Reviews & Culture
Monsters vs. Zombies: Review of Phil Mullan’s Creative Destruction
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Reviews & Culture
Phil Mullan, Creative Destruction: How to Start an Economic Renaissance, Bristol, UK and Chicago: Policy Press, 2017.
by Barry Curtis
Phil Mullan, business manager and chief economist at the magazine spiked-online, is, by his own admission, ‘obsessed with economic growth.’ This goal, alongside others, is precious to many people. Mullan makes his case that we are currently living through a ‘Long Depression’ that began with the economic downturn in the 1970s. The rate of expansion of Gross Domestic Product in Western nations has shrunk in relation to the levels of the post-war boom. Consequently, rises in living standards, which Mullan the humanist cares about, are held back. Appearances of dynamism in things like the stock market are essentially parasitic upon the real, productive economy where value is created. If that is seizing up, then finance is just another bubble like the dot-com bubble waiting to burst. Another Crash like 2008 is imminent in the context of the persisting Long Depression. The escape from the protracted depression, says Mullan, lies in increasing productivity, for which it is essential to demolish zombification trends. Read More
Bull Fight on Wall Street
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Reviews & Culture
by A. J.
New York is abuzz about the recently installed “Fearless Girl” statue now confronting the massive, bronze “Charging Bull” statue in the heart of Wall Street. The petite girl holds a defiant stance as she stares down the big, brutish symbol of a rising stock market.
The girl was put there temporarily, but many women and girls want her to remain permanently. The creator of the bull, Arturo Di Modica, demands the girl be removed, claiming that she infringes on his sculpture.
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Londoners Protest to Shut Down LD50 Gallery, Sponsor of “Alt-Right” Exhibits and Talks
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Reviews & Culture
by Apollo and E. A.
We attended a “Shut Down LD50” picket called by Hackney Stand Up to Racism in Dalston, an inner city suburb of London, on Feb, 25. The campaign was aimed at calling attention to the backstreet LD50 Gallery that had held a series of “alt-right” exhibitions and talks on its premises over a week last year. Around 250-300 people–both locals and political groups–turned up to protest the art gallery at short notice on a chilly Saturday morning. The event was organised through social media.
Hackney Stand Up to Racism was asking the local council to shut down the gallery.
photo by MHI
The gallery has usually put on uncontroversial exhibitions–the exception being one by former Turner Prize nominees Jake and Dino Chapman–but this was the first exhibit dedicated to so-called “alt-right” themes of economics, genetics and immigration. The talks and discussions only recently caused considerable local alarm, as they seem to have been kept very low key until late last year. Some participants even claim they were duped into attending under false pretences. This brought into question owner Lucia Diego`s claims on local radio that the gallery wanted to start an artistic debate. Read More
