To keep this project as approachable as possible, I've had to take certain liberties. For example, I've defined communism and socialism and separate, though related ideas. Many would disagree with this classification, but I've defined them in this way because it is the clearest way to explain the left's ideas to someone without prior knowledge. Some on the left might disagree with the labels--but not the concepts.
Furthermore, Bernie Sanders' definition of socialism (decommodification of labor) is the definition of socialism I work with here. Since many have been introduced to socialism through Sanders, this classification makes the most sense to present basic ideas.
Feel free to read these in the order that is most interesting to you. If something builds on the knowledge of a another page, it will clearly link back accordingly.
Full Employment
- A brief history of postwar era full employment
- Economics is class warfare (and they started it)
- Why isn't social democracy enough? Why must capitalism be abolished?
Why Left?
- The left is about happiness
- The real world? There is no such thing. The real world is what we make it.
- The low road to morality
Communism vs Capitalism
- What is communism? A form of ownership. What is capitalism? A form of ownership.
- Communism and capitalism are forms of ownership and have nothing to do with free markets vs. central planning
- Socialists do not want your iPhone
- Communism is about ownership, not dictatorships
- The revolution will not be very revolutionary
- Why is communism better than capitalism?
- Shareholders and the destruction of value
- Why do communists care about ownership? Wage labor
- Green communism, or political decisions masquerading as economic ones
- Misconceptions about communism
- Why communism wouldn't be a disaster...
- Capitalism and the ownership of ideas does not encourage innovation
- The revolution will need MBA's
- We need finance, but not Wall Street
- ...and why capitalism is
- Capitalism in time of famine
- The millions killed by the IMF, World Bank, and World Trade Organization
- No, YOU don't understand free trade
- Kerala, India, and the moral bankruptcy of the neoliberal development project
The Free Market
- Free markets are not efficient
- Free markets are not efficient not in theory
- The success of centrally planned economies
- Free markets are not efficient not in simulation
- Free markets are not efficient in the real world
- The failure of the transition to free markets
- The free market in time of famine
- Socializing capital markets
Socialism vs. Capitalism
- What is socialism? And why you're probably already a socialist without knowing it
- Why do socialists want to decommodify labor? Poverty and the exploitation of wage labor
- The universal basic income: How giving people free money solves otherwise unsolvable societal problems without any negative consequences
- Venezuela, Afghanistan, and the moral bankruptcy of the neoliberal development project
- Sorry liberals, but single payer health care will never be in the best interest of capital, no matter how expensive private insurance is
- Green socialism
How to end capitalism
- The Republicans are right: Obamacare really is the first step on the slippery slope to Marxism (or: On the Rahm Emmanuel theory of social change)
- Stop waiting for the next Martin Luther King and start organizing
- Also: stop marching
- The revolution will be very complicated
- What will our postcapitalist world look like?
