HAYEK & KEYNES Rap
Apr 11, 2010 Economy
Econstories.tv is a place to learn about the economic way of thinking through the eyes of creative director John Papola and creative economist Russ Roberts
In Fear the Boom and Bust, John Maynard Keynes and F. A. Hayek, two of the great economists of the 20th century, come back to life to attend an economics conference on the economic crisis. Before the conference begins, and at the insistence of Lord Keynes, they go out for a night on the town and sing about why there’s a “boom and bust” cycle in modern economies and good reason to fear it.
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Tags: F. A. Hayek, John Maynard Keynes, John Papola, Russ Roberts, Sound, Video
The Common in Communism
Mar 20, 2010 Economy
Michael Hardt
The common must be the foundation of any communist hypothesis today. This is true due primarily to two interconnecting and conflicting conditions of the common with respect to capitalist production. First, contemporary capitalist production relies ever more centrally on the production and productivity of the common. And, second, the common, since it must be shared and open to free access, is antithetical to property. In other words, the common and its productivity are destroyed when relations of property (private or public) are imposed on it; and, in turn, the affirmation of the common implies the destruction of property. The dynamics of class struggle today and the project to overcome class society develop on the terrain of the common.
I generally agree with the efforts of Alain Badiou and Slavoj Zizek to renew the idea of communism and the communist hypothesis. The concept of communism, like that of democracy, has been corrupted so that today in standard usage it has come to mean its opposite, that is, state control of economic and social life. I would like to shift the discussion slightly, however, or recenter it from Badiou’s and Zizek’s focus on the political decision to the critique of political economy and the project for the abolition of property. To realize the communist hypothesis for our times we need to move, so to speak, from Lenin to Marx. Indeed one of the reasons that the communist hypotheses of previous eras are no longer valid is that the composition of capital – as well as the conditions and products of capitalist production – have altered. Most importantly the technical composition of labor has changed. How do people produce both inside and outside the workplace? What do they produce and under what conditions? How is productive cooperation organized? And what are the divisions of labor and power that separate them along gender and racial lines and in the local, regional, and global contexts? In addition to investigating the current composition of labor, we also have to analyze the relations of property under which labor produces. Along with Marx we can say that the critique of political economy is, at its heart, a critique of property. “The theory of the Communists,” Marx and Engels write in the Manifesto, “may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.”1
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Tags: Alain Badiou, Commons, Communism, english, Marx, Michael Hardt, Slavoj Žižek
Deuda externa y tercer mundo – Eric Toussaint
Mar 16, 2010 Economy
Deuda externa y tercer mundo – Eric Toussaint from AttacTV on Vimeo.
Entrevista realizada por AttacTV a Eric Toussaint, presidente del CADTM-Bélgica (Comité por la Anulación de la Deuda del Tercer Mundo), miembro del Consejo Científico de Attac Francia y miembro del consejo internacional del Foro Social Mundial, hablando de la deuda externa.
Tags: 2010, Deuda externa, Eric Toussaint, español, FMI
Seminário com Maurizio Lazzarato – UFRGS
Dec 10, 2009 Economy
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1576985897713028936Seminário com Maurizio Lazzarato – UFRGS – Trabalho imaterial e subjtevididade
De la connaissance à la croyance, de la critique à la production de subjectivité
Maurizio Lazzarato
Je ne suis pas sûr que le problème politique de notre présent soit celui de l’art de la critique, puisque c’est le concept même de critique qui pose problème.
Foucault à déjà démontré que dans l’œuvre de Kant nous pouvons trouver deux concepts de critique : le premier « qui pose la question des conditions sous lesquelles une connaissance vraie est possible » et le deuxième qui pose la question « Qu’est-ce que c’est notre actualité ? Quel est le champ actuel des expériences possibles »[1]. Le premier pose la question d’une critique théorique des « limites que la connaissance doit renoncer à franchir » et le deuxième pose la question d’une critique pratique des « franchissement possibles » qu’il qualifie ailleurs comme l’art de ne pas se faire gouverner ou de se gouverner soi-même.
