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.
source
source
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.
The crisis has brought the economy to a near halt, and left millions of people out of work. But thanks to intervention on an unprecedented scale, a full-scale meltdown has been averted – for now.
By Adam Tooze
www.theguardian.com/business/2020/apr/14/how-coronavirus-almost-brought-down-the-global-financial-system
By Adam Tooze
www.theguardian.com/business/2020/apr/14/how-coronavirus-almost-brought-down-the-global-financial-system
the Guardian
How coronavirus almost brought down the global financial system
The long read: The crisis has brought the economy to a near halt, and left millions of people out of work. But thanks to intervention on an unprecedented scale, a full-scale meltdown has been averted – for now
The new NLR issue's main topic is about, of course, the coronavirus and its implications. Here 3 short essays on the situation in:
- Indonesia
- Brazil
- Iran
- Indonesia
- Brazil
- Iran
New Left Review
Rohana Kuddus, Lemongrass and Prayer, NLR 122, March–April 2020
Bumbling ministers, regional rivalries and pious stigmatization of the victims compound inadequate hospital provision in Indonesia’s belated response to COVID–19, amid the uncounted dead.