I gave this talk at a very good conference, New Deal/No Deal, at Berkeley’s Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, on October 29. The panel chair was Michael Reich, who was the main organizer of the conference along with Richard Walker of the geography department. The dual themes were reflecting on the New Deal […]
Archive | Commentary
Monthly Review Magazine
Freedom Restored: “We’ve Come to Take Our Country Back”
The Republican and Tea Party counter-revolution is on the march. Faced with a major voter rebellion against his hard socialist agenda yesterday, the Marxist-Leninist United States president Barack Obama has met with Tea Party icons Sarah Palin, Rand Paul, and Glenn Beck and “FreedomWorks” chief Dick Armey. Obama has agreed to significantly roll back the […]
U.S. Reverses Course and Designates Anti-Iranian Jundallah as a Foreign Terrorist Organization
In a notable turn-around, the U.S. Department of State today designated Jundallah as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO). In early 2009, shortly after President Obama came into office, the United States considered designating Jundallah as an FTO, as a conciliatory message to the Islamic Republic of Iran. In March 2009, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali […]
Wages and Deflation in Japan
Wages and Depressions Sooner or later any bubble bursts, leading to falling asset prices as investors flee to safe liquidity. Distress selling and debt liquidation by the market participants follow. For Irving Fisher (1933), it is of key importance that an asset price deflation leads — via falling asset prices and a distorted financial […]
Reading Badiou
Alain Badiou. The Communist Hypothesis. Verso, 2010. Alain Badiou: Key Concepts. Eds. A.J. Bartlett & Justin Clemens. Acumen Publishing, 2010. Christopher Norris. Badiou’s Being and Event. Continuum, 2009. Alain Badiou could be the most important philosopher alive today — time will tell — and his work is gradually reaching English-speaking readers. His magnum opus, Being […]
Deficit Commission Plots to Overhaul Social Security Behind Voters’ Backs
That is what the New York Times reported today, although it used somewhat different language. It told readers that: The group, which has a Dec. 1 deadline for recommending how to reduce the annual deficits swelling the federal debt, purposely has done little to date beyond five public hearings, and it has decided nothing lest […]
The Currency War
Everyone is talking now of the “currency war” that seems to be breaking out among the world’s leading economies, each working for a depreciation of its currency vis-à-vis the others. The effect of a currency depreciation is to enlarge the exports of the country undertaking such a depreciation and to reduce its imports, since its […]
Dilma’s Victory in Brazil
Like the rally led by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert of Comedy Central that brought hundreds of thousands of people into the streets of Washington DC on Saturday, Brazil’s election on Sunday was a contest of “Restore Sanity” versus “Keep Fear Alive.” Dilma Rousseff of the governing Worker’s Party coasted to victory against the opposition […]
An Ambivalent Reading of Marxism and Utopianism
Vincent Geoghegan. Utopianism and Marxism. Oxford et al: Peter Lang, 2008. pp. 189. ISBN: 3039101374. In his contribution to Lenin Reloaded: Toward a Politics of Truth, Alain Badiou forcefully argues that the century, “between 1917 and the end of the 1970s, is not at all a century of ideologies, or the imaginary or of […]
David Broder Calls for War with Iran to Boost the Economy
This is not a joke (at least not on my part). David Broder, the longtime columnist and reporter at a formerly respectable newspaper, quite explicitly suggested that fighting a war with Iran could be an effective way to boost the economy. Ignoring the idea that anyone should undertake war as an economic policy, Broder’s economics […]
Speaking of Islam: An Orwellian Story
A few metres from my office at the School of Oriental and African Studies in the heart of London’s Bloomsbury area is the Senate House of the University of London, a remarkable neo-classical colossus of a building which functioned as the headquarters of Britain’s ministry of information, where George Orwell worked occasionally during the second […]
The Globalising Wall
Walls have a longstanding relation both with freedom from fear and subjugation to another’s will. After 1945, walls acquired an unprecedented determination to divide. They spread like a bushfire from Berlin to Palestine, from the tablelands of Kashmir to the villages of Cyprus, from the Korean peninsula to the streets of Belfast. When the Cold […]
Families Without Borders
In the past ten years, 12,000 Mexican families have been torn apart by a broken immigration system. For more information about Families Without Borders, go to . | Print
Economic Crisis and Tax Injustice
The Associated Press’s Robin Hindery reported on October 29, 2010 that the AP had found a remarkable fact: communities across the US have been raising their local property taxes. The AP surveyed 39 states and studied 2,387 revenue measures that came before town, city, and county voters. In most of those elections, voters favored measures […]
The House of Latin America in Iran
In mid-October, a nongovernmental organization in Iran called the House of Latin America, or HOLA, invited several anti-imperialist organizations from North America to Tehran with the goal of building the movement against war and sanctions against Iran. Among those who attended were representatives of the International Action Center, ANSWER Coalition, Toronto Coalition Against the War, […]
Brazil: Abortion in Presidential Election
Pope Benedict XVI backs José Serra, determined to continue to make uteruses church properties in Brazil. Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist. Cf. Leonardo Boff: “No Brasil a cada dois dias morre uma mulher por abortos mal feitos, como foi publicado recentemente em O Globo na primeira página” (In Brazil a woman dies every other […]
Che Guevara’s Daughter Meets Hezbollah’s Number 2 Leader
11 October 2010 — The daughter of the celebrated revolutionary Che Guevara, who is currently visiting Lebanon, met on Sunday the number two leader of Hezbollah after visiting southern Lebanon where she received a plaque in homage to her father and the martyr Imad Mughniyeh.
The Impact of Income Distribution on the Length of Retirement
Social Security has made it possible for the vast majority of workers to enjoy a period of retirement in at least modest comfort without relying on their children for support. The average length of retirement has increased consistently since the program was started in 1937. However, the increase in the normal retirement age from 65 […]
Death Squads in Honduras
Anyone who thinks that social and political instability in Honduras ended with the election of Porfirio Lobo as the president of the republic is mistaken, according to the Committee of Families of the Detained and Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH). Human rights violations, political persecution, and selective political murders continue to be the order of […]
Iran War Talk: “Once the Military Option Is on the Table, It Never Goes Away”
October 28, 2010 Today, Marc Lynch — a professor at George Washington University who blogs at Foreign Policy — published a timely piece entitled “Keep the Iran War Talk Quiet.” As Marc notes, “there’s some hope that Iran will return to nuclear talks with the P-5+1 in Geneva on Nov.15, even if they probably will […]
