Socialism — what is it?

Like many other political words, “socialism” is tossed around loosely, by many people who have only a very vague idea of what it means.
Hillaire Belloc does a good job of clarifying things in The ChesterBelloc Mandate: An Examination of Socialism Part I:
A Socialistic State need be neither more democratic nor less democratic than the present [...]

How you too can participate in the financial crisis

Lastest news from the financial markets: most shares may be down, and production is dropping in many industries, but snake oil production is up, and snake oil shares are booming.
Bishop Alan’s Blog: HBOS: Personalised Credit Crunch:
Welcome to the share offer that enables you to have your very own credit crunch at home this Christmas. As [...]

Socialism, communitarianism, distributism

Since the Reagan/Thatcher years of the 1980s socialism has been decidedly unfashionable and the neoliberalism of the free-market fundamentalists has been all the rage.
I’ve blogged before on the Gadarene rush to destroy the building societies in the late 1980s, but they had become unfashionable too. And mutual insurance associations were destroyed about ten years later. [...]

Bring back the building societies!

Twenty years ago most South African building societies went commercial, and one result of this is that it became almost impossible for anyone except the very rich to save, because the commercial banks charged fees that emptied savings accounts faster than the poor could fill them.
In Britain, building societies that became banks have been causing [...]

Is neoliberalism dead yet?

The the recent nationalisation of banks in the UK and US looks like the death-knell for neoliberalism – but is it?

clipped from www.counterpunch.org

What exploded last week was an economic credo that has been rolling along since the early 1970s: neoliberalism.
By all rights, this last crisis has brought us to the crossroads where neoliberalism should be [...]

Zimbabwe: losing my Ubuntu

Thabo Mbeki is back in Zimbabwe, trying to patch up the power-sharing agreement that he helped to patch together just before he resigned as president of South Africa.

clipped from www.hararetribune.com

Yesterday the World Food Programme issued an alarming statement on the food crisis in Zimbabwe. They appealed for an additional US$140 million to cover the shortfall [...]

How to solve the financial crisis

Elizaphanian’s solution is beautiful in its simplicity:
Take the $700bn and use it to pay off the mortgages of the poorest. Instant solvency and liquidity flowing through the system, a Jubilee for social justice, and the bankers aren’t favoured over the people they misled.
‘Nuff said.

Building society eats building society

I don’t know much about financial institutions in Britain, but I found it encouraging that they still apparently have building societies.In South Africa all the major building societies demutualised about 20 years ago, suckering their members with stories of “windfalls”, which they have since lost many times over in the bank charges levied by the [...]

ANC’s Thatcherism responsible for Eskom load shedding — Cosatu

Cosatu has drawn attention to one aspect of the electricity supply crisis that hasn’t received much coverage in the media. Cosatu does not blame Eskom management, but the government’s mania for privatisation. And if that is true, then the heads have already rolled — at the ANC conference in December.And then it is just [...]

The Church and money – synchroblog

In my first-year Theology course at university the first essay we were asked to write in the Ethics class was on Usury, and it forced us to look at the way that Christian ethical standards have changed over the centuries.
Lord, who shall dwell in Thy tabernacle: or who shall rest upon thy holy hill?
He who [...]