capitalism 51
Lament for a Post-National Canada
"Canada has become a country much practiced at outrage."
Private Tyrants, Public Remedies: A Review of Sohrab Ahmari’s Tyranny, Inc.
The “freedom to walk away” from at-will employment seems, in many cases, to be the “freedom” to launch yourself into the unsteady winds of “joblessness and financial misery,” particularly if…
Reject the Consumer: Imagining A New Identity Politics
Freeing ourselves from the corrosive Consumer identity isn’t an individual task, but a call for system change rings hollow if we are afraid of personal change. How can we imagine…
Restoring Ideas and Structures: A Review of The Right to Repair
For readers exhausted by the seemingly intractable erosion of society by powerful forces, Perzanowski, has, thankfully, included many tales of heroic and insurgent successes sure to inspire readers, and his…
The Enchantments of Mammon–and the Hope of Alternative Enchantments
McCarraher argues that capitalism works very much like a religion in the contemporary world.
Yuval Levin’s “Conservative Capitalism”
Yuval Levin recently highlighted right and leftwing critiques of capitalism in National Review’s May issue. Many of these critiques, he says, are serious and should not be ignored. “For the…
Imagining Humane (Household) Economies
Hirschfeld’s assessment of what we as Christians should and should not accept in mainstream economics, informed by her training in both economics and theology, is thus a most welcome resource.
On Being Watched, and Remembered
“Don’t take my gun, Nightlife!” Tol called, trying to sound not too much concerned, and yet unable to keep the tone of pleading entirely out of his voice. “I’m liable…
“Ora et Anti-Labora”? Kathryn Tanner on Finance Capitalism
The mighty cosmos of the modern economic order determines, with overwhelming coercion, the style of life not only of those directly involved in business but of every individual who is born into…
Losing (Some of) the Local Commons
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] The annual Prairie Festival at The Land Institute just outside Salina, KS, was held two months ago, but it's been much on my mind for…
The Local Game
The baseball season has ended. For fans just about everywhere outside of Boston, this will signal either melancholy or relief. Or possibly disgust. Melancholy if your season ended unsatisfactorily, relief…
Redeeming Capitalism is an Uphill Battle
Recently there has been a growing sense that capitalism is at best a mixed blessing. Though the material benefits that accompany its massive wealth creation are real and significant, capitalism…
Free Labor: The Liberation Theology of Capitalism
Capitalism as Theology In his seminal work, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism, Michael Novak provides his readers with a “Theology of Democratic Capitalism.”1 Now, some might find his theology a…
What Wendell Berry’s Brush Teaches Us About Capitalism, Community, and “Inevitability”
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] The Art of Loading Brush: New Agrarian Writings, the latest collection of writings by Wendell Berry, isn't a perfect book, nor the perfect expression of…
Urban Questions (and Responses) for Krugman
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Over a month ago, Paul Krugman used his space at The New York Times to ask "what, in the modern economy, are small cities even…
A New FPR Book by John Crowe Ransom
Ransom objected to a false dilemma.
Creative Destruction and its Benefits, China-Style
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] A few weeks ago I was visited by a fellow Wichita resident who was thinking about getting into politics. We talked for a while about…
New ANAMNESIS Symposium: “Views on Hawthorne, Simms, History, and Progress.”
Many FPR readers will enjoy the new symposium, "Views on Hawthorne, Simms, History, and Progress," in ANAMNESIS, A Journal for the Study of Tradition, Place, and 'Things Divine.'
Traditionalist Critique of Marx and An Analysis of Hawthorne in ANAMNESIS
FPR readers will be interested in both (1) K.R. Bolton's traditionalist Conservative critique of Marx and Ideological-Capitalism and (2) Lee Trepanier's examination of the use of history in Hawthorne.
Compensation: The Cultural Contradictions of Philanthrocapitalism
Every excess causes a defect; every defect an excess. — Ralph Waldo Emerson It is appropriate that Robin Rogers begins her informative essay on the state of philanthrocapitalism with a…
Global Warming, Local Farming, and Naomi Klein: A Trip to the Land Institute
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Wichita, KS A couple of weeks ago some fine intellectuals, political figures, journalists, and activists associated with this blog gathered together to talk about localism,…
We Have Met the Enemy, and He is Us
One has a free choice of whether to take one's cocaine in crystal or powdered form. However, while this may be a free choice, it is never a choice of…
A Requirement for Respect
Our region became, unwittingly, the domestic front of what is now surely a global energy war.
Thoughts on Teaching Wendell Berry
Teaching Wendell Berry to students today isn't a thankless task, but the victories are small and far between (which, one might say, is all the best victories always are).