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Tags: 2006, français, Maurizio Lazzarato, subjtevididade, Trabalho imaterial
Elinor Ostrom became the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in economics
Oct 13, 2009 Economy
Dr. Elinor Ostrom became the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in economics on October 12th, 2009, just four months after speaking at the Frankfurt School on the same topic in which she was awarded the prize.
Renowned political scientist, Dr. Elinor Ostrom, from Indiana University – Bloomington, gave a lecture on Friday June 19th, 2009, outlining her latest research and outcomes regarding the problem of “the commons.”
In the lab, she had simulated conflicts concerning the allocation of the commons and had derived a complex theoretical framework that exploits the various elements (e.g. leadership, trust and reciprocity) of this process.
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Tags: Commons, Elinor Ostrom, english, Video
Jacqueline Novogratz on patient capitalism
Sep 22, 2009 Economy
Jacqueline Novogratz shares stories of how “patient capital” can bring sustainable jobs, goods, services — and dignity — to the world’s poorest. Filmed jun 2007. from TED.com
Transcript:
Tags: 2007, Jacqueline Novogratz, patient capital, poor
The Commons
Aug 28, 2009 Economy
In a just world, the idea of wealth–be it money derived from the work of human hands, the resources and natural splendor of the planet itself–and the knowledge handed down through generations belongs to all of us. But in our decidedly unjust and imperfect world, our collective wealth is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few. There is be a better way–the notion of the commons–common land, resources, knowledge–is a common-sense way to share our natural, cultural, intellectual riches.
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State Capitalism in Britain
Jun 25, 2009 Economy
James Heartfield, Mute magazine
Despite the State being the main investor in the UK’s national economy, the official rhetoric of private sector productivity is alive and well. James Heartfield takes a look at Labour’s failed strategy of privatising public services and the rise of ‘corporate welfare’
Two very contradictory stories about British capitalism are told today. The first is that the State is eating up more and more of the private sector. The sudden increase of public shares in the major banks and the falling of the railways into receivership is evidence of a return to the nationalisations of the 1970s. Some on the left even take heart from this, and urge the government to go the whole way and nationalise the banks. The Sunday Times runs stories warning of ‘Soviet Britain’, to show that in many towns in Britain (and especially in Scotland and Northern Ireland) state spending is a majority of output.
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Tags: 2009, Britain, Capital, Capitalist, corporate welfare, english, government, management, privatisation
Science reinvents the economy: An economy in a computer
Jun 25, 2009 Economy
Magazine issue 2711. New Scientist
More: Can science reinvent the economy?
Can we pack an entire economy, with all its complex human and political interactions, into a computer? Physicist Dirk Helbing of ETH thinks so – as long as we’re bold enough in going about it.
He points out that financial systems aren’t the only monsters we’ve let out of the box. How traffic flows in and around huge cities simply cannot be grasped by mathematical analysis, but computer models let millions of virtual vehicles interact on realistic road patterns – and often discover potential problems before they occur in reality.
The complexity of today’s economy, Helbing suggests, demands a similar approach. “We’re not currently using the best capabilities of science,” he says. “We need to bring together scientists from different fields and put together tools that can be used as a kind of wind tunnel for testing out social and economic policies.”
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Tags: 2009, Capital, Capitalist, computer, english, Knowledge, Market, model, Postcapital, science, text
São tempos difíceis mas interessantes
May 22, 2009 Economy
17.04.2009 – Joana Gorjão Henriques
Depois desta crise com contornos de dilúvio, o que se abre à cultura? Há cenários que já podemos desenhar
Em época de crise, o melhor mesmo é ir às compras na própria casa. Desenterrem-se leituras eternamente adiadas, leia-se finalmente o “Ulisses” de James Joyce que anda por ali há séculos. Os livros podem ser caros, mas ler ainda continua a não ser assim tanto. Até porque um livro pode sempre passar por muitas mãos. E há as bibliotecas, a “forma de entretenimento mais barata de todas”, lembra John Carey, professor de Inglês em Oxford, ao “Guardian”. Por esta lógica, a leitura – não o mercado dos livros – será uma das actividades que menos sofrerá com a crise económica mundial. Mas nem tudo é lógico e nem tudo se pode prever. O podemos esperar, então, dos próximos anos?
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Tags: 2009, Crisis, Cultural Policies, Culture, Joana Gorjão Henriques, português
