Bankocracy

Bankocracy
Author: Eric Toussaint
Publisher: IMG Publications
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2015-11-02
Genre:
ISBN: 9780902869370

Governments of the most industrialised countries have dramatically increased their public debt to bail out the private banks after the most disastrous economic and financial meltdown in capitalist history since the 1930s. Paying debts and reducing fiscal deficits have become the perfect pretexts to enforce austerity measures everywhere. The Troika (European Commission, ECB and IMF) and all EU governments have launched an unprecedented attack on people's social and economic rights. This book will enable the reader to understand how the crisis developed: the consequences of deregulating the banking system, the logic underpinning private banks' responses, and the crimes they perpetrate on a daily basis with the collusion of governments and central banks. It argues for socialisation, rather than 'nationalisation', of the banking sector so that it becomes a proper public service under citizen control and monitoring. It argues for the cancellation of illegitimate public debt that largely results from bank bail-outs. It uses simple straightforward language to make it possible for anyone to understand the current crisis and see coherent alternatives to the current policies.

A Glance in the Rear View Mirror

A Glance in the Rear View Mirror
Author: Eric Toussaint
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Total Pages: 80
Release: 2012-07-17
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1608462846

As the financial crisis continues to shake the economy it has begun to expose cracks in the ideology long used to justify neoliberal policies. This informed and accessible primer drives a wedge into these cracks, allowing the non-expert to understand the flaws in the economic philosophy of the 1%.

Socialism Is Dead! Long Live Socialism!

Socialism Is Dead! Long Live Socialism!
Author: Todor Bombov
Publisher: Strategic Book Publishing & Rights Agency
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2017-01-10
Genre:
ISBN: 1681819651

This work is divided into two autonomous books. The first book, The State, represents a radically new political system of society, one which is the most democratic system ever possible! This is a completely new society, a real civil society, which otherwise in the capitalist system is only a utopia. In this book, I scrutinize the principles of scientific socialism; i.e., all those principles of Marxism concerning the state that build socialism as a political system. The second book, The Economic Theory of Socialism, is a sequel, and as far as I know, the only sequel of the greatest work by Karl Marx – Capital. The economics of socialism makes Marx’s socialism already completely possible. In this book, I scrutinize the economic laws that build socialism as a more effective economic system than capitalism. These laws are extracted from Marx’s main work – Capital. From 1917 to 1991, the totalitarian system in USSR and East Europe was called socialism, and even by the scientific nonsense and absurd names of communism and communist system. In this system, the official ideology was allegedly Marxism, but really it could not endure any Marxist criticism. There was never any socialism anywhere! In the twentieth century, we passed through a system of utopian socialism as proof that this was not socialism that was not possible, but for the utopia of writers before and after Marx. We were visited by a utopian socialism, which at the contemporary stage is simply capitalism – state, monopolistic. There is no better application of Keynes’s doctrine than the “socialism” of the twentieth century. His “planned capitalism” is actually “planned socialism.”

Central Banking, Monetary Policy and Social Responsibility

Central Banking, Monetary Policy and Social Responsibility
Author: Vallet, Guillaume
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2022-08-18
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 180037223X

Part of The Elgar Series on Central Banking and Monetary Policy, this book explores the relationship between central banking, monetary policy and the economy at large. It focuses on the specific relationship between central banking, monetary policy and social responsibility as central banks wake up to new realities

Capital as Power

Capital as Power
Author: Jonathan Nitzan
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 853
Release: 2009-06-02
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1134022298

Conventional theories of capitalism are mired in a deep crisis: after centuries of debate, they are still unable to tell us what capital is. Liberals and Marxists both think of capital as an ‘economic’ entity that they count in universal units of ‘utils’ or ‘abstract labour’, respectively. But these units are totally fictitious. Nobody has ever been able to observe or measure them, and for a good reason: they don’t exist. Since liberalism and Marxism depend on these non-existing units, their theories hang in suspension. They cannot explain the process that matters most – the accumulation of capital. This book offers a radical alternative. According to the authors, capital is not a narrow economic entity, but a symbolic quantification of power. It has little to do with utility or abstract labour, and it extends far beyond machines and production lines. Capital, the authors claim, represents the organized power of dominant capital groups to reshape – or creorder – their society. Written in simple language, accessible to lay readers and experts alike, the book develops a novel political economy. It takes the reader through the history, assumptions and limitations of mainstream economics and its associated theories of politics. It examines the evolution of Marxist thinking on accumulation and the state. And it articulates an innovative theory of ‘capital as power’ and a new history of the ‘capitalist mode of power’.

