@Linda Wood

my favorite heterodox economist, as far a i remember it, is michael hudson who is at least well-versed in marxist economics. back in the days of firedoglake, a man named southern dragon offered us classes once a week that featured wolff's classes on youtube. tinny, hard-to-hear videos, and needless to say, i flunked the course. miggtta been cuz i was the klass klown. but during those times, i'd gone to wolff's website, and lol x 3: his content was behind a paywall!!!

peeking into roar magazine for something i'd read earlier, either by david harvey or murray bookchin, i came upon “Rosa Remix” is an exciting collection of essays that examine Rosa Luxemburg and the relevance of her life and work to contemporary political struggles’, richard wolff, roar magazine

now as to david harvey, this at his own website: '“Marx’s Refusal of the Labour Theory of Value” by David Harvey, March 14, 2018 (looks a li'l bit deep for me, lol.)

but i did go to wolff's site, and maybe it's because most everything is radio or youtube or such, but there's no paywall there no mo'.

best to you, linda wood, and solidarity.

#4.1

you're absolutely right, and you're right to bring it to my attention too. I have limited knowledge about Sanders' war positions even though I voted for him in the primary election. I was so disappointed that he endorsed the Party and Clinton for president that I just stopped listening to him. I did manage to hear some of his thoughts about war and foreign policy, and they seriously disappointed me, again.

I voted for Barbara Lee for president in the general election in 2016 because she voted against the AUMF in 2001. She was the only member of Congress to do so. But even she has bought this Russia thing. What on earth?

I did see your comment in your thread earlier. I just failed to respond. Keep hammering. You're building a very solid case.

@Nastarana

to co-administrate called himself an anarcho-syndicalist, a couple writers at roar magazine tout 'municipal syndicalism'.

there is also charles eisenstein’s ‘Sacred economics’ (with short and imo, inspirational video): his book ‘traces the history of money from ancient gift economies to modern capitalism, revealing how the money system has contributed to alienation, competition, and scarcity, destroyed community, and necessitated endless growth. Today, these trends have reached their extreme - but in the wake of their collapse, we may find great opportunity to transition to a more connected, ecological, and sustainable way of being.’

and david korten-style great turning toward ecological economics; he also co-edits Yes magazine.

socialism would likely be defined very differently along the road, but i'd think at it's most basic would be shared power, shared influence from the grassroots bottom up and let the people decide, as with the zapatistas in chiapas. but here's a cheat sheet i found on the differences between communism and socialism, fwiw, of course. last night i remembered that i'd once seen that there's an anti-capitalist meet-up tab here, and it turns out to be so. only one writer, unless coming at it thru the bingle misdirected me, as i'm rather new here.

on edit: and given that you're catholic, i'd like to wish you a good palm sunday.

#6.2 So far as I know, there was not one single signer of the Declaration of Independence, including John Adams, or the Constitution who did not own at least one slave at one time or another. Franklin did come to be an early abolitionist towards the end of his life.

However, I do not think that that hypocrisy necessarily invalidates either document.

About what is the best kind of economy, I have recently learned about something called Democratic Syndicalism, which, from what I am able to understand, refers to enterprises in which the means of production are owned by the workers themselves, NOT by the state.

@wendy davis

What a romp. I'm the in-house ranter on the demon-seed US Constitution. Always the sole voice amidst a cacophony of silence.

In these latter days, I've come to admire how perfectly it has functioned across time. What hath the constitution wrought? Is that not how you judge a thing?

Found every word enjoyable, Wendy.

#6.2

lewis lapham had a bit of fun recently wondering if the many mentions of 'the death of the rule of law' since at least nixon's watergate fiasco...might not have been a misnomer as the framers actually framed the constitution around 'property ownership'. (great artwork, as well)

he amply demonstrated as others before him that the founding fathers wanted actual democracy nowhere near the document. a few pithy quotes of many:

"The prosperous and well-educated gentlemen assembled in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 shared with John Adams the suspicion that “democracy will infallibly destroy all civilization,” agreed with James Madison that the turbulent passions of the common man lead to reckless agitation for the abolition of debts and “other wicked projects.” With Plato the framers shared the assumption that the best government, under no matter what name or flag, incorporates the means by which a privileged few arrange the distribution of property and law for the less fortunate many. They envisioned a wise and just oligarchy—to which they gave the name of a republic—managed by men like themselves, to whom Madison attributed “most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue the common good of the society.” Adams thought the great functions of state should be reserved for “the rich, the wellborn, and the able”; John Jay, chief justice for the Supreme Court, observed that “those who own the country ought to govern it.”

The framers borrowed the words for their enterprise from the English philosopher John Locke, who had declared his seventeenth-century willingness “to join in society with others who are already united, or have a mind to unite, for the mutual preservation of their lives, liberties, and estates, which I call by the general name property.” Locke could not conceive of freedom established on anything other than property. Neither could the eighteenth-century framers of America’s Constitution. By the word liberty, they meant liberty for property, not liberty for persons, and by the end of the summer of 1787 the well-to-do gentlemen in Philadelphia had drafted a document hospitable to their acquisition of more property.

"Accepting of the fact that whereas democracy puts a premium on equality, a capitalist economy does not, they designed a contrivance to accommodate the motions of the heart as well the movements of a market. The Constitution joined the life of an organism with the strength of a mechanism, offering as warranty of its worth the character of men capable of caring for such a thing as a res publica, attentively benign landlords presumably relieved of the necessity to cheat and steal and lie.

The presumption in 1787 could be taken at face and fair value. The framers held their idea of law to be sacred, investing it with the intellectual idealism of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment together with the moral force of the New Testament."

now he doesn't say as much, but including the new testament to me meant 'our manifest destiny', which argument carried the new united states in a vast 'westward ho' direction rather permanently, annihilating first american (barbarian godless heathens), breaking treaties up the wazoo, waging war with mexico to 'expand OUR influence and territory', all in the name of the reagan version of 'a shining city on a hill' or what ever.

'the commons' died an unnatural death, of course, and property over freedom for the rabble class exists still. remember chris hedges' 'the cancer in Occupy'? OMG: some folks broke some windows!!!' (whether of not the window-breakers were agent provocateurs is still a vibram-cop-boots-soles kinda open question. but the whole movement paused to discuss 'diversity of tactics', and in many ways never fully recovered from it, imo.

and in the parallel of 'the divine right of kings', at least in oakland, it was the academic college teachers who directed the plays like 'Move-in Day', staying safely in the background as the privileged souls they were.

oh, and lapham had opened his essay with these quotes:

True law is right reason in agreement with nature.
~ Cicero

Law is a flag, and gold is the wind that makes it wave.

~ Russian proverb

end of rant. sorry for any (or many) typos.