Originally appeared on Truthout.org on Janurary 30th, 2012 in their Tax Issue

Καθώς το κίνημα «Occupy» αναπτύσσεται, επιδιώκει λύσεις για τα οικονομικά και πολιτικά προβλή-ματα, τα εκθέτει και αντιτί&

ریچارد وُلف

Published in "il manifesto' on December 31, 2011

A meeting with the Marxist economist Richard Wolff, one of the inspirers of the movement: "It's the first time in thirty years that there emerges an organized left, wide-reaching and receiving popular consensus."

Pubblicato nel Manifesto, 31 dicembre, 2011.

Imagine a democratic alternative to police evictions of Occupy encampments across America's cities and towns. What if the decision to evict or not had been made by referendum? Voters could have determined whether to continue the long overdue public debates over inequality, injustice and capitalism that were launched and sustained above all by the Occupy encampments.

Over the weekend, Fitch -- the major rating company that, with its fellow majors, Moody's and Standard and Poor's, dominate the business of assessing the riskiness of debt instruments -- took a highly publicized step. It downgraded the credit-worthiness of the sovereign debts of many European countries. What a spectacle! These rating companies were distinguished by their laughably inaccurate (to be extremely polite) assessments of the risks associated with asset-backed securities. Those assessments contributed to the economic crisis we are living through.

Originally appeared in The Guardian's Comment is Free on December 12, 2011

Originally Appeared in the Occupy Harvard Crimson under the title "Occupy Production." Translated by Munich, Germany, ISW Institute.

As the Occupy movement keeps developing, it seeks solutions for the economic and political dysfunctions it exposes and opposes. For many, the capitalist economic system itself is the basic problem. They want change to another system, but not to the traditional socialist alternative (e.g., USSR or China). That system too seems to require basic change.