On every scale, from the smallest cells to the entire planet, the essential elements of life are constantly used and re-used. Biogeochemical cycles are the basis of the biosphere.
Archive | Commentary
Monthly Review Magazine
A new Marxian century
It’s not just that Marx’s ideas remain relevant — we’re also in the midst of a great new age of Marxian thought.
Karl Marx: ‘ruthless criticism of all that exists’
Two hundred years after Marx’s birth, the challenge is to reinterpret the world using his mode of thought and his method and in the process, critique the old interpretations which we have inherited.
Marx was born on this day–May 5
Karl Marx was born, two centuries ago, on this day–May 5. In today’s world, it’s impossible to ignore Marx, the greatest proletarian revolutionary.
Jill Stein breaks the silence on being a Russiagate target
Former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein has turned in her campaign materials to the Senate Intelligence Committee, and warns that Russiagate is being used to silent dissent.
Dossier 3: Syria’s bloody and unforgiving war
Syria enters its eighth year of a bloody and unforgiving war. The death toll is catastrophic. After the number reached 200,000, the United Nations stopped keeping count.
Anti-materialism, capitalism, and violence against the human body: some preliminary comments
There are two kinds of on-going ‘attack’ on the materiality of the body (and nature) in capitalist society. A discursive attack inspired by post-structuralism; and an actual, objectively-existing, material attack by capital and its state. The latter is the focus of this article.
Dossier 2: Cities without water
Water is a class issue. Its distribution has never been equitable. What the residents of Cape Town will struggle with is what more than one billion residents of informal settlements across the planet deal with each day.
Five revolutions: how bacteria created the biosphere and caused the first climate crisis
“Life is the mode of existence of protein bodies, the essential element of which consists in continual metabolic interchange with the natural environment outside them.”
When they occupied the land
The reason for the swift fall of Afrin was not because fighters fled, as rumored in racist anti-Kurdish circles, but because an the army of takfiris (Turkish mercenaries) advancing under the cover of Turkish bombers and some 37,000 ground troops.
From Afrin: resisting neo-fascists and the need to return to Syria
There is an indisputable righteousness in the resistance of the region’s Kurds, who are fighting in defense of their lands.
Mao’s legacy defended, and famous swim decoded, for clueless academics
In late 1965 the rumblings of the Cultural Revolution had begun, due to grumblings over corruption, revisionism (“taking the capitalist road,” selling out socialism, etc.) and the snooty technocratism of urbanites. The party, led by Mao, saw these trends as threats to the common good, the revolution, and the Party’s “Heavenly Mandate” – the millennia-old […]
Lies, damned lies, and neocolonialism
If we don’t start challenging neoliberal hegemony soon, the non-West will eventually have little choice but to challenge it for themselves.
History notes: A scrap book of words and actions
A compilation of relevant historical notes reflecting upon the bombing of Syria on April 13, 2018 by the United States, United Kingdom, and France.
Exploitation and super-exploitation
Extreme rates of exploitation in the Global South is a palpable, directly observable fact. We don’t need a theory to know this but we do need a theory if we are to understand what we can see and work out the consequences that flow from it.
Willetts the conqueror (part 5): knowledge exchange
In addition to subsumption of teaching and research, the third mission of neoliberal marketisation has been termed, “knowledge exchange.” The introduction of this mission represents not only a fundamental attack on the academic profession, but also a desperate attempt to marshal the knowledge-producing powers of universities to kick-start a stagnating post-crisis global economy.
Recast(e)ing the model minority: Behind right wing Hindu politics in the U.S.
Indian Americans’ susceptibility to conservative politics in the U.S. is itself a contradictory affair—on the one hand they have largely voted Democrat, but have publicly remained ambivalent about racial politics in the country. One key element of this ambivalence is the question of affirmative action and meritocracy.
China’s rise threatens U.S. imperialism, not American people
That China and the U.S. are moving in opposite directions is not a new trend, but it has been brought into sharper focus in the Trump era. Growing anxious about its diminishing international authority, the U.S. demonstrates increasing hostility towards China.
Easter march for peace
What were these indefatigable protesters demanding this time, here in Berlin and at rainy meetings, marches and bicycle parades during the long Easter weekend in over a hundred cities and towns all over Germany?
“We did not feel we belonged to the same Europe as them”
Given the context of Ernaux’s book, which traces different instances of French and world political history over the span of 66 years, one can clearly infer that the “we” of this passage refers to French people and, by extension, Western Europeans as a larger group. As a Macedonian, I am inclined to think that I […]
