Includes greek subs:

Many scholars claim that democracy improves the welfare of the poor. This article uses data on infant and child mortality to challenge this claim. Cross-national studies tend to exclude from their samples nondemocratic states that have performed well; this leads to the mistaken inference that nondemocracies have worse records than democracies. Once these and other flaws are corrected, democracy has little or no effect on infant and child mortality rates. Democracies spend more money on education and health than nondemocracies, but these benefits seem to accrue to middle- and upper income groups.

GLOBALIZATION PRESSURES AND THE STATE: THE WORLDWIDE SPREAD OF CENTRAL BANK INDEPENDENCE [pdf]

"We predict that countries boost the independence of their central bank from the political power as their exposure to foreign trade, investment, and multilateral lending increases. We also model the cross-national dynamic process of diffusion of central bank independence by examining the impact of cohesive and role-equivalent trade relationships between countries. We test our hypotheses with information on 71 countries between 1990 and 2000, using both event-history modeling and fixed-effects panel-corrected regression. Controlling for domestic variables of a macroeconomic and political nature, we find empirical support for each our predictions. We conclude that globalization pressures have the effect of strengthening certain parts of the state at the expense of others, and raise concerns about the degree of democratic oversight of technocratic institutions."

David Harvey, The Crisis Today: Marxism 2009 July 15, 2009:



The Roots of the World Ecological Crisis
by John Bellamy Foster, October 29. 2009 (starts at ~17'):


Tom Reifer, July 8 2009
Histories of the Present: Giovanni Arrighi, the Longue Duree of Geohistorical Capitalism, and the Current Crisis

Life and death during the Great Depression — PNAS:

Correlation and regression analyses confirmed a significant negative effect of economic expansions on health gains. The evolution of population health during the years 1920–1940 confirms the counterintuitive hypothesis that, as in other historical periods and market economies, population health tends to evolve better during recessions than in expansions.

This is not new: "Are Recessions Good For Your Health?" The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2000:

Total mortality and eight of the ten sources of fatalities examined are shown to exhibit a procyclical fluctuation, with suicides representing an important exception. The variations are largest for those causes and age groups where behavioral responses are most plausible, and there is some evidence that the unfavorable health effects of temporary upturns are partially or fully offset if the economic growth is long-lasting

Although the effect is apparently real, the health benefits during recessions are unequally distributed and widen the income induced health gap:

Self-rated health improved in absolute terms for all occupational groups even after the economic recession. However, the relative disparity increased between the top and middle occupational groups in men.

The health debacles that occur during periods of rapid growth are equally obvious:

Cancer casts a shadow over the villages in this region of China in southern Guangdong province, nestled among farmland contaminated by heavy metals used to make batteries, computer parts and other electronics devices.
Every year, an estimated 460,000 people die prematurely in China due to exposure to air and water pollution, according to a 2007 World Bank study.

.

...Thus adding a few more exhibits to the question of relevance of GDP as any sort of measure of human happiness, or the obviousness of the need for its incessant growth...

In Memoriam: Crystal Lee Sutton ('Norma Rae'). Working Class Hero.


Ampersand: Labor History: A Brief History of Corporate Whining

By B. Deutsch

Some notes:

1. Commonwealth v. Hunt 1842
2. The Thibodaux Massacre of 1887
3. Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire (I think this is what the 1912 cartoon refers to)
4. Yellow Dog contracts legal, 1915
5. Child Labor Amendment, 1924
6. Fair Labor Standards Act, 1938
7. Equal Pay Act, 1963
8. Occupational Safety and Health Act, 1970
9. Today

... All this to make a point: it was never easy and they always whined. Not to mention the fact that it always bears reminding that the US was the stage of a hard, bloody and bitter class struggle. And, hey! What do you know, the tide is turning. I did not believe that I'd see the day when an overtly anti-capitalist documentary would be poised to become a major box-office hit in the US, but things sure change fast:

Related: Red Scare

ISJ: GM Tamás, a prominent Hungarian dissident and now professor of philosophy in Budapest, spoke to Chris Harman about developments in Eastern Europe since the fall of Stalinism.

