5LL #7 - The New Socialists, Work, Public Food, Public Banks, Alternative Economies

The New Socialists
Corey Robin, The New York Times
The socialist argument against capitalism isn’t that it makes us poor. It’s that it makes us unfree. When my well-being depends upon your whim, when the basic needs of life compel submission to the market and subjugation at work, we live not in freedom but in domination. Socialists want to end that domination: to establish freedom from rule by the boss, from the need to smile for the sake of a sale, from the obligation to sell for the sake of survival.
The United States of Work
Miya Tokumitsu, The New Republic
Work no longer works. “You need to acquire more skills,” we tell young job seekers whose résumés at 22 are already longer than their parents’ were at 32. “Work will give you meaning,” we encourage people to tell themselves, so that they put in 60 hours or more per week on the job, removing them from other sources of meaning, such as daydreaming or social life. “Work will give you satisfaction,” we insist, even though it requires abiding by employers’ rules, and the unwritten rules of the market, for most of our waking hours. At the very least, work is supposed to be a means to earning an income. But if it’s possible to work full time and still live in poverty, what’s the point?
A Public Option for Food
Nathan Robinson, Current Affairs
Food is actually the perfect example of a system in which the presence of a profit motive is having incredibly destructive human consequences. That’s because it introduces a terrible incentive: to sell people the products they’ll get addicted to rather than the products that are good for them. Americans live on junk food; they have terrible diets, with too much sodium, too many calories, too much sugar, and too few fruits and vegetables.
The Case for a State-Owned Bank
Meagan Day, Jacobin
In a world where nearly everything costs money, nearly everybody needs financial services. And yet we leave the provision of those services to private banks, which are institutions that exist to maximize profit for executives and shareholders, not to serve the public. Herndon and Paul advocate for the creation of a government-run financial entity tasked with the “public provision of household financial services” which would “create the financial infrastructure required for universal service.”
Inside Mexico's Anti-Capitalist Marketplaces
Ava Tomasula y Garcia, In These Times
The mixiuhca is one of many Mexican monedas comunitarias, communal or local currencies fostered since the 1990s, drawing on indigenous bartering practices. “Pesos generate violence, they fund wars, drug and human trafficking, GMO crops, international corporations, inequality,” says one prosumidor. “Community money doesn’t.”
Subscribe to 5 Lefty Links
Check out the 5 Lefty Links Archives