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  • Monthly Review Essays

About David Ruccio

David Ruccio (@Dfruccio) used to teach in the Department of Economics at the University of Notre Dame (until it was split and renamed) and then in the Department of Economics and Policy Studies (until it was dissolved). He is currently Professor of Economics “at large” as well as a member of the Higgins Labor Studies Program and Faculty Fellow of the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. Ruccio blogs at Occasional Links and Commentary on Economics Culture and Society and is a contributor to the Real-World Economics Review Blog.
  • The world according to Bloomberg

    The world according to Bloomberg

    Originally published: Occasional Links & Commentary on October 28, 2022 (more by Occasional Links & Commentary)

    The story currently being peddle by the folks at Bloomberg [ht: ja] is that the American middle-class is currently suffering, as the enormous wealth they managed to accumulate during the past few years is now dwindling. And that crisis—the end of their “once-in-a-generation wealth boom”—is what they will take into the midterm elections.

  • Jobsanger: CEOs Get Huge Raises While Workers Suffer

    Inflation, wages, and profits

    Originally published: Real-World Economics Review Blog on June 7, 2022 (more by Real-World Economics Review Blog)

    Inflation continues to run hot—and now, finally, the debate about inflation is heating up.

  • Inflation and the case of the missing profits

    Inflation and the case of the missing profits

    Originally published: Occasional Links & Commentary on April 14, 2022 (more by Occasional Links & Commentary)

    Everyone knows that inflation in the United States is increasing. Anyone who has read the news, or for that matter has gone shopping lately. Prices are rising at the fastest rate in decades. The Consumer Price Index rose 8.6 percent in March, which is the highest rate of increase since December 1981 (when it was 8.9 percent).

  • James Ensor, “The Intrigue” (1890)

    Folk economics

    Originally published: Occasional Links & Commentary on February 14, 2022 (more by Occasional Links & Commentary)

    Mainstream economists have, it seems, discovered the existence of economic ideas outside the official discipline of economics.

  • How to lie with inequality statistics (Photo: Occasional Links & Commentary)

    How to lie with inequality statistics

    Originally published: Occasional Links & Commentary on February , 2022 (more by Occasional Links & Commentary)

    It’s a “simple story,” with clear political implications. Maybe that’s the reason the Krugmans of the world don’t want to tell it. . .

  • Cornelia Mittendorfer, Double Alienation (2012)

    Ruthless criticism

    Originally published: Occasional Links & Commentary on October 22, 2020 (more by Occasional Links & Commentary)

    We can trace the development of Marx’s critique through a variety of texts—many of them now quite famous, even if they are rarely mentioned or discussed within economics. There, we can see Marx’s ideas developing and changing, until he began to work on his critique of political economy, finally presented in Capital.

  • Capitalism and workers’ power

    Capitalism and workers’ power

    Originally published: Occasional Links & Commentary on August 27, 2021 (more by Occasional Links & Commentary)

    You don’t have to read Marx to understand the lack of power workers have under capitalism.

  • Class conflict and economics

    Class conflict and economics

    Originally published: Occasional Links & Commentary on September 16, 2021 (more by Occasional Links & Commentary)

    A funny thing happened on the way to the recovery from the Pandemic Depression: class conflict is back at the core of economics.

  • Chart of the day December 17, 2020

    Chart of the day

    Originally published: Occasional Links & Commentary on December 17, 2020 (more by Occasional Links & Commentary)

    Both the number of initial unemployment claims for unemployment compensation and the number of continued claims for unemployment compensation are once again on the rise, signaling a worsening of the Pandemic Depression.

  • Toward a critique of political economy

    Toward a critique of political economy

    Originally published: Occasional Links & Commentary on December 7, 2020 (more by Occasional Links & Commentary)

    There is no necessary trajectory to Marx’s writings, no reason his earlier writings had to lead to or culminate in Capital. However, as we look back from the vantage point of his critique of political economy, we can see the ways his thinking changed and how the elements of that critique emerged.

