Category Archives: Political Economy
Materialism (Vers 2.0, Part 2)
Materialism (Vers 2.0, Part 2): in “A Free Man’s Worship” (1903) philosopher Bertrand Russell called for a humanist ethic of respect for scientific truth, economic justice, and world peace. How well has this held up? Is its failure just the sign of a civilization’s growing pains, or of something fundamentally wrong with its key assumptions? Continue reading
The Deep Establishment
In the title of his recent Adults in the Room: My Battle with the European and American Deep Establishment (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2017) former Greek foreign minister Yanis Varoufakis introduces this phrase: The Deep Establishment. I like it! The … Continue reading
This Blog Is Not a Commodity
Several months back, someone posted a comment that went something like, “You don’t monetize your blog.” Why not? was the implied question, quite in tune with the prevailing neoliberal ideology of the day. I thought about it. I’ll admit, I … Continue reading
George Herbert Walker Bush (1924 – 2018)
Today is George Herbert Walker Bush’s funeral. I don’t normally write notices for just-deceased politicians, so this is a departure for me. But something has aroused my curiosity. I posted a very brief notice about his death, along with a … Continue reading
Auguste Comte’s Law of Three Stages: What It Is, Why the Third Stage is Dying, What Comes Next. (A Major Statement.)
[Note: this may be the longest blog post I have ever made on this site. The result of several weeks of effort, it may be read as a progress report on what may turn into my life’s work: if I … Continue reading
Is Higher Education Undergoing a Long-Term Structural Collapse?
Is higher education in the U.S., and almost surely in the West generally, undergoing a long-term structural collapse? The question sounds histrionic, perhaps even hysterical and would be treated as such in many (most?) mainstream academic circles. But if we … Continue reading
