All posts by sz szilu84
Hieronymus Bosch and the art of the death agony of feudalism
The art of the painter from the Netherlands, despite its anarchist and irrational features, is a true picture of the age of transition, the death agony of feudalism and the birth of capitalism. Immense changes characterised that time: the feudal order was falling apart and the bourgeoisie of the towns attacked the old order and demanded rights. His art is of a world torn by conflicting powers, from which reason was ousted, where animal spirits ruled, the world of force and terror, when reality became a nightmare. That is, a world quite similar to ours.
Original article: In Defence of Marxism (Thursday, 23 December 2010) Alan Woods: Hieronymus Bosch and the art of the death agony of feudalism. See at http://www.marxist.com/bosch-art-of-death-agony-of-feudalism.htm
Digital self-organisation – with limits
Internet based communities are examples of self-organisation. In many cases they overcome private ownership and commodity relations established between people. Nevertheless, their only partial anti-capitalism may serve the better operation of the system.
Health, health care and capitalism
According to the widespread interpretation of our days, the huge improvement concerning health affairs over the past 100-150 years is obviously an achievement of capitalism. In fact the relationship between capitalism and health conditions is rather contradictious thus the revolution in public health and later the establishment of universal social security systems often were realized against the active resistance of capitalists. Countries less developed according to capitalist standards or even non-capitalistic ones have also been able to achieve a dramatic improvement in extending life expectancies at relatively low costs. Capitalism is unable to actually solve the stubborn inequality – one of the fundamental reasons of health problems, furthermore is unwilling to raise this question. In the past decades, private capital interest became more and more determining in the operation of the health care system – having the result of increasing inequality in the access to and level of health care services.
The original article in the Socialist Register (Vol. 46), 2010 .
Liberation theology: its present state in Latin-America
The starting point of liberation theology is the situation of the oppressed. The God of love cannot exist there, where injustice, exploitation and war are present. Thus, it is such a theology that does not seek to answer whether God exists, rather where he exists. Fundamentals of its theoretical background and discourse are the reality of social struggle for justice and Christian commitment.