Category: Articles

The following articles explore many different topics related to class, capitalism, and redistribution.

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Accumulation vs. Redistribution

by Holmes Hummel

How does money pile up in the hands of a few?

My great-great-grandfathers accumulated wealth by claiming as their own the productivity of stolen land, captured people, and institutions organized by and for white Christian men. By contrast, the wealth inherited by my generation is accumulated today through investments in branded corporations that handle all the messy transactions of the global economy on “our behalf” as shareholders, paying dividends on the same types of systems that generated proceeds for my family’s lauded patriarchs.

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Buy One, Get One. Free.

by Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Debt is spelled with a silent ‘b’. (I mean to use the passive voice.) Debt is spelled with a silent ‘b’, an empty letter holding space next to unopened bills. Debt is spelled with a silent ‘be’. As in “be quiet, feign ignorance and master the timing of smiling and leaving.” But I learned this before I learned to spell.

My mother learned from my father that debt was the American way. A $9 trillion US deficit backs this lesson up. From letters dropped out of my mother’s mouth I learned that money was something we never had enough of, something we needed urgently. From cards dropped out of my father’s hands I learned that money was not real. From the hypocritical narrative of consumer capital I learned shame and silence. I learned that we were less than empty, that we were less than zero.

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