"There is no liberation without a revolutionary transformation of the class society. . ." Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 1970. We live in a careless society where authoritarianism masquerades as democracy (Wolin, 2008). Illegal wars, shameless lying and widespread ignorance fuel the country (Hedges, 2010). The Fourth Estate is in tatters and fear permeates the land (Bauman, 2006). Citizens even fear thinking itself! This is true, ironically, in schooling and higher education where appeasing the teacher and getting an "A" are predominate student concerns. Atomized students seek to outcompete their fellow classmates to serve those same corporate masters who are busy offshoring millions of jobs, leaving them in the lurch (Roberts, 2010). Foreclosures mount, unemployment rises and people are discarded as so much trash. Widespread mental illness, itself a byproduct of these developments (Shulman & Watkins 2010), erupts in the wildest of aberrations like the January 8, 2011 shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. As in other times of social crisis, like the 1930s and 1960s, concerns for truth are being swept aside by a capitalist culture gone mad (Lynd 1939, Baran & Sweezy, 1966). The financial meltdown of 2008 was actually predicted by people like financial journalist Gillian Tett in 2007 (see her account in the 2009 New York Times bestseller "Fool's Gold") and Michael Perelman, whose book title says it all: The Confiscation of American Prosperity, From Right Wing Extremism and Economic Ideology to the Next Great Depression (Perelman, 2007). But the message was not broadcast widely and few listened. Today the tragic story is updated in the searing bestselling narrative of Yves Smith, ECONned: How Unenlightened Self Interest Undermined Democracy and Corrupted Capitalism (Smith, 2010). This book should be required reading on all college campuses. But few students who enter college leave (and half leave before graduation) with any substantive knowledge about capitalism, the visibly invisible behemoth that shapes them (Robbins 2011). How to ignite them?
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