Stephen D. Shenfield | Author and Translator
The coronavirus, bats, and deforestation
- Published on 17 March 2020
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Coronaviruses are not a new phenomenon, nor were they discovered only recently. They were first studied in detail by scientists in the 1960s. The name comes from the ‘corona’ or ‘crown’ of sugary proteins that protrude from the envelope of the virus. Coronaviruses exist in numerous varieties and infect birds and mammals, including bats, pigs, cats, and humans.
Climate: up against the 'growth machine'
- Published on 28 September 2019
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This past week the climate crisis has been in the spotlight. Last Friday (September 20) was the first Global Climate Strike, with four million taking to the streets in 185 countries (reported figures vary). Protests continued over the weekend. On Sunday afternoon (September 22) our comrades in the World Socialist Party of India held a rally on College Square, Kolkata under the rousing slogan ‘Save the Planet, Share the Earth.’ Then on Monday (September 23) the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York opened with the eloquent appeal of 16-year-old Greta Thunberg.
Why the shortage of medical supplies?
- Published on 12 April 2020
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Introduction
One key feature of the coronavirus crisis is the grave shortages of medical supplies. Respiratory and surgical masks, gloves, gowns, and other personal protective equipment (PPE); ventilators, X-ray machines, and other medical devices; the various components of testing kits; even sedatives. The list goes on and on. Is there anything that is not in short supply?
Anyone under the influence of capitalist dogma regarding the wonders of the ‘free market’ must surely find these shortages surprising. After all, it is a much-celebrated virtue of this market that it balances supply and demand and satisfies consumer demand (true, only within the limits of what consumers can afford). Shortages are associated not with capitalism but with the sole recognized alternative of the pseudo-socialist Soviet-type ‘command economy.’
On yachts and tropical diseases
- Published on 16 August 2019
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Huge numbers are hard to visualize. A billion dollars, let’s say. That’s the sum you have to accumulate to get yourself listed as a billionaire in Forbes magazine and denounced by Bernie as a member of the ‘billionaire class.’
Start with a wad of twenty $100 banknotes. That makes $2,000. Then imagine a suitcase packed with 500 of those wads. That makes a million. Then imagine entering a big storeroom with 100 of those suitcases lined up on shelves. That still gives us only one tenth of a billion.
Or we can tackle the problem in another way. We can ask what can be done with a billion dollars. What can be bought with that much money? What can be achieved?
Waste and want: Grapes of Wrath revisited
- Published on 01 August 2010
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In his famous novel The Grapes of Wrath (Chapter 25), John Steinbeck described how food was destroyed during the Great Depression:
Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground.
The people come for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges… A million people hungry, needing the fruit – and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains.And the smell of rot fills the country.
Burn coffee for fuel in the ships… Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out [with nets]. Slaughter the pigs and bury them…
And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificates – died of malnutrition – because the food must be forced to rot.