  • Age of capital

    Age of capital

    Originally published: Occasional Links & Commentary on December 2, 2020 (more by Occasional Links & Commentary)

    It was during the “age of capital,” as the illustrious British historian Eric Hobsbawm aptly called it, that Marx formulated his critique of political economy.

  • Utopian Socialism (Illustration: Davidson W)

    Utopian socialism

    Originally published: Occasional Links & Commentary on November 18, 2020 (more by Occasional Links & Commentary)

    The third major influence on Marx’s critique of political economy (in addition to and combined with classical economics and Hegel’s philosophy) was utopian socialism.

  • Toward a critique of political economy: Hegel

    Toward a critique of political economy: Hegel

    Originally published: Occasional Links & Commentary on November 13, 2020 (more by Occasional Links & Commentary)

    It is difficult to fully understand the Marxian critique of political economy without some understanding of Hegel. No less an authority than Lenin wrote that “it is impossible completely to understand Marx’s Capital, and especially its first chapter, without having thoroughly studied and understood the whole of Hegel’s Logic.”

  • Cornelia Mittendorfer, Double Alienation (2012)

    Ruthless criticism

    Originally published: Occasional Links & Commentary on October 22, 2020 (more by Occasional Links & Commentary)

    But where did Marx’s critique of mainstream economics come from? It certainly did not emerge in one fell swoop, as a ready-made theory of capitalism. And it wasn’t produced in isolation, independently of the society within which it was first produced and then further elaborated.

  • Chart of the day

    Chart of the day

    Originally published: Occasional Links & Commentary on October 15, 2020 (more by Occasional Links & Commentary)

    U.S. billionaires have recouped all of their wealth—and more—during the Pandemic Depression. Meanwhile, since May, the number of poor Americans has grown by about 8 million.

  • James Sanborn, Adam Smith’s Spinning Top (1998)

    Mainstream economics then: classical political economy

    Originally published: Occasional Links & Commentary on October 14, 2020 (more by Occasional Links & Commentary)

    Marxian economists have been quite critical of contemporary mainstream economics. As we saw in Chapter 1, and will continue to explore in the remainder of this book, Marxian economists have challenged the general approach as well as all of the major conclusions of both neoclassical and Keynesian economics.

  • Limits of mainstream economics today

    Limits of mainstream economics today

    Originally published: Occasional Links & Commentary on October 12, 2020 (more by Occasional Links & Commentary)

    Keynes’s criticisms of neoclassical economics set off a wide-ranging debate that came to define the terms of—and, ultimately, the limits of debate within—mainstream economics.

  • Mainstream economics today: Keynesian

    Mainstream economics today: Keynesian

    Originally published: Occasional Links & Commentary on October 8, 2020 (more by Occasional Links & Commentary)

    Once it was created as a new theory of capitalism, neoclassical economics expanded its influence—in its original countries as well as elsewhere.

  • Milton Friedman - Performative economics

    Performative economics

    Originally published: Occasional Links & Commentary on October 7, 2020 (more by Occasional Links & Commentary)

    The relation between economic theories and economic systems is even more dynamic. The various economic theories of capitalism are not just different ways of making sense of that particular economic system. They emerge, develop, and change over time as capitalism itself changes—and, in turn, they have effects back on capitalism.

  • Mainstream economics today

    Mainstream economics today

    Originally published: Occasional Links & Commentary on October 5, 2020 (more by Occasional Links & Commentary)

    Readers today will be more familiar with contemporary mainstream economics than with the mainstream economics of Marx’s day. So, let’s start there.

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    Over 10,000 people died in transit to Spain in 2024 alone.[1] On June 2022, the border fence of Melilla, one of two Spanish enclaves in Morocco, was witness to a massacre that killed or disappeared over a hundred African migrants.[2]  A recent BBC investigation revealed that Greek border guards systematically repeal immigrants already on Greek […]

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