Tuesday, January 01, 2008

Bill Moyer's Crisis in Capitalism; Ben Barber asks "Global Consumer or Global Citizen?"; Naomi Klein's Brilliant History The Shock Doctrine

Crisis in Capitalism: Interview with Benjamin Barber
Bill Moyer's Journal



Benjamin R. Barber is a principal member of the Democracy Collaborative, with offices in New York, and Maryland.

In his latest book, CONSUMED: HOW MARKETS CORRUPT CHILDREN, INFANTILIZE ADULTS, AND SWALLOW CITIZENS WHOLE, Dr. Barber discusses the ways in which he believes American capitalism is undermining democracy. As he explains to Bill Moyers:

Capitalism has put democracy in trouble, because capitalism has tried to persuade us that being a private consumer is enough. That a citizen is nothing more than a consumer.

Benjamin Barber's over 17 books include the STRONG DEMOCRACY (1984) reissued in 2004 in a twentieth anniversary edition; the international best-seller JIHAD VS. MCWORLD (1995 with a Post 9/11 Edition in 2001, translated into twenty languages) and FEAR'S EMPIRE: WAR, TERRORISM AND DEMOCRACY (2003), also published in eight foreign editions. His collected American essays, A PASSION FOR DEMOCRACY, were published by Princeton University Press in 1999, and his book THE TRUTH OF POWER: INTELLECTUAL AFFAIRS IN THE CLINTON WHITE HOUSE was published in 2001 by W.W. Norton & Company.

He writes frequently for HARPER'S MAGAZINE, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WASHINGTON POST, THE ATLANTIC, THE NATION, LE NOUVEL OBSERVATEUR, DIE ZEIT, LA REPUBBLICA, EL PAIS and many other scholarly and popular publications in America and Europe. He was a founding editor and for ten years editor-in-chief of the distinguished international quarterly POLITICAL THEORY.

To Read/Watch this Interview

For more on Benjamin Barber:

Benjamin Barber: Global Citizen or Global Consumer?

Also check out Naomi Klein's views on "Disaster Capitalism" as put forth in her recent book "Shock Doctrine":

Collection of Video Interviews

I would like to state that Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. (Random House: 2007) was the best book of 2007 (more on this when I have more time)

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