Eye Core

What reason can anyone give me to not to prefer the annihilation of all mankind to a scratch on my finger?

I have been trying to make capitalism look bad as bad as it really is. I have argued that capitalism is war, and that those of us who do not own capital suffer from it just as do civilian populations caught between opposing armies, or as foot soldiers conscripted into armies fighting for interests that are not our own.  I've tried to show that ca...

The administration and most of the press tells us, over and over, that we are in a war against an evil enemy.  The choice of this language is crucial to what happens next.  

The word "evil" stigmatizes anyone who would point out what makes these terrible actions seem necessary to their perpetrators. 

If we cannot speak or think about them, then we are helpless to deal with the conditions that will continue to generate ang...

In Britain where Ithey regularly watch BBC television, which is perhaps the last major domain of public space that is free of commercial messages. There is no advertising on BBC radio or television because it is supported entirely by license fees paid by owners of TV sets and radios.

At home we are struck by the absence of any space free of ads, not only on television but absolutely everywhere. Every conceivable surface seems designed today to carry an en...

We live in a society organized around private property, the right of private individuals and corporations to own the resources we all need in order to live. These resources, belonging to a small proportion of the top one percent of the population, include the natural products of the planet, what grows in the soil, the oceans and the forests, as well as all the products of human culture and history the techniques and knowledge and art we have created over the centuries. Even the techniques ...

The TV series The Sopranos suggests sometimes that the only difference between big business and organized crime is the mob's willingness to use murder to accomplish its ends "Capitalism is organized crime." the thought keeps coming back to me. Capitalism is a way of organizing crime in such a way that it can masquerade as something altogether different.

But at bottom, they are the same. To understand this is to see that capitalism cannot be reformed; it ...

Maybe the media only make it seem that there are more serial and mass murders happening in our country today than in the past. But whether the numbers are up or down, it still stuns us when people, always men and boys, kill simply for the sake of killing, killing not only strangers, fellow students, co-workers and their own families, but often themselves as well. The reasons are always obscure, though newspaper columnists and lots of other folks have their theories. I’ll get to mine ...

People who talk a lot about the fact that we must die usually have a religious message to sell. If you believe in the right God in the right way, you need not be afraid of death. Believers reap their reward in eternal life, while sinners suffer eternal damnation.

The mainstream doctrine of eternal life often recommends acquiescing in the status quo: Be upright and faithful now in this life, obey your superiors, accept exploitation, and you will be rewarde...

Gender, race, and class. This little list has become a mantra we on the left use to remind ourselves of the kinds of fine quality that characterize this society, the Big Three of discrimination and injustice. We have learned to see them as more than just prejudices: they are systematic forms of inequality, part of the framework of oursociety. They are injustices built into our economy, our culture, even our language.    

But that last item...

The information revolution is the death knell of private property. Consider the following current legal issues. Drug companies patent the medicines they make, giving them exclusive rights to their production, which allows them to charge a price many times their cost of production.  People who need these drugs to combat deadly diseases, especially in the third world, are unable to afford them. Governments and health organizations in the third world are prohibited from duplicating these...

As the worlds only remaining superpower, the United States is a super state. It does not directly govern the world, but it sure exercises hegemony over it. It establishes alliances and forms of cooperation wherever possible, and uses threats, intimidation and violence wherever it must. Its missionis to manage the process of globalization -- no small task. Globalization is an immense transformation, and it requires increasingly sophisticated forms of information and control. In the1970s, th...

The Bush administration, having gained control of both houses of congress, now has an open highway for its plans to advance world peace and the well-being of Americans.  It aims to stabilize the international scene by going to war in the Middle-east, against the better judgment of most of our allies in the region and in Europe. Nothing is more likely to pacify the angry young men of the Muslim world than American bombs falling on Baghdad.  American will be safer at home thanks to...

The United States' approach to engineering a war on Iraq signifies a giant leap towards establishing absolute sovereignty over the world.  The Donald Rumsfeld memo, as reported in the New York Times  on October 14 2002, states that once a national interest has been identified, "U.S. leadership should make a judgment as to when diplomacy has failed and act forcefully, early, during the precrisis period, to try to alter the behavior of others and to prevent the conflict. If that fa...

"The new world order, with the United States as not only the mightiest power on earth but also the heart of the entire international system, has become a reality.  For better or for worse, there is no stepping back from that now." These words appeared in the New York Times on Wednesday in a review of a book about the U.S. military.  For the sake of argument, let's suppose they are true.  Whoever governs the US governs the world -- not, of course, by the consent of the govern...

Money does have magical powers.  It looks ordinary enough, lying sedately in its slot in the cash register or your wallet.  Yet it appears to have powers like those of a magician's wand or the ring Frodo goes to find in Lord of the Rings.  It can grant you your wishes.  Let's think about what magic is, and then about where money gets its magic. 

There is no magic in a horse's or a car's power to carry us where we want to go. ...

Oil price in July 2008 reached a staggering $147 a barrel, having doubled in price over the previous 12 months. Who would have thought, that within half a year, a dramatic oil-price freefall would bring oil to a 5-year low of $35 a barrel – a price drop of 76%.

However, even though many have sighed in relief, experts are heralding new dramatic spikes in oil price. Oil prices might proceed erratically with huge ranges in peaks and troughs, but there is across-the-board ...

About 30 years ago, a string of manufacturing plants called "maquiladoras" began to grow up along the border between the U.S. and Mexico on the Mexican side. There are now almost 4000 of them. They employ close to a million Mexican workers, many of them girls and young women from 14 to 20 years old. The result has been a huge growth in shanty-town cities from Tijuana just south of San Diego across the Southwest to Matamoros next to Brownsville Texas. These developments were the topic of tw...

Progressive political work must aim at something more than justice. We must cultivate a community of people who love one another, a beloved community. In fact, justice is impossible without love, and love is crippled without justice. I want to pose some problems about the idea of social justice.

Let me begin with a disclaimer: I'm going to present a line of thought that I think is worth discussion. It may be mistaken in important ways, and I know there ...

How should society treat a Timothy McVeigh? An Augusto Pinochet? A heroin dealer arrested on the streets of Portland? A man who holds up a convenience store? How should we, through our government, treat someone who can't hold a job and lives on the street? A woman with three children, no job, no money, and no education?

These are questions about who deserves what, which philosophers call the question of desert. What, if anything, do people deser...

That capitalist society is organized around class domination is Marx's most fundamental claim about our world. What's wrong with class domination? It's not so much that it's unfair that a few people should be rich while vast multitudes are poor. It is that class rule is mis-rule; it's bad government. A tiny minority, those who control capital, determines how everybody lives. Capital advances its own interests. Therefore the interests of the vast majority are thwarted, creati...

Justice is a powerful idea: in its modern, democratic form, it means that every voice has a right to be heard and that every human life deserves respect. Today I want to ask whether justice is enough.

Justice is a way of regulating power. It demands that power be exercised fairly and with respect for persons. Left to its own devices, what does power do? According to one of the great theorists of power Friedrich Nietzsche, power affirms only itself. With...