June 14, 2012 “The logic of planetary responsibility is aimed, at least in principle, at confronting the globally generated problems point-blank—at their own level. It stems from the assumption that lasting and truly effective solutions to planetwide problems can be found and made to work only through the renegotiation and reforming of the web of…
Continue readingLearning About The Past. Thinking About The Future
COMBINE MORALITY, ECONOMICS AND POLITICS WHEN IT COMES TO THE DEFENSE INDUSTRY AND ARMS EXPORTS IN SWEDEN Will the narrow framing of the debate over the potential renewal agreement between Sweden and Saudi Arabia lead to a defeat for those opposed to arms exports? To avoid defeat of those opposed to renewal and to broaden…
Posted on April 3, 2012 by admin Perpetual growth under present circumstances threatens the ecosystem. The current system of energy usage is unsustainable. Zero growth in a depression threatens to create a permanent class of unemployed and underemployed persons, however. Debts and imports can rob wealth, but simply cutting deficits without generating wealth and growth…
By Jonathan Michael Feldman Don’t Just Cut the Defense Budget With Laissez-Faire Economic Policy Progressive and left leading economists have proposed military budget cutbacks, increased taxes and closing loop holes as ways to reduce the deficit. The problem with the first proposal is that it often is not accompanied by proposals to create civilian alternatives…
Continue readingWhy Not Falling Off the Fiscal Cliff Requires Conversion
By Brian D’Agostino What I find remarkable about the recent “fiscal cliff” debate in the United States, which is now morphing into the “debt ceiling” debate, is the absence of America’s bloated and obsolete war economy from the discussion, even as vitally needed programs are on the chopping block. For two months, right wing Republicans…
Continue readingCongress coddles military while neglecting Sandy victims and violence prevention
By Jonathan M. Feldman, Stockholm University, May 24, 2013. Kjöller Argument 1: Upploppen blir ett Rorschachtest, en bläckplump där allt från Sverigedemokrater till anarkister tycker sig kunna läsa in just det som bekräftar den egna verklighetsbilden… Analysis of Argument 1: The claim is that people from the far right to the far left will interpret…
By Jonathan Michael Feldman, November 25, 2015, Modified November 26, 2015. Party Leaders Valorize the Politics of Scarcity On Swedish television (SVT) yesterday we saw a series of party leaders speak. One key point was when the Green Party Leader Gustav Fridolin said that Europe must do its duty by taking in more refugees (their…
Continue readingThe Politics of Scarcity: New Code Words for Swedish Politics
By Jonathan Michael Feldman October 25, 2015 Capitalism as the Colonizer of Universities In a recent article for The Chronicle of Higher Education, Terry Eagleton, describes “The Slow Death of the Universities.” He writes: “Yet the distance they established between themselves and society at large could prove enabling as well as disabling, allowing them to…
Connecting the Dots Working Group Workshop Connecting the Dots (CTD) är ett nytt Stockholmsbaserat gräsrotinitiativ och en arbetsgrupp med syfte att fungera som tankesmedja, organisatör och initiativtagare. Vi vill bjuda in er till en workshop. Våra medlemmar är aktiva inom den breda vänstern och inom gröna, feministiska, antimilitaristiska och antirasistiska rörelser som aktivister, akademiker, konstnärer…
Continue readingConnecting the Dots Working Group: Workshop in Stockholm
THE BIGGEST BARRIERS ARE POLITICAL AND NOT SIMPLY “ECONOMIC” By Jonathan M. Feldman The argument that it is impossible to build low cost housing sounds plausible, using the tools of standard housing economics, but it leaves many questions unanswered. First, the population of Stockholm and other key locations will inevitably expand. One study suggests its…
Continue readingHow to Build Affordable Housing in Sweden: A Thought Experiment for the Left