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  • Monthly Review Essays

About Jason Hickel

Dr. Jason Hickel is an anthropologist, author, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He has taught at the London School of Economics, the University of Virginia, and Goldsmiths, University of London, where he convenes the MA in Anthropology and Cultural Politics. He serves on the Labour Party task force on international development, works as Policy Director for /The Rules collective, sits on the Executive Board of Academics Stand Against Poverty (ASAP) and recently joined the International Editorial Advisory Board of Third World Quarterly.
  • Africa Remains at the Center of a 21st Century Cold War

    Plundering Africa–Income deflation and unequal ecological exchange under structural adjustment programmes

    Originally published: ROAPE (Review of African Political Economy) on February 28, 2025 by Dylan Sullivan (more by ROAPE (Review of African Political Economy))  |

    Presenting new research, Dylan Sullivan and Jason Hickel mount a devastating critique of the impact of structural adjustment in Africa in the 1980s and 1990s. Drawing on recent data on Africa’s material resource use, Sullivan and Hickel show how during this period structural adjustment programmes led to a significant increase in ‘unequal ecological exchange’, a process whereby African countries were compelled to export more materials, energy, and other resources than they received in imports. The difference between the two, Sullivan and Hickel argue, represented a transfer of real tangible materials from Africa to the capitalist world economy, for free.

  • Tank

    Capitalism is the single greatest source of violence

    Originally published: Pearls and Irritations on April 23, 2024 (more by Pearls and Irritations)

    What the present moment reveals, once again, is that Western aggression during the “Cold War” was never about destroying socialism, as such. It was about destroying movements and governments in the periphery that sought economic sovereignty. Why? Because economic sovereignty in the periphery threatens capital accumulation in the core.

  • Plastics of all shapes, sizes, colors and composition enter the ocean every day, with largely unknown impacts. Studying these environmental impacts outside the lab and in the ocean is challenging. Image by Florida Sea Grant via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 DEED).

    How popular are post-growth and post-capitalist ideas? Some recent data

    Originally published: Jason Hickel Blog on November 24, 2023 (more by Jason Hickel Blog)

    Here is a list of studies, surveys and polling results that shed some light on popular perceptions of post-growth and post-capitalist ideas.

  • One, two, … many Green New Deals: an ecosocialist roundtable | MR Online

    The double objective of Democratic ecosocialism

    Originally published: ZNetwork on August 21, 2023 by Steve Grumbine (more by ZNetwork)  |

    The title of this week’s episode is taken from an article to be published in September’s Monthly Review. The author, Jason Hickel, talks to Steve about the topic in his third visit to the podcast.

  • 'Public services are a common good,' reads a placard on the March 22 protest in Paris over cuts, labour rights and privatisation. Photo: Twitter/@commeunbruit

    Universal public services: The power of decommodifying survival

    Originally published: Jason Hickel Blog on April 11, 2023 (more by Jason Hickel Blog)

    One of the central insights emerging from research on degrowth and climate mitigation is that universal public services are crucial to a just and effective transition.

  • As Myanmar experiences more extreme weather events, a roadmap that lays the context, analysis, and options on how to tackle climate change is highly essential, 2016

    Existing climate mitigation scenarios perpetuate colonial inequalities

    Originally published: The Lancet on July 20, 2022 by Aljosa Slamersak (more by The Lancet)

    The core countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the rest of Europe (collectively referred to here as the Global North) use on average about 130 gigajoules of energy per capita each year, nearly ten times more than what low-income countries use (13·4 GJ/capita).

  • Protesters carry placards as they demonstrate as part of a global day of action on climate change outside parliament in Cape Town, South Africa, September 25, 2020 [Mike Hutchings/Reuters]

    The Global South has the power to force radical climate action

    Originally published: Al Jazeera on June 29, 2022 (more by Al Jazeera)

    After all, Western economies–and their economic growth–depend utterly on labour and resources from the South.

  • The Age of Imperialism is Not Over—But We Can End It

    The age of imperialism is not over—but we can end it

    Originally published: Current Affairs on December 5, 2021 (more by Current Affairs)  |

    Capitalist accumulation has always depended on cheap labor and resources extracted from the Global South. To end this violence we need a post-capitalist transition—otherwise, as climate breakdown accelerates, the ceaseless search for profit will drive us further into barbarism.

  • - Wikimedia Commons File:Simple surplus value model.svg

    Is the world poor, or unjust?

    Originally published: Jason Hickel Blog on February 21, 2021 (more by Jason Hickel Blog)

    Social media has been ablaze with this question recently. We know we face a crisis of mass poverty: the global economy is organized in such a way that nearly 60% of humanity is left unable to meet basic needs. But the question at stake this time is different.

  • Green New Deal (Photo: Bart Everson)

    A response to Pollin and Chomsky: We need a Green New Deal without growth

    Originally published: Jason Hickel Blog on November 2, 2020 (more by Jason Hickel Blog)

    Robert Pollin and Noam Chomsky have a new book out, Climate Crisis and the Green New Deal. It’s an important contribution to the emerging GND literature, from two thinkers I respect.

