Political Economy

BRUCE LERRO—The ruling powers try to rationalize and legitimize their power by inventing ideologies that paint them as more capable and harder working than they really are. One part of their ideology is that there is no ruling class as a social formation. Class is simply the position that separate individuals occupy as a result of their individual competencies and effort. The “free market” is infinitely flexible, open to all comers. In this capitalist ideology there is no relationship between social classes. Capitalists appear to acquire their wealth as a completely separate process from what workers do or don’t do. What is really going on is that upper-class wealth is dependent on their exploitation of the working class in the form of surplus value.

The breakup of Yugoslavia provided the fodder for what may have been the most misrepresented series of major events over the past twenty years. The journalistic and historical narratives that were imposed upon these wars have systematically distorted their nature, and were deeply prejudicial, downplaying the external factors that drove Yugoslavia’s breakup while selectively exaggerating and misrepresenting the internal factors. Perhaps no civil wars—and Yugoslavia suffered multiple civil wars across several theaters, at least two of which remain unresolved—have ever been harvested as cynically by foreign powers to establish legal precedents and new categories of international duties and norms. Nor have any other civil wars been turned into such a proving ground for the related notions of “humanitarian intervention” and the “right [or responsibility] to protect.”

 [su_spoiler title=”MAKE SURE YOU CIRCULATE THESE MATERIALS! BREAKING THE EMPIRE’S PROPAGANDA MACHINE DEPENDS ON…

 [su_spoiler title=”MAKE SURE YOU CIRCULATE THESE MATERIALS! BREAKING THE EMPIRE’S PROPAGANDA MACHINE DEPENDS ON…

by John Bellamy Foster and Brett Clark REVIEW OF THE MONTH Crossing the River…