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Archive | 2020

Berlin Bulletin by Victor Grossman

Mirror mirror and politics

“Mirror, mirror on the wall…” Nearly every German knows the story of Snow White. Currently, the question of who is “fairest of them all” faces nearly every German political party or, in modern terms, who can attract more votes in next year’s election.

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2019 Lebanese protests - Beirut (Wikimedia Commons)

Lebanese portents

Its two major sources of foreign exchange, tourism and remittances from the Gulf and elsewhere, have virtually dried up owing to the pandemic, causing its currency to depreciate massively, its external debt to be impossible to service, and its ability to import essential commodities which are the lifeline of the population to be severely curtailed.

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Burning the throne of King Louis Philippe: Paris, 25 February 1848.

1848: Marx’s school of revolution

The revolutionary wave of 1848 began with a joyous struggle for democracy. But it ended with violent struggles between workers and capitalists, liberals and socialists, revolutionaries and reformers. The experience was a decisive influence on the development of Marx’s theory of revolution.

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GDP - wages

To the victor belong the spoils

The phrase, which was used in the early nineteenth century to describe the the spoils system of appointing government workers, accurately describes the American economy today.* And it’s pretty clear who the victor is, and it’s not the working-class. Instead, a small group at the top have come out as the victor—and that’s been true […]

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Roadblock Bolivia

Bolivia’s right-wing coup government is facing resistance

On 28 July, tens of thousands took to the streets of El Alto, the predominantly working-class and Indigenous city that overlooks La Paz, in a mobilisation called by the Bolivian Workers Centre (Central Obrera Boliviana, or COB), the country’s chief trade union federation, together with other worker, peasant and Indigenous organisations (gathered under the title […]

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"You can't have capitalism without racism." Source: Peter James Hudson on “The African Origins of Racial Capitalism.”

You can’t understand capitalism without race

The centrality of race in the devilment of capitalism continues to be resisted by “the sort of hardline, orthodox folks who only look at class, alongside the sort of liberals and so-called racial multiculturals who have the misconception that race no longer matters,” said Charisse Burden-Stelly, professor of Africana Studies and Political Science at Carleton College.

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