revolutionary dreams aren’t out there. But contemporary revolutionaries rarely think they can bring them into being by some modern-day equivalent of storming the Bastille.

I will examine two key aspects of Evgeny Preobrazhensky’s concept of ‘primitive socialist accumulation’: the notions that (a) the essential differences between socialism and capitalism are nationalised property and economic planning, and that (b) a transition from capitalism to socialism can take place through the extension of nationalised property and economic planning. Drawing on the work of Karl Marx and Raya Dunayevskaya, I will argue, first, that state property and economic planning are not the essential differences, and second, that Preobrazhensky’s conception is one example of the view that political and legal changes are the determining factors in social change. That view, I will contend, inverts Marx’s conception according to which political and legal relations correspond to and are determined by the mode of production, not vice-versa. If this latter view is accepted, I will further argue, the idea of a transitional society between capitalism and socialism is incoherent. This does not mean that social transformation must be instantaneous; what it means is that socialism cannot exist, partly or wholly, until the mode of production is revolutionised and that this cannot take place by political and/or legal means.

Few criticisms of the state of the European Union are more pervasive than the democratic deficit of the European institutions. If so many voters feel there’s a deficit, politicians will have to work hard to improve things or be cast aside, writes Reinhard Bütikofer.

Newly-accessible documents were obatined during 1990s civil case against ADL snoops.

As manufacturing goes digital, it will change out of all recognition, says Paul Markillie. And some of the business of making things will return to rich countries

The time is right for a new kind of economics, one that can lead society out of the economic darkness and guide us through the new challenges of the 21st century. I think we are all ready to join that conversation.

Japan's economy enjoyed a stronger than expected recovery last quarter, growing at a 3.5 percent annual pace as the government stepped up public works spending and eased credit to encourage investment.