CAPITALIST SYSTEMIC POVERTY

GODFREE ROBERTS—Mao, a passionate developmentalist, had offered to travel to Washington in 1944 to talk with President Roosevelt, “China must develop. This can only be done by free enterprise. Chinese and American interests fit together, economically and politically. America need not fear that we will not be co-operative. We cannot risk any conflict”. Mao’s message never reached the President so, in 1949, he wrote Truman, then Eisenhower. Both ignored him.

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—”These are the people who’ve been pulling the wool over the eyes of the mainstream public and manipulating the masses into thinking, speaking, working, consuming, and voting in ways that serve the interests of the ruling power structure. In this way they are able to ensure that revolutionary opposition to that power structure remains a fringe minority position, even as that power structure wages wars, sponsors genocides, destroys the biosphere, and keeps everyone poor, sick, and stupid…”

JEFF J. BROWN—It’s too easy for people like Engdahl to think that China is just like the United States or Europe, and it’s not. The land is all people-owned. The banks are all people-owned. The insurance companies are all people-owned. Much of the large scale industry is all people-owned. So plus you have a much more honest, caring government that’s actually trying to help the people instead of trying to kill it [or bamboozle it]. It’s just also wrongheaded.

BRUCE LERRO—During World War II many European social psychologists fled Europe and contributed some of the best research on group dynamics. This included Asch’s experiment on conformity, and Sherif’s experiments on inter-group conflict. This was followed in the 60s by Moscovici’s study on the power of minorities to influence majorities and Milgram’s great experiment on obedience.