The Debt System

The Debt System
Author: Éric Toussaint
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2019-04-23
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1642590169

“A compelling explanation of the deep-seated mechanisms at work in the international credit system” from the coauthor of Debt, the IMF, and the World Bank (Counterfire). For as long as there have been rich nations and poor nations, debt has been a powerful force for maintaining the unequal relations between them. Treated as sacrosanct, immutable, and eternally binding, it has become the yoke of choice for imperial powers in the post-colonial world to enforce their subservience over the global south. In this ground-breaking history, renowned economist Éric Toussaint argues for a radical reversal of this balance of accounts through the repudiation of sovereign debt. “Since 2008 CADTM has campaigned for ‘a new doctrine of illegitimate, illegal, odious, and unsustainable debt’ cancellation. This doctrine includes considerations of whether the debtor state is democratic, whether it respects human rights, whether the debt is incurred within the framework of ‘structural adjustments’ (enforced austerity), and includes all debts incurred to pay back previous odious debts. On grounds of global social justice, The Debt System makes a strong case for this new doctrine.” —Against the Current “This work has much to commend it; it provides detailed analyses of the impact of indebtedness in several nations . . . The author shows that, contrary to orthodox arguments, debt repudiation can be both justified and successfully carried out. I recommend the book wholeheartedly.” —Counterfire

The Cancer Stage of Capitalism

The Cancer Stage of Capitalism
Author: John McMurtry
Publisher: Pluto Press
Total Pages: 328
Release: 1999
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780745313474

In this bold new look at the recent uncontrolled spread of global capitalism, John McMurtry, professor of philosophy at the University of Guelph, develops the metaphor of modern capitalism as a cancer. Its invasive growth, he argues, threatens to break down our society's immune system and--if not soon restrained--could reverse all the progress that has been made toward social equity and stability. On every continent, in every state, there are indicators of profound economic and environmental collapse. From the lands of indigenous communities to the currency markets of Asia, from the ocean floors to the ozone layer, the collapse is all-encompassing and deep-reaching. John McMurtry traces the causes of this global disorder back to the mutating assumptions of market theory that now govern the world’s economy. He diagnoses the malaise as a pathologist would a biological cancer, tracking the delinked circuits of the global system’s monetised growth as a carcinogenic disorder at the social level of life-organization. In the wide-lensed tradition of Adam Smith, Marx and Keynes, McMurtry cuts across academic disciplines and boundaries to penetrate the inner logic of the system’s problems. Far from pessimistic, he argues that the way out of the global crisis is to be found in an evolving substructure of history which provides a common ground of resolution across ethnic and national divisions. Reaching beyond conventional textbooks, this fascinating study offers a new paradigm which is accessible to intelligent citizens the world over.

In Defense of Housing

In Defense of Housing
Author: Peter Marcuse
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2024-08-27
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1804294942

In every major city in the world there is a housing crisis. How did this happen and what can we do about it? Everyone needs and deserves housing. But today our homes are being transformed into commodities, making the inequalities of the city ever more acute. Profit has become more important than social need. The poor are forced to pay more for worse housing. Communities are faced with the violence of displacement and gentrification. And the benefits of decent housing are only available for those who can afford it. In Defense of Housing is the definitive statement on this crisis from leading urban planner Peter Marcuse and sociologist David Madden. They look at the causes and consequences of the housing problem and detail the need for progressive alternatives. The housing crisis cannot be solved by minor policy shifts, they argue. Rather, the housing crisis has deep political and economic roots—and therefore requires a radical response.

Debt, the IMF, and the World Bank

Debt, the IMF, and the World Bank
Author: Eric Toussaint
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 372
Release: 2010-09-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1583674985

Mainstream economists tell us that developing countries will replicate the economic achievements of the rich countries if they implement the correct “free-market”policies. But scholars and activists Toussaint and Millet demonstrate that this is patently false. Drawing on a wealth of detailed evidence, they explain how developed economies have systematically and deliberately exploited the less-developed economies by forcing them into unequal trade and political relationships. Integral to this arrangement are the international economic institutions ostensibly created to safeguard the stability of the global economy—the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank—and the imposition of massive foreign debt on poor countries. The authors explain in simple language, and ample use of graphics, the multiple contours of this exploitative system, its history, and how it continues to function in the present day. Ultimately, Toussaint and Millet advocate cancellation of all foreign debt for developing countries and provide arguments from a number of perspectives—legal, economic, moral. Presented in an accessible and easily-referenced question and answer format, Debt, the IMF, and the World Bank is an essential tool for the global justice movement.