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Capitalism , a six-part, 320 minute documentary epic, is a highly informative and refreshingly absorbable look at the economic system dominating our social and political lives. Directed by Ilan Ziv, the series spans over 500 years of history, and features commentary by the likes of David Graeber, Thomas Piketty, Michael Hudson, Kari Polanyi Levitt, and many others. It can be rented online, here . Like Marx’s Capital , it succeeds in putting capitalism in historical context - a history that does indeed come dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt . There is nothing permanent about Capitalism. Like all previous relations of production, it too contains progressive qualities alongside immense contradictions, leading to conflict and instability.

American anthropologist David Graeber was recently interviewed by Sasha Lilly on KPFA's Against the Grain . Graeber is the author of many books, including Debt: The First 5000 Years , and appears in the highly informative documentary series Capitalism , directed by Ilan Ziv. His insight into debt as the driving force behind the Spanish conquest of the Americas is a particularly interesting part of chapter 1 of the film. The key points in Graeber's interview are as follows. Humans did not live in small hunter-gatherer bands, and this has been known for a while. Hunter-gatherers lived in bands for perhaps part of the year, but changed their social structure quite often. They had different structures - patriarchal, micro cities, a strong state, hierarchical, egalitarian - for different times of year. Humans have "played around" with social structures for thousands of years. There is no linear development of human society (contrary to the popular theory put forwa

What, then, constitutes the alienation of labor? First, the fact that labor is external to the worker...that in his work he does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind. The worker therefore only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself. He is at home when he is not working, and when he is working he is not at home. His labor is therefore not voluntary, but coerced; it is forced labor. It is therefore not the satisfaction of a need; it is merely a means to satisfy needs external to it. Its alien character emerges clearly in the fact that as soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, labor is shunned like the plague. - Karl Marx, The Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 Some there are who live in darkness / While others live in light / We ser those who live in daylight / Those in darkness, out

There was a wall. It did not look important. It was built of uncut rocks roughly mortared. An adult could look right over it, and even a child could climb it. Where it crossed the roadway, instead of having a gate it degenerated into mere geometry, a line, an idea of boundary. But the idea was real. It was important. For seven generations there had been nothing in the world more important than that wall . - Ursula Le Guin, The Dispossessed   On June 3, a makeshift boat carrying African refugees bound for the Italian island of Lampedusa capsized off the coast of Tunisia, killing at least 50. Just 10 days later, a rescue vessel carrying over 600 refugees and immigrants was denied the right to dock in Italy and Malta, and had to make its way to Spain. So far in 2018, 660 immigrants have died crossing the Mediterranean. The massive refugee crisis unfolding around the world is at the center of Human Flow , a 2017 film directed by renowned artist and activist Ai Weiwei.

  “I have decided to keep a journal to set down all my thoughts and the simple events of my day,” writes a hunched man, sitting at a barren desk in a sparsely furnished room, kept company only by a bottle and small glass. “I will keep the diary for one year, and at the end of that time, it will be destroyed.” So begins the story of Rev. Ernst Toller (Ethan Hawke), a middle-aged pastor at the center of Paul Schrader’s searing new film First Reformed . Schrader, a longtime writer and director best known for writing Taxi Driver , uses Toller’s crisis of faith to explore some of our most important societal issues, including climate change, isolation and suicide. First Reformed also explores, if less overtly, who controls capitalist cultural and political institutions, and what we should do about it. Toller presides over a Dutch Reform church in upstate New York. Once a safe haven along the Underground Railroad, First Reformed is now little more than a gift shop, attracti