Economics

Noam Chomsky: Requiem for the American Dream (2015)

This is accessible, non-exhortative Noam Chomsky and although the focus of this dissertation of his is the systemic dismantling of American idealism, the questions that he raises certainly finds resonance in the countless democratic struggles against concentrated wealth and power in lands spread out across the globe, India included. Economic inequality, more than ever, is at the heart of the agonies of a majority populace embattled on all fronts, and their suffering made more acute by what Chomsky delineates as the ten principles of the concentration of wealth and power, principles articulated by the self interests of Adam Smith‘s minuscule minority, the “masters of mankind” following the vile maxim of “all for ourselves and nothing for anyone else.” These principles are: 1. Reduce Democracy, 2. Shape Ideology, 3. Redesign the Economy, 4. Shift the Burden, 5. Attack Solidarity, 6. Run the Regulators, 7. Engineer Elections, 8. Keep the Rabble in Line, 9. Manufacture Consent, 10. Marginalize the Population. Read More…

Ibn Khaldūn: 14th C foundations of Sociology, Historiography and Economics

My first brush with the north African philosopher-thinker of the ‘Middle Ages’, Ibn Khaldūn, was at the Universidad de Sevilla in España, intrigued as I have always been, with the circumstances and the contexts of the rise and fall of civilizations. With Andalusian and Yemenite Arab roots, Ibn Khaldūn was ‘Tunisian’ by birth, and his extensive and ground breaking work out of north Africa during the ‘Middle Ages’ was discovered by the occident much later. This belated discovery could probably be partially attributed to barriers of language, along with, I suppose, a degree of disdain and intellectual suspicion of that which is non-occidental. Having said that, it is only in retrospect that we can appreciate Ibn Khaldūn’s remarkable contributions to the foundations of a scientific study of society and civilization. Read More…

 Scroll to top