Abstract The collapse of the European socialist block at the end of the 1980s caused a deep crisis in the Cuban economy. One of the distinctive features of the process of adjustment and reform of the Cuban economy carried out by the government was that even during the worst period of the crisis, the Revolution’s […]
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Monthly Review Magazine
The Auto Crisis: Putting Our Own Alternative on the Table
Deep economic crises violently interrupt daily lives and force more radical responses onto the public agenda. In the case of the North American auto industry, however, that radicalism has been remarkably one-sided. Absent an alternative of their own, workers were (and remain) trapped by their dependency on “their” corporations becoming stronger. On the one hand, […]
The Sugar Curtain: Chronicle of Generational Disillusionment
El telón de azúcar (The Sugar Curtain) was the winner of the Premio Coral for the best documentary at the 29th International Festival of New Latin American Cinema in Havana in 2007. — Ed. In The Sugar Curtain, the Paradise of the Cuban Revolution Is Put in Crisis The daughter of a Chilean documentary […]
Turkey and the Obama Visit: “He Gave Me Water!”
Obama did what was expected, dispensing good luck charms for all. What he left behind is a state of delirium, a la the Hunchback of Notre Dame: “He gave me water.” Even though some of Obama’s gestures during the visit — such as Obama reminding the young people he was chatting with of the […]
Egypt and Israel: The Enemy of My Enemy Is My Friend
Jamal Dajani: A war of words between the Egyptian government and the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah has escalated after Egypt’s public prosecutor recently ordered 49 people held for plotting attacks on behalf of Hezbollah be kept in custody for an additional 15 days. The 49 suspects include Egyptians, Palestinians, and Lebanese. They were reportedly arrested […]
Eduardo Galeano: The Open Eyes of Latin America
Very few writers maintain total indifference toward the ethics of their work. Those who have thought that in the practice of literature it is possible to separate ethics from aesthetics, however, are not so few. Jorge Luis Borges, not without mastery, practiced a kind of politics of aesthetic neutrality, perhaps convinced of its possibility. Thus, […]
Thailand: Red Shirts Shut Down the ASEAN Summit
In Pattaya, Thailand on Friday, demonstrators — members of the National United Front of Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD), aka Red Shirts — broke the police cordon around the hotel where the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) Summit was to be held, demanding the resignation of the illegitimate government. The Thai government responded by declaring […]
Venezuela: The Coup of 11 April 2002, in Images
VTV’s “La Hojilla” program’s production team republished the images of the coup d’état of 11 April 2002, which kidnapped President Hugo Chávez and trampled on the Constitution and the rights of the Venezuelan people for 48 hours. After seven years, now that justice is beginning to be done in the cases of the massacre […]
Take Back the Land: Interview with Max Rameau
CNN, 6 December 2008 Max Rameau, community activist and founding member of Take Back the Land: We only move families into government-owned homes or bank-owned foreclosures, not into places that are owned by individuals. . . . Looking at it from the taxpayer’s point of view, these banks are getting billions of dollars, literally billions […]
The Case against Shell
Dear CCR Supporter, On May 26, 2009, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), co-counsel EarthRights International (ERI), and other human rights attorneys will bring oil giant Shell to federal court in New York for the start of a landmark trial for corporate accountability. CCR is pleased to make two exciting announcements as we draw nearer […]
Arab Students Marginalized by Israeli Universities
Obstacles to Israel’s Arab minority participating in higher education have resulted in a record number of Arab students taking up places at universities in neighboring Jordan, a new report reveals. Figures compiled by Dirasat, a Nazareth-based organization monitoring education issues, show 5,400 Arab students from Israel are at Jordanian universities — half the number of […]
A “People First” Strategy: Credit Cannot Flow When There Are No Creditworthy Borrowers or Profitable Projects
In 1930, John Maynard Keynes wrote: “The world has been slow to realise that we are living this year in the shadow of one of the greatest economic catastrophes of modern history.” Today, as then, we are in the shadow of catastrophe. Today, as then, our thinking is slow. We need to come to grips […]
Demonstration in Baghdad against US Occupation
Thousands of supporters of Shi’i leader Muqtada al-Sadr demonstrated in Baghdad to demand an end to the “US occupation,” on the sixth anniversary of the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime. From early morning, a multitude of youths, waving Iraqi flags and upholding portraits of Muqtada al-Sadr, assembled, despite the relentless rain, in Firdos Square, where, […]
Deconstructing Labor: What Is “New” in Contemporary Capitalism and Economic Policies: a Marxian-Kaleckian Perspective
Paper presented at the Congrès Marx International V, Paris-Sorbonne et Nanterre, October 2007 1. Introduction About a decade ago the radical left, both in Italy and elsewhere in Europe, had been gripped by an understanding of contemporary capitalism as based on a three-pronged tendency: ‘globalization’ as an already accomplished state, the ‘end of labor’ due […]
Which Side Are You On? Hakenmura and the Working Poor as a Tipping Point in Japanese Labor Politics
This article analyzes one of Japan’s most widely reported labor stories in recent years. The unusual degree of national attention given to this incident is evidence that the labor question has become a central issue in Japanese politics.1 It also offers insight into critical shifts in the landscape of both labor politics and labor […]
Wrestling with the Past
Sonya Huber. Opa Nobody. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2008. xvi + 358 pp. Illustrations. ISBN 978-0-8032-1080-6; $24.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8032-1080-6. In recent years, scholars have grappled with the specific manner in which recent generations of Germans and Austrians have confronted their own familial complicity in Nazism. The narratives revealed by these studies […]
Obama and the Banks
If we take a look at the recent self-described progressive US presidents (Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton), we will notice that their progressiveness invariably fades away, not even intentionally. That is because the beast compels them to align themselves with its own reality. Carter, who campaigned against the wage stagnation of the Nixon-Ford years, collapsed […]
Moldova in the Russian Media
Boris Kagarlitsky: “Moldovan Turmoil Grew Out of Unresolved Social Problems” Moldova Blames Romania for Riots Opposition Promises Larger Protests Violence Escalates in Moldovan Capital Mikhail Chernov: “Defeat of Moldovan Democracy” Kirill Koktysh: “Those Taking Part in Moldovan Protests Are Mainly Migrant Workers Who Had to Return Home amid the Financial Crisis” Aleksandr Fomenko: “Protest in […]
G20 and Inter-capitalist Conflicts
In the Financial Times of March 31st, Martin Wolf set down a straightforward criterion to evaluate the outcomes of the G20 meeting in London. Will they decide, he asked, to put forward a plan to shift world demand from the countries with a balance of payments deficit to those with a surplus? The underlying reasoning […]
China’s Way Forward? Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Hegemony and the World Economy in Crisis
2008 — Annus Horribilis for the world economy — produced successive food, energy, and financial crises, initially devastating particularly the global poor, but quickly extending to the commanding heights of the US and core economies and ushering in the sharpest downturn since the 1930s depression. As all nations strive to respond to the financial […]
