“Don’t compromise,” he told me, “you start compromising on a small thing and soon you are one of them.”
Thwas Thandika — he was a mentor and an inspiration to many of us.
jacobinmag.com/2020/04/thandika-mkandawire-development-economics/
Thwas Thandika — he was a mentor and an inspiration to many of us.
jacobinmag.com/2020/04/thandika-mkandawire-development-economics/
Jacobinmag
We Just Lost a Giant of Development Economics
When the world was shifting toward neoliberalism, blind to shocking inequalities, Thandika Mkandawire (1940–2020) bravely stood up for the welfare state. We should remember him as a brilliant economist and committed egalitarian.
Global inequality is now so high that the global Gini coefficient, which measures the level of inequality across the world, is about the same as South Africa’s — one of the most unequal societies on the planet.
source
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2020 will be the first year of falling global GDP since WWII. And it was only the final years of WWII/aftermath when output fell.
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The market alone cannot meet our needs, nor can the state. Both, by rooting out attachment, help fuel the alienation, rage and anomie that breeds extremism. Over the past 200 years, one element has been conspicuously absent from the dominant ideologies, something that is neither market nor state: the commons.
https://evonomics.com/reviving-commons-one-possible-route-social-transformation/
https://evonomics.com/reviving-commons-one-possible-route-social-transformation/
Evonomics
Why Common Ownership Is a Route to Social Transformation - Evonomics
The case for despair is made. Now let’s start to get out of the mess we’re in
(...) making the food system a public utility also entails the second aspect of decommodification: democratic control.
(...) Sam Gindin argues for a socialist middle ground between local worker control and higher-level and democratic state planning. He proposes we could create “sectoral councils” for specific and socially important sectors like food and agriculture. These councils would ideally represent both communities in need of food provision and the workers involved in agricultural production.
These councils could inform larger-scale efforts at “ecological planning.”
jacobinmag.com/2020/04/covid-food-system-coronavirus-agriculture-farming/
(...) Sam Gindin argues for a socialist middle ground between local worker control and higher-level and democratic state planning. He proposes we could create “sectoral councils” for specific and socially important sectors like food and agriculture. These councils would ideally represent both communities in need of food provision and the workers involved in agricultural production.
These councils could inform larger-scale efforts at “ecological planning.”
jacobinmag.com/2020/04/covid-food-system-coronavirus-agriculture-farming/
Jacobinmag
COVID-19 Shows Why We Must Socialize the Food System
Coronavirus has emphasized a truth we knew before the pandemic: capitalist food systems are irrational and don’t serve human needs. Socialists have to demand a food system based on social and ecological needs — one that can provide food for all.