Read more
From market crisis to market boom, from welfare to wealth care, from homelessness to helplessness, and an all-out assault on the global environment-these are just some of the indecencies of contemporary economic life that Profit Pathology takes on. Here, Michael Parenti investigates how class power is a central force in our political life and, yet, is subjected to little critical discernment. He notes how big-moneyed interests shift the rules of the game in their favor while unveiling the long march by reactionaries through the nation's institutions to undo all the gains of social democracy, from the New Deal to the present. Parenti also traces the exploitative economic forces that have operated through much of American history, including the mass displacement and extermination of Native Americans and the enslavement of Africans. Parenti is a master at demonstrating the impact of monomaniacal profit accumulation on social services-especially health care-and human values. Here he takes us one step further, showing how unrestrained capitalism ultimately endangers itself, becoming a "self-devouring beast" that threatens us all. Finally, he calls for a solution based on democratic diversity and public ownership-"because it works."
List of contents
Part One: Class, Race, and Empire
Chapter 1 Thinking about the Great Class Divide
Chapter 2 Ethnicity and Exploitation: A Quick History of the Boiling Pot
Chapter 3 Empire in Extremis? Some Urgent Notations
Part Two: The Corporate Beast at Home
Chapter 4 A Case of Death and Profits
Chapter 5 Free Market Medicine: A Personal Account
Chapter 6 Free Market Medicine: More True Stories
Part Three: Cultural Aberrations and Other Oppressions
Chapter 7 Pedophiles, Popes, Priests, Preachers, and Papa
Chapter 8 Inequality: 85 Billionaires and the Poorer Half
Part Four: Global Rule and Ruin
Chapter 9 Capitalism, a Self-Devouring Beast
Chapter 10 Profit Pathology and Disposable Planet
Epilogue The Next Trip
About the author
Michael Parenti
Summary
A wide-ranging examination and takedown of a class power structure that perpetuates economic inequality and ravages social democracy
