Carnival of Un-Capitalists

Welcome to the Carnival of Un-Capitalists, the blog carnival dedicated to the Left angle of analysis of economics, poverty, work, trade and social justice. I was wondering how to organize the carnival and how to editorialize the entries when I realized that nothing I could write would be as good as what the participants already wrote. Thus, instead, I decided to place a short quote from each post to whet your appetite and lure you to click on each and every link - they are very much worth it. So, without further ado, let's dig in with gusto!

We'll start off with Liberty red in tooth and claw from The Sharpener:

The trouble is, I’ve had a technicolour taste of the unregulated market. Not as part of a case study, or from an ivory tower perusing newly published data, or points-scoring in a doctrinaire blogswarm, but as a way of life, a way to make money, feed my family and survive.

Guerilla Science wrote a decidedly Anti-Authoritarian, Anti-Capitalist's Take On The EU

The false Left v. Right paradigm is finally being done away with in exchange for a more truthful Top v. Bottom, The Elite v. The Dispossessed framing. (Can you say “Class War?”) This dichotomy brings to light a situation that has existed for many years, political parties in Europe and here in the US are only in touch with their constituents around election time, and even they only pretend to care enough to get elected.

Thinking Nurse provides a useful (and bookmarkable - is that a new word?) resource: Poverty and Health - Online Resources:

Thought I would compile a list of links and online resources that provide information on poverty and health outcomes, and ways that nurses can act to challenge poverty and the systems that create it.

Porquios Pas? reports on the history as well as current activity of unions in Iraq in Fighting privatization and occupation in Iraq

Bush and Blair should remember that those who voted in last month’s elections in Iraq are as hostile to the occupation as those who boycotted them. Those who claim to represent the Iraqi working class while calling for the occupation to stay a bit longer, due to “fears of civil war”, are in fact speaking only for themselves and the minority of Iraqis whose interests are dependent on the occupation.

Agitprop wrote a conspiracy theory:
The Bogeymen Cometh, A Conspiratorial Rant. But even a paranoid has real enemies. So, do you think this is just a consipracy theory?

First, we need an evil bogeyman out in the world in order to justify the War on Terror. Second, it helps keep the terror level at yellow alert and the public in constant fear. The Iraq War proves the power of fear and misinformation to manipulate the hearts and minds of citizens. The sheep are always easier to control when the farmer continually scares them about the wolves in the surrounding forest.

From Freiheit und Wissen comes Bobo Does Europe. Arrrgh! Can Brooks get anything right? Or just "Right":

The problem is not the welfare state, but the fact that the social programs and protections of Europe have been gutted at the behest of the E.U. and its bureaucratic elites. If there is any lesson that the U.S. should learn from the history of Europe in the last several years is that the neoliberal agenda does not work.

Meat-Eating Leftist inspires with a call for local political action in The city as a leftist oasis:

Once looked down on as dead end jobs, city political posts for progressives are now all the rage. We can do much more on the local level than we can on the state and certainly the federal. The best way to combat the extremists in power is to do it in our own backyards. Measures that protect workers that have been absent from the federal level and defeated at the state level are easily passed in municipalities.

The Green Lantern points something you will not find in MSM in Future Bleak For US "War On Terror" Vets:

The US Military is having a recruitment crisis. Apparently, a lot of people just don't want to die for oil. Imagine that.
And it's not just because of the lack of new recruits. More and more soldiers are waking up and either dropping out of the military to face prison or just going AWOL altogether.

When free-market is anything but free. Mutualist, in Claire Wolfe on Economic Fascism
, writes:

Some time earlier, I had linked to an amazing article by Nicholas Hildyard of Corner House. In it he argued that the neoliberal agenda of "free market" reform carried out under the auspices of NAFTA, GATT, CAFTA, etc., really meant just reducing the amount of activity nominally carried out in the "public" sector, while greatly augmenting the state capitalist framework within which the so-called "private" sector functioned.

Dark Wraith dismantles another unquestioned myth in his analysis If the Truth Be Told:

Among the misconceptions set forth by the new Right in this country is that American labor, largely through union activity, priced itself out of competition in a globalized economy. The argument goes that, in a market economy such as that of the United States, it is only rational for employers to seek the lowest cost factors of production, be they raw materials or labor; and if labor is cheaper elsewhere, then that is where profit maximizing companies will go to secure it.

Lenin's Tomb in Socialism From Below explores the modern versions of workers' self-management:

Just yesterday, I read inThe Guardian of how in Argentina businesses shut down by the bosses were invaded and re-opened by workers who now run them as cooperatives, "an important symbol of another world that is possible, necessary, and emerging." In doing so, they have often increased employment beyond what was achieved by the capitalist bosses themselves and created micro-models of participatory democracy that mimic the shorahs, cordones, workers councils and soviets of the 20th Century.

Editor's Choice: Yes, he may be famous, and he may be guest-blogging on a famous blog, but as a blogger he is a newbie, so why not include him in the carnival? Five posts about labor and poverty by John Edwards at TPM Cafe engendered quite a lot of interesting commenting below the fold, well worth reading by the readers of this Carnival.

Next week, the Carnival will be hosted by Bionic Octopus. For information about submissions and hosting, and to browse the carnival's archives, go to the wonderfully designed and organized homepage. Thank you all for coming and...get busy writing for next week's edition.