From Financial Crisis to Stagnation: The Destruction of Shared Prosperity and the Role of Economics

Thomas I. Palley

Marshall McLuhan, the famed philosopher of media, wrote “We shape our tools and they in turn shape us”. His insight also applies to the economy which is shaped by economic policy derived from economic ideas, and it is the theme of my recent book which argues the global economic crisis is the product of flawed policies derived from flawed ideas.

 Broadly speaking, there exist three different perspectives on the crisis. Perspective 1 is the hard-core neoliberal position, which can be labelled the “government failure hypothesis”. In the U.S. it is identified with the Republican Party and the Chicago school of economics. Perspective 2 is the soft-core neoliberal position, which can be labelled the “market failure hypothesis”. It is identified with the Obama administration, half of the Democratic Party, and the MIT economics departments. In Europe it is identified with Third Way politics. Perspective 3 is the progressive position which can be labelled the “destruction of shared prosperity hypothesis”. It is identified with the other half of the Democratic Party and the labour movement, but it has no standing within major economics departments owing to their suppression of alternatives to orthodox theory.

The King and Us - Why Thailand’s lèse majesté law matters to unions and the world

Ian Graham (author)

Somyot Prueksakasemsuk

“Union rights are human rights.” That has been said loud and often. But it bears repeating. Labour rights are specialised extensions of the principles set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. “Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests,” the declaration insists. Nobody reading this column is likely to disagree (except, perhaps, with the “his”). Philosophically, core human rights such as freedom of association have always underpinned core labour rights.

We seldom hear the equation put the other way round: “Human rights are union rights”. And yet it is just as true. A place that disregards any of the basic human rights is a place that trade unions will find irksome.

Lack of Rain in the Rainforest

Nora Räthzel

From work or nature to work and nature: another kind of unionism

On a one-week tour organised by João Paulo Cândia Veiga from the University of São Paulo and Manoel Edivaldo Santos Matos from the Union of Rural workers (Sindicato dos Trabalhadores y Trabalhadoras Rurais de Santarém, STTR) in Pará, a region of the Brazilian Amazonas, we visited eight communities along the Rivers Arapiuns, Maró and Amazonas. These are small communities of between 90 and 300 people. They are of mixed indigenous and Portuguese origin, some groups defining themselves as indigenous. Traditionally, they lived from fishing, hunting, gathering fruit and planting manioc. But with the arrival of timber companies their lives have become unstable. In the eighties, but on a much larger scale in the nineties, timber companies entered more remote areas of the rainforests. Game, fruits and fibres on which people had lived began to decrease radically. In the middle of the nineties, supported and organised by the STTR, the communities living in the areas began a struggle for the ownership of the land they worked and lived on. They won this struggle but their battles have not ended. The timber companies remain, employing carrot and stick strategies to get at the wood: threatening activists on the one hand and promising to provide electricity and jobs on the other. The companies do not keep their promises, jobs are heavy and wages are low. But when survival is difficult, some people see no other choice than to work for them. Others are too concerned with the future of the forests to accept such an option, which creates tensions within communities.