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Unmaking global capitalism
The fundamental contradiction of capitalism, Marx and Engels argued, was that as capitalists brought workers together to increase profits they opened the door to workers discovering their own potential. Capitalism created its own gravediggers. Sam Gindin explores limits and opportunities to make digging a little easier.
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Beyond the impasse of Canadian labour: Union renewal, political renewal
When, at the height of the financial crisis, Occupy signalled that audacious action could gain popular sympathy and that an articulation of class could touch a popular chord, unions nodded in support and offered funds for water, toilets and tents. What unions didn’t do was pick up the real challenge and, inspired by their own history of workplace occupations in the 1930s, take over facilities that were more than symbolic—government buildings, schools, hospitals, and factories.
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Raising our expectations
The Left to stop lamenting its disappointments in the working class and address, with humility, its own failures. The Left must raise its expectations of itself.
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Stagnation, austerity and left politics
If we on the left want to assess the likely outcome of the recent crash and develop a meaningful response, we need to at least clarify some of the issues involved.
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The Global Economic Crisis—Part 3
Canadian Dimension posed a number of questions to three well-known economists to reflect on the roots of the crisis and what lies ahead, and to advance some progressive options. This week we publish the responses from Sam Gindin, former economist with the CAW and co-author of the forthcoming book “The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of the American Empire” (Verso, 2012).
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Politics après Jack
When Jack Layton, newly minted Leader of the Opposition in Canada’s parliament, died on August 22, even politically indifferent Canadians took serious notice. Here was a political death that could dramatically affect the country’s future. What might the actual impact of Layton’s loss be, not just on the federal political landscape, but on the New Democratic Party, on Québec, and the “larger Left” in general? We asked observers on the front line to consider those questions.
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The Assault on Public Services
Today, the message is that if you don’t like the way things are, tough — you have no alternative. The real lesson of course is that if the present economic system can’t offer us a better life, then it is that system, not our expectations that needs changing.
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Conversing with Jack Layton
The November 2003 issue of Canadian Dimension featured this extensive interview with Jack Layton shortly after he was newly elected as leader of the federal New Democratic Party. Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin sat down with the NDP leader Jack Layton and asked whether he planned on confronting capitalism, US imperialism, and whether he saw himself as a socialist.
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The End of Retirement
The demographic implications of living longer present real dilemmas and challenges to our pension system. But the real choices to be made do not revolve around whether we’re rich enough to afford retirement, but the extent to which we value freedom from work over consumption, the form that freedom from work might take, and – above all – how society’s wealth is distributed
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Debating Avatar
Avatar has been criticized for being unsophisticated, simplistic, New Age-y, anarcho-primitivist, a white man’s fantasy of redemption for the crimes of his race. Can this be overlooked considering the movie allows people to understand some of the elements of Indigenous struggles?