I remember Hudson writing some UBI type thing ten years ago.
Just to point out, Hudson has literally called UBI a far right, neoliberal, Milton Friedman-esque platform.
Hudson is a co-founder of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and the MMT people are relentless in the critique of UBI (and rightly so), and promote Federal Jobs Guarantee as the solution forward.
Literally the very first sentence from the abstract of Hudson’s paper that Mason was critiquing:
Marx and many of his less radical contemporary reformers saw the historical role of industrial capitalism as being to clear away the legacy of feudalism—the landlords, bankers, and monopolists extracting economic rent without producing real value. However, that reform movement failed.
I think Mason misunderstood what Hudson was talking about here. Monopolists are indeed extracting economic rent without producing real value.
Mason’s critique is fair to read, but misses the mark, by a very long shot.
Hudson was talking about the financial capital takeover of industries i.e. the financialization of industries, as opposed to Marx’s predicted industrialization of finance.
This is the paper from Hudson (2021) that Mason was responding to: Finance Capitalism versus Industrial Capitalism: The Rentier Resurgence and Takeover
The very first sentence of the abstract reads:
Marx and many of his less radical contemporary reformers saw the historical role of industrial capitalism as being to clear away the legacy of feudalism—the landlords, bankers, and monopolists extracting economic rent without producing real value. However, that reform movement failed.
Mason argued that Amazon, Walmart etc. are still “industries” and as such should be counted as industrial capital. But this is not what Hudson was talking about - Hudson meant the financialization of these industries leading to monopolists extracting economic rent (for example, the high inflation from 2022 was in part caused by monopolists raising prices, claiming an anticipation in energy cost increase).
A prime example is Boeing. Is Boeing an industry? Of course, it is still the world’s leading aviation manufacturer, but the top management has since been taken over by Wall Street bankers, whose direction focuses on stock market performance, share buybacks and handing out dividends to shareholders. This management style that incessantly pursues quarterly profit inevitably leads to reckless cost-cutting and mass layoffs to pay off their shareholders. The 737 MAX scandal - which almost never occurred in Boeing’s history - was a direct consequence of such financialization process.
Another example was Intel’s mass layoff in 2022 even when receiving billions of handout from the CHIPS Act:
Indeed, when Vermont senator Bernie Sanders attempted to attach conditions to those subsidies — including a ban on stock buybacks, a cap on executive pay, a government equity stake, and union neutrality provisions — he was thwarted by Democratic leaders.
At the time, Democrats blocking Sanders’s initiative were bolstered by Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, who insisted that if the legislation did not pass immediately, the company could move factories overseas and hold up already-planned investments.
When lawmakers ultimately passed the bill in July, Intel abruptly began changing its rhetoric about new domestic investments: That very same day, the company announced it was cutting back on capital spending by billions of dollars, but still intended to issue a “strong and growing dividend” for shareholders.
Mason critique missed the fact that the vast majority of American industries has been financialized to such an extent that nearly 90% of corporate income is spent on share buybacks rather than investing in capital expenditure (means of production). The financial capitalists don’t care - like parasites, once the host has been sucked dry, they will simply hop on to the next industry to feed from.
Anti-colonial struggle is universal. It has taken place all over the world and by no means limited to Islam or the Palestinians.
Islam does play a role in the formation of the political movement in Palestine. However, the idea that religion drives anti-colonial movement and infuses them with some “special” property is nonsense.
National liberation movement has always taken on a form that is deeply influenced by its local culture and shared values among its people. This is not unique to the struggle of the Palestinian people.
Of course he’s a liberal lol. In fact, only Western liberals take him seriously.
Here, watch a clip of Dugin sharing the same round table with Anthony Blinken: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kA5a8naNhC8