  • GDP - raw materials

    A response to McAfee: No, the “Environmental Kuznets Curve” won’t save us

    Originally published: Jason Hickel on October 9, 2020 (more by Jason Hickel)

    A number of people have asked me to respond to a piece that Andrew McAfee wrote for Wired, promoting his book, which claims that rich countries – and specifically the United States – have accomplished the miracle of “green growth” and “dematerialization”, absolutely decoupling GDP from resource use.

  • APARTHEID IN THE GLOBAL GOVERNANCE SYSTEM

    Apartheid in the global governance system

    Originally published: Jason Hickel on October 16, 2019 (more by Jason Hickel)

    In my research I have argued that rising global inequality is driven in large part by power imbalances in the global economy, in that rich countries have disproportionate influence when it comes to setting the rules of international trade and finance.

  • A response to Noah Smith about global poverty

    Originally published: Jason Hickel Blog on June 14, 2019 (more by Jason Hickel Blog)

    During the debate about the global poverty numbers that unfolded earlier this year, the Bloomberg opinion columnist Noah Smith wrote a piece discussing some of my claims. In the months since a number of people have asked me to respond.

  • Economic Growth

    Degrowth: a theory of radical abundance

    Originally published: Real-World Economics Review on March 2019 (Issue no. 87) (more by Real-World Economics Review)

    Degrowth seeks to invert the Lauderdale Paradox. By calling for a fairer distribution of existing resources and the expansion of public goods, degrowth demands not scarcity but ratherabundance (see Sahlins, 1976; Galbraith, 1998; Latouche, 2014; D’Alisa et al., 2014).

  • democracy chronicles Income Inequality Thomas Nast Style | by democracychronicles

    Inequality metrics and the question of power

    Originally published: Jason Hickel Blog on July 3, 2019 (more by Jason Hickel Blog)

    How should we measure inequality?

  • Income inequality has been growing for decades and Americans are ... LSE Blogs

    How not to measure inequality

    Originally published: Jason Hickel Blog on May 15, 2019 (more by Jason Hickel Blog)

    When we look at inequality from the perspective of the poor – using the theory of increasing egregiousness – it becomes clear that the relative metric is inappropriate as a tool for assessing distribution. Certainly if our objective is to end poverty, this is the conclusion we must draw, as an additional dollar going needlessly to the rich could have been used to reduce poverty, and yet was not.

  • Inequality and the ecological transition

    Originally published: Jason Hickel Blog on January 14, 2019 (more by Jason Hickel Blog)

    Last month Branko Milanovic published a blog post about the Yellow Vest movement against the fuel tax in France. He was worried–like many analysts–that the uprising proves it will be virtually impossible to roll out the policies necessary to reduce carbon emissions. He’s convinced that people simply won’t accept it.

  • NEW HAVEN, CT - OCTOBER 08: Yale Professor William Nordhaus attends a press conference after winning the 2018 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences at Yale University on October 8, 2018 in New Haven, Connecticut. Professor Nordhaus' research has been focused on the economics of climate change, economic growth, and natural resources. (Photo by Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Getty Images)

    The Nobel Prize for climate catastrophe

    Originally published: Foreign Policy on December 6, 2018 (more by Foreign Policy)  |

    The economist William Nordhaus will receive his profession’s highest honor for research on global warming that’s been hugely influential—and entirely misguided.

  • Prosperity or Plunder? Nigeria Slipping at an Oily Crossroads

    Jason Hickel

    “Disaster” doesn’t begin to describe the troubled oil scene in Nigeria.  Last June, in the immediate wake of the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the New York Times ran an article exposing a crisis in Nigeria that should have been capable of piquing the conscience of even the most hardened oil barons.  It […]

  • Rethinking Jeffrey Sachs and the “Big Five”: New Proposals for the End of Poverty

    Jason Hickel

    Jeffrey Sachs has become something of a force in international development circles over the past decade.  As special advisor to the UN’s Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, former director of the UN’s Millennium Development Project, and a decorated economist at Columbia University, Sachs certainly has much to brag about.  The publication of his runaway bestseller, The […]

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Also By Jason Hickel in Monthly Review Magazine

  • The Double Objective of Democratic Ecosocialism September 01, 2023
  • On Technology and Degrowth July 01, 2023
  • Capitalism, Global Poverty, and the Case for Democratic Socialism July 01, 2023

Monthly Review Essays

  • US Imperialism in Crisis: Opportunities and Challenges to a Global Community with a Shared Future
    Sam-Kee Cheng A late 1940s Soviet poster showing a US military service member lounging on top of a German factory, smoking a cigar. The text beneath reads DER DOLLARIMPERIALISMUS [dollar imperialism].

    1. Introduction The predominance of US economic, political and military power in the world was established at the end of the Second World War.1 With just 6.3 percent of global population, the United States held about 50 percent of the world wealth in 1948. As the only power which had used nuclear weapons on civilian […]

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    Our job is to make media reform part of our broader struggle for democracy, social justice, and, dare we say it, socialism.

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