Value Wars: The Global Market Versus the Life EconomyThe slogan "Marxism is dead" was proclaimed almost immediately after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Very soon after, a strange ideological inversion occurred. In place of the "inevitable victory of the proletariat" espoused by Marx, there was the "inevitable process of globalisation", a line now adopted by corporations, politicians and the media the world over. John McMurtry unravels the moral contradictions inherent in this "new world order", and argues that it cannot succeed because it is based on essentially inhuman values. Connecting across a broad spectrum of issues including the Iraq and Balkan wars, the Asian and Russian meltdowns, ecological collapse, the privatisation and deregulation of public institutions, and the principles of technology, neo-classical and Marxian economics, McMurtry's compelling study lays bare the battle lines of an emerging global ethical war. Tracking social uprisings across continents from the rural landless and women's movements of the South to the workers, students and civil alliances marching in the North, the author's original "life-ground ethics" explains the unseen bonds uniting people across cultural and class divisions. Defining the clear choices available to us, and taking apart the official line of "no alternative", John McMurtry delivers not only a devastating philosophical critique of globalization, but also offers us a new economic manifesto, based on principles and human values. |
Contents
The Unseen Pattern 346 | 3 |
Return of the Genocidal War | 22 |
Uprising against the global corporate regime | 55 |
Copyright | |
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accountability Afghanistan alternative attack Blair bombing calculus Cancer Stage capital cent citizens civil commons command consumer costs culture currency debt demand destruction domestic economy ecosystems effects environmental European Union fact fanatic foreign free market freedom function genetically genocide global corporate system global market global market system globalisation Guardian Weekly human increasingly instituted interest investment Iraq labour life-ground lives majority mass mass media meaning military millions mind-set money sequences money-demand money-sequence moral natural natural capital oligopolist operations opposition organising paradigm pattern political pollution presupposed principle prison privatisation proclaimed production profit programme protect publicly recognised regime regulating restructuring rule scientific sectors selected slogans social infrastructures societies society's standards structure systematic terror terrorists Tony Blair totalitarian transnational corporate transnational trade value-set World Trade Organisation Yugoslavia