General – FightBack

New research into ethics and class: the rich are more likely to cut you off while driving and take candy from children

April 14, 2012 by Admin

Kelly Pope, Workers Party, Christchurch

With increasing industrial and social action against inequality taking place around the world, one outcome has been a shift in the focus of research towards the issues these movements and campaigns are highlighting. For example, in psychology and ethics there has been a recent emphasis on exploring the relationship between wealth distribution or class and a range of behaviours and dispositions that are considered pro-social and ethical, or anti-social and immoral.

Research that has recently featured in the media found that employers are four times as likely as the general population to have anti-social personality disorder, the condition experienced by people often referred to as psychopaths, which is characterised by impulsivity, manipulative behaviour and the inability to empathise with others. Looking more deeply into the relationship between socio-economic class and anti-social behaviour, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley have carried out a series of studies, all of which have shown unethical behaviour to be more prevalent in the upper classes. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Marxism

Zizek: What to make of the political Elvis (Wellington event)

March 30, 2012 by Admin

“[Zizek uses] a dizzying array of wildly entertaining and often quite maddening rhetorical strategies are deployed in order to beguile, browbeat, dumbfound, dazzle, confuse, mislead, overwhelm, and generally subdue the reader into acceptance.” Edward R. O’Neill

Slavoj Zizek is one of the worlds most well-known and controversial philosophers.
As a Marxist theoretical thinker, he refuses to be easily labelled and categorised.
And yet Zizek is full of contradictions. He can be infuriatingly vague, suddenly putting his complex subject into a relatively simple and easily understandable phrase, often chucking in some pop cultural example to make his point and explain himself. Few people label themselves as Zizekians, due in part to the constant zig-zagging of his political framework. Yet he has a huge following, matched maybe, only by Noam Chomsky.
Come along for a discussion of Zizek’s ideas, the place of Zizek in radical social change and the myriad of discussions that stem from him.

5-7pm Monday
SU219, Student Union Building, Victoria University

Filed Under: Events

Spark Discussion Group: a space for radical ideas

March 26, 2012 by Admin

5pm, Mondays
SU219 Student Union Building
Victoria University of Wellington

Filed Under: Events

Auckland event: Rally to Save Our Port

March 9, 2012 by Admin

Join us to rally to Save Our Port and stand up for job security for the port workers and their families and for a publically owned sustainable and successful port.

This is an issue for all of us – casualisation is not good for workers or their families. This is a growing story of working in New Zealand – even when workers already offer a lot of flexibility, they are expected to give more, and often to give up any hope of a structured and healthy life.

Support the port workers, meet at Britomart at 4pm, Saturday 10th March. Entertainment and speeches at Teal Park to follow.

Background:
SaveOurPort.com
Interview with Maritime Union National President Garry Parsloe
Why wharfies are striking – in their own words