Archive | Commentary

While the framework of “vectoralism” proposed by McKenzie Wark in Capital is Dead: Is This Something Worse? proves inadequate for understanding contemporary political economy, the concept of value chains developed by Intan Suwandi (Value Chains: The New Economic Imperialism) offers a promising alternative.

In January 2020, as the Verizon settlement was being worked out, the city released the NYC Internet Master Plan, which declared: “The private market has failed to deliver the internet in a way that works for all New Yorkers.”

In German elections—like the coming ones, as always on a Sunday—all you have to do is present the registration paper mailed to every citizen, then make crosses on a paper  ballot. No trouble with the boss, no missing work, long lines or quarrels about fraud or discrimination.  It sounds easy.

Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research created the collages in this dossier based on archival photographs, inserting silhouettes of people and activities and breathing life back into the spaces of the Black Community Programmes of decades past.

It is a sign of just how serious matters have become—with the UN COP26 talks on climate in Glasgow this November now regarded by many as a last-ditch effort to achieve a global solution on behalf of humanity as a whole—that the early draft versions of Part II and Part III of the IPCC’s, ‘Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis’, were leaked during the summer.

The simple quietness in Leiva’s photography reveals his poetic contemplation while exposing the loss of visual honesty in an era of hyper imagery manipulation.

“The expropriation of the mass of the people from the soil forms the basis of the capitalist mode of production.” (Karl Marx)

Another leak of the UN report warns that the only known way to avert climate breakdown is to avoid any model which is based on perpetual growth.

The UN-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently released its latest comprehensive report on the state of the earth’s climate. The much-anticipated report dominated the headlines for a few days in early August, then quickly disappeared amidst the latest news from Afghanistan, the fourth wave of Covid-19 infections in the US, and all the latest political rumblings.

Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua all demonstrate what a society can do when it embraces a centralized system, people over profit, and solidarity. Not only are citizens protected, but the will to fight against threats like COVID-19 is all the stronger when nations are united behind a popular and radical project.

On Dec. 17, 2020, Deb Haaland was appointed by Joe Biden as Secretary of the Department of Interior (DOI). Celebratory headlines proclaimed it a “historic moment” and the identity politics-influenced left was quick to defend the appointment from questioning. Immediately, Haaland’s nomination was touted as a “victory for Indigenous movements.” As Indigenous and other colonized revolutionaries, we offer a materialist antidote to the narrow and superficial narrative that has been put forward by corporate, non-profit, and even, left-media sectors.

The U.S. has degenerated to such an extent that is probably one of the least democratic countries in the world. It is ruled by an extremely powerful and undemocratic billionaire class, buttressed by an entrenched bureaucracy and intelligence apparatus, and legitimized by an obsequious media which does not even pretend to be neutral.

Only “niggers” have the right to employ the example of George Floyd to fight oppression.   And, “there are no niggers in Cuba!”  So proclaimed someone who identified himself as a “nigger” to a group of us at George Floyd Square on Saturday afternoon, July 31.

Until 1989 that terrible Berlin Wall angered many an East German. The small part of Germany it helped preserve for 28 years was always the butt of anger, sarcasm, vituperation and resistance in one form or another.

“All progress in capitalist agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the worker, but of robbing the soil.” (Karl Marx)

One and a half years since the beginning of the pandemic in Brazil, it is possible to better evaluate some of its effects. The most visible immediate aspect of the pandemic has certainly been the sudden suspension of in-person activities and the temporary closure of schools and universities.

Diverse international groups along with the U.S. State Department have taken notice of Rodrigo Duterte’s record of killings and wanton defiance of universal norms of justice. Duterte’s regime might claim to honor the right to life, liberty, and security of persons guaranteed by the UN Declaration of Human Rights and other Covenants; but its practice consistently defiles those norms. Mass media and internet platforms cannot keep up with the regime’s punitive outrages.

The following essay examines the different reactions to radical and reactionary protest, and situates them in a broader historical context. In doing so, we find that the capitalist state will tolerate reactionary violence to a large extent since it represents no threat to capitalist property relations. In contrast, when faced with radical (and particularly socialist) movements capitalist states engage in much more severe repression.

This guide is designed to help understand the central ideas in Kohei Saito, Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism: Capital, Nature, and the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy. New York: Monthly Review, (2017)

On July 22, U.S. President Joe Biden and his Vice President Kamala Harris released a “fact sheet” on U.S. “measures” against Cuba. The release from the White House said that Cuba was a “top priority for the Biden-Harris administration.”