Pete Davis talks to Josh Davis of the newly-founded Institute for Christian Socialism. Together, they talk about the intertwined history of left movements and Christianity.

Riot is the recourse of surplus populations: both Marx's "industrial reserve army" and the lumpen, the excluded — those who are "chronically outside the formal wage, or 'structurally unemployed.' "

"Basic income is a real shot at utopia. Basic jobs takes that energy and idealism, and redirects it to perpetuate some of the worst parts of the current system. It’s better than nothing. But not by much."

Tim Barker's very good review of a book that seems interesting (especially the COST proposal) but that I'll probably not read.

Kapitalism101's Law of Value series (I've not read/watched all of these yet).

"It is obviously true that one cannot understand the complexities of contemporary geopolitics and imperialism simply by reading Lenin and Bukharin. But it is equally true that if one ignores their key insights, it is not possible to make much sense of the otherwise bewildering set of events that is currently being played out on the international chessboard and, just as importantly, to come up with a coherent political strategy to oppose militarism, war, environmental destruction, and all the other horrors that capitalism creates. The framework Lenin and Bukharin developed a hundred years ago, taken as a methodology and not as a set of dogmas, retains its relevance for activists today."

"Ricardo was followed by two able and well-trained pupils — Marx and Marshall. Meanwhile English history had gone right round the corner, and landlords were not any longer the question. Now it was capitalists. Marx turned Ricardo’s argument round this way: Capitalists are very much like landlords. And Marshall turned it round the other way: Landlords are very much like capitalists. Just round the corner in English history you see two bicycles of the very same make — one being ridden off to the left and the other to the right."

It's still good.

The frustrating thing is that capitalists like Kevin Crissey and Jamie Baker have more class-consciousness than most workers.

Dyer Lum argues that the motivational force behind the Edmunds Anti-Polygamy Act is to crush the cooperative economy set up by Mormons in Utah.

"The spirit of Caesar, rendered powerless in religious systems, castrated of divine right in forms of political government, is entrenching itself in the economic system of the age. British and German empires, Spanish and Italian kingdoms, French and American republics, are but dead forms; the animating soul in each is the same. A common (economic) feeling has made them all akin. Statecraft exists for the furtherance of economic interests; forms of government are recognized as of secondary importance to "vested interests." Harrington's apothegm: 'Empire follows the balance of property,' is no longer disputable."