Religious Fundamentalism. An ambivalent phenomenon of the modern age (tags)
The conclusion that Thomas Meyer repeatedly puts forward is obvious: "Fundamentalism proves to be an indeterminate negation of the foundations of Enlightenment and modernization."
The pace of business rationalization has accelerated to such an extent that in the core sectors of world market production, fewer and fewer workers are needed despite growing output of goods. Thus, the development of productive power has reached a point at which it makes absolutely more labor superfluous in each period.
Psychology as a method of domination (tags)
The current pandemic policy has given the world the ultimate understanding of how democracies (...) transform themselves into totalitarian because inhumane systems. (...) Long live the courage to resist and refute.
Democracy beyond Corona (tags)
Whether the experiences of the lockdown will result in lasting damage in the sense of a democratically consumptive "new normality" depends not least on whether it is possible to take up and strengthen the very existing democracy-building impulses and initiatives - from "Black Lives Matter" to "Fridays for Future".
Thoughts and Theses on the Corona Exceptional State (tags)
The state of emergency threatens to become the normal state - Maximum vigilance is now required to ensure that the new state of emergency does not gradually normalize and that the authoritarian turnaround does not become entrenched.
A society of social descent, precariouisness and polarization has emerged out of the society of ascent and social integration. The modern age continues developing but backward. The social state, is a de-commodifying institution since it socializes risks.
Social Inequality in the Descent Society (tags)
The elevator effect is not true any more. This changed from the 1990s. People no longer move up together. A society of descent, precariousness and polarization has come ou9t of the society of social ascent. Ascents and descents have a collective and an individual dimension.
Brave New Working World (tags)
Classical working conditions and social securities dissolve. Ulrich Beck speaks of this world as a world risk society that will be marked by risky freedoms. To counter this, he develops the vision of a citizen society. How can the state compensate for the loss of taxes through paid work?
TTIP: Threat to Democracy and the Constitutional State (tags)
The TTIP, the largest free trade zone comprising 800 million of the EU and the US is being secretly negotiated. Democracy and the constitutional state are threatened by 3-person arbitration courts where corporations can sue states and decisions are irreversible.
The Liberal-Regressive Modern Age (tags)
The financial crisis of the states-dramatically intensified by the costs of bailing out the banks-shifts the costs to the broad population without touching the wealth of the economic elites. Political governing is increasingly uncoupled from the approval and influence of citizens.
Book Review: "The Great Crash or the Century Crisis" by Elmar Altvater (tags)
Capitalism is at an end and the whole world is drawn into the mess. Preventing this is an ethical imperative and a political duty. The multiple crisis has dragged on for years. The political class allows this to happen. Political answers to the debacle can only be found with clarity on causes.
Economic Crisis and the Crisis of Neoliberal Ideology (tags)
The crisis has his origins in the "real" economy. Inequality is the ideological motor of neoliberfalism. German president Kohler described the financial markets as a monster. The metaphor has changed from market as rational subject to monster.
Global challenges arise today through breaking limits. The idea that more consumption is better begins to lose support. We must be engaged socially and politically to change the rules, institutions and information streams so they reflect our highest values.
"The Financial Crisis has made Heroes out of Rogues" (tags)
The state should make the economy more social and democratic. The conversions of Gordon Brown, Angela Merkel and Peter Steinbruick from market fetishism to state optimism were cabaret-style conversions. Democracy should dominate the economy.
Faith and religion could be a force for peace after militarism and intolerance are excised as false corrupted consciousness. Prejudice could be a stepping stone to the event of understanding, the fusion of horizons (H.G.Gadamer,Truth and Method).
Welfare State in the Market Trap (tags)
"The crisis of the welfare state is a crisis in the heads of the economic and political elites. The welfare state is a political barrier against the marketing of human labor. The welfare state can be regained through democratic solidarity.. Today one farmer feeds 88 non-farmers."
Another Economy is Possible (tags)
The world economy increasingly has the character of a plutonomy, a wealth economy where the rich appropriate an ever larger share of the social wealth. Imagine an economy that serves justice, peace and creation, where competition and cooperation coexist and the future is safeguarded
The Future of Work-driven Society (tags)
When less and less time needs to be spent working for a living in Western industrialised countries, this partial freedom of gainful occupation is increasingly becoming a problem for those dismissed. The vision of working less and living longer is a utopia that is also realistic.
"Unemployment is a Victory" (tags)
Higher productivity allows a maximum in prosperity to be realized with a minimum in human labor. Freedom, not full employment, is the alternative today.
No Peace to the Western War Policy and the Neoliberal System! (tags)
This war policy is justified as a completely selfless undertaking..When industrialists say a constitutional state must be built militarily, they really mean the right to plunder..What we witness now is the return to jungle law or double standards.
The Unconditional Basic Income (tags)
Alternatives to the work society are necessary. A political movement is only credible today if it positions itself to the changes of the world of work and presents alternatives to the crisis of the work society. Basic income is a first step to freedom.
Brave New World of Work: The Political Economy of Insecurity (tags)
"The utopia of the free market has an unintentional upshot: the Brazilianization of the West.. What is most remarkable is the new similarity of development profiles, the incursion of the precarious, intermittent, fluffy and unsanctioned in the Western bulwarks.."
Activating State or Active Social State (tags)
"Cuts in benefits are not social reforms but a relapse to the last century when society didn't protect its members from general life risks on account of deficient resources.The welfare state is indispensable for the society altogether and for the socially disadvantaged
Angola gave a perfuctory reply to a letter urging resistance against a pre-emptive strike against Iraq. Mexico, Chile, Cameroon and Angola should be flooded with emails to their UN embassies in New York.
Make love, not war resounded..at the time of the Vietnam war. Make law, not war is proclaimed by Europe at the threshold to the Iraq war. Bush acts according to the slogan: Make war, not law. The brave new world of military security replaces the logic of treaty..
Hundreds of millions of people are forced to work migration between countries and continents.. People are transformed into socially uprooted vagabonds of markets..Flexibility means ..more output and more stress for less money. From German
This book will make you furious (tags)
The 'Black Book on Brand Corporations' by Klaus Werner finally provides consumers with an insight in the unscrupulous practices of renowned and popular global players.