We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Richard Smith's articles

On March 19th I posted information about what I thought was a new article from the Real-World Economics Review Blog by Richard Smith entitled "Green Capitalism: The God that Failed" which lay behind a paywall. I now discover that this title is only the title of one of five of his articles that have been published in the past by various websites. In other words, the March 19th posting "Green Capitalism: the God That Failed" is a misnomer--it contains five articles as chapters that Richard Smith has written in the past. Here are the articles and the links to them:
Chapter 1: How Did the Common Good Become a Bad Idea? The Eco-suicidal Economics of Adam Smith [June 2007 from the CNS Journal]

Chapter 2: Beyond Growth or Beyond Capitalism? [originally published in Real-World Economics Review in June 2010]

Chapter 3: Green Capitalism: the God That Failed  
[Jan. 2014 Truthout]
Chapter 4: Climate Crisis, the Deindustrialization Imperative, and the Jobs vs. Environment Dilemma  [November 2014 Truthout]

Chapter 5: Capitalism and the Destruction of Life on Earth: Six Theses on Saving the Humans  [July 2013 Real-World Economics Review]
They are all excellent articles which focus on one of two central themes of my blog which is the fundamental conflict between capitalism and a sustainable biosphere--the other being that the operations of capitalism create wars, gross inequality, poverty, and all the various forms of the degradation of human life.