What was important in hindsight was that in the first two years I spent in the highest chamber of my country as a lawmaker two million jobs were lost—and I don’t think I noticed. That is one of the greatest shames of my life. I don’t think it figured in political debates at that time. There were important debates concerning constitutional rights and republican versus monarchist symbols, fights over control of state radio and television. I won’t say political conflicts were not important but compared to the economic disaster they were of less importance, and we did not see the interdependence between the two. Why did the ruling class need the centralisation of media power? Because it was losing majority support from the population that were getting impoverished. We were totally naive and our discourse at the time was that of classic liberalism and pretty ineffective. This liberal party will probably now, and quite deservedly, disappear from parliament.

...

From the 1920s the Stalinist system—however monstrous, tyrannical and state capitalist it was—had through urbanisation and industrialisation created the livelihoods and life forms of hundreds of millions of people. They may have been disappointed and dissatisfied with the way of life but nevertheless it was theirs. And nobody had prepared them for what was to replace it. It was not something better, not something we might call “change”, but instead the end to economy as such.

In large parts of Eastern Europe and the Eurasian landmass there was the loss of what we knew of as civilisation, which was very much dependent on the state. The state has barely started to function again in Putin’s Russia—in a very unpleasant way—but it is starting to work regularly, making records, collecting revenue, paying civil servants, answering letters, receiving citizens with complaints. But in the early 1990s even that was not available: it was a total disaster. Meanwhile we, the froth at the top of it, were celebrating the triumph of freedom and openness and plurality and fantasy and pleasure and all that. That was frivolous, and I am deeply ashamed.

...

Soviet-type state capitalism was a commodity-producing, wage labour based, unequal, hierarchic, repressive money economy and a class society to outclass all class societies which was extremely efficient in suppressing proletarian resistance. Revolts against that regime have always been socialist revolutions, in 1956 the workers’ councils in Hungary, in 1968 the humanistic socialism in Czechoslovakia. Solidarność was in fact no trade union but a network of territorially organised workers’ councils which initially wanted a self-management proletarian republic of a self-governing people, before repression made it into a bitterly conservative, pessimistic and Catholic movement to disintegrate at the moment of political “victory”. The Central European style of “enlightened absolutism”, of top-down reforms devised by scientifically and philosophically trained elite planners has not changed since the 18th century. “Communist” economic planners were painlessly transmogrified into neoconservative monetarist planners. For them, in a characteristically positivist manner, “socialism” was but an error in economic calculus. Marginal utility seemed more “modern” than the labour theory of value—and bureaucrats go more willingly with the prevailing fashion than couturiers.

...

More-info: MADRE INDÍGENA HABLA AL PRESIDENTE ALAN GARCIA PEREZ MASACRE EN BAGUA TRADUCCION SUBTITULADA
A native mother who is in pain for the lost of her people talks in her language and she has the right to be listened and understood around the world: " Listen please president Alan Garcia, you are responsible because you have exterminated us, you are killing us, you are selling us. You are the terrorist. We defend our territory from armament Our only weapon of defense is just arrows and sticks, that aren't long range and they aren´t meant to kill like you did with us. You exterminated us using armament, bullets, helicopters and killed our brothers, sisters, students, teachers, sons... Alan we ask you to come over here to our territory to pay the debts you have to us. Alan, you sell our country, you sell our people, you sell our natural resources, gold, oil, water, air You pollute our environment and so you will leave us even poorer as you can see us now.. this is how we are and how we are left. We, the awajón-wampis people haven´t elected you to exterminate us, but to help us, to provide us with education for the kids you killed now. We aren´t taking your private property, we haven´t killed your kids or family, you already exterminated us and now we have NOTHING!".

The background: Trade Agreement Kills Amazon Indians
The jungle massacre: Peru's tribal chief flees country
A first hand account: Massacre in Peru: A trip into the Amazon brings answers and more questions
Families of Dead Native Protesters Tell Their Stories

But all of this was not in vain: Victory in the Amazon

by John Belamy Foster. Also.