The Economists: Notes on CORE’s The Economy, Unit 1

CORE is an “open-access platform” “for a changing world” and “for anyone who wants to understand the economics of innovation, inequality, environmental sustainability, and more”. It attempts to readjust economics teaching towards taking the financial crisis into account. In these notes, we want to show that the primary purpose of its first unit is to convince the reader that capitalism is rather good by a sleight of hand: positing GDP per capita as the standard for how people are doing in a society.

Critiquing Corbyn: capitalism isn’t about sharing

There was much hype over Jeremy Corbyn’s successful campaign to lead the Labour Party. What has been largely absent from the debate is an evaluation of Corbyn’s economic ideas and assumptions. In The Economy in 2020, Corbyn set out what his economic policies will be, if he becomes Prime Minister. A lot can be learned from this about how he understands the economy and the State.

Austerity & Debt interview

Organise! interviewed Critisticuffs about Austerity and Debt.

One Nation

With the One Nation campaign Labour is making its case to rule over us. In the campaign quote Ed Miliband sees that wages are so low, unemployment is so high and inequality so extreme that he fears for the unity of British society. He recognises the problems with poverty that those he addresses are facing and thus asks everyone to stick together as a nation to overcome these and any odds. At the same time, though, he touches on everything we need to know in order to come to a rather different conclusion.

A Companion to David Harvey's Companion to Marx' Capital, Chapter 1

David Harvey is the dominant commentator on Capital in English and many Capital reading groups use his video lectures or his book – A Companion to Marx' Capital – to guide them. Capital can be a daunting book and David Harvey's commentaries have encouraged many to pick it up and work through it. This, in principle, is a valuable project as much can be learned about the world we are forced to live in from that old book.

Yet, those who read A Companion to guide them through Capital in order to learn about the capitalist mode of production will be disappointed: it neither gives an adequate account of what Marx said nor of the capitalist mode of production.

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