Geography Archives: Americas

It didn’t affect many people directly, but even small victories are welcome these days. Germany’s Constitutional Court just ruled that no-one should be forced to declare themselves officially male or female. It thus created a third open category anyone can opt for (or be opted by parents when still a child). I think everyone can […]

Writing in the October 28 New York Times, conservative columnist David Brooks said the preceding week was “when Donald Trump and Steve Bannon solidified their grip on the Republican Party and America’s national government”.

In the world we’re living in, it’s not enough to solve the tension between capital and work, the ongoing crisis of civilization urgently demands that we address the tension between capital and nature, which is currently compromising the existence of life in our planet.

Diana Lozado was 21 when she left her home city of Nieva and fled into the jungle to fight with the FARC. She had always been fascinated by the guerrilla movement and its fight against inequality in the countryside, and Lozado wanted to be part of it.

This week, representatives of three major internet platforms — Google, Facebook, and Twitter — are testifying before Congress about their role in facilitating Russian meddling in the 2016 election. But a fourth giant sat comfortably removed: Amazon.

What follows is the paper I gave this past weekend at the ninth annual meeting of the Society for U.S. Intellectual History in Dallas. I received excellent comments from our chair, Amy Wood, and from several audience members–comments that have made me rethink some of my argument. But I publish here without editing in the hopes that I receive more comments.

Beyond electoral battles and victories, the Bolivarian Revolution must fight a strategic battle every day; that is the battle of ideas. This cannot be waged simply through theoretical debate alone, but through the real practice of political ethics.

In 1939, the German American Bund organized a rally of 20,000 Nazi supporters at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

This entry begins by setting out the core ideas of Karl Marx (1818–83), with particular reference to the theory of historical materialism and its application to the capitalist mode of production. Marx’s theory of value and distribution receives detailed attention, followed by his models of capital accumulation and economic crisis.

Powerful corporations and the rich in the United States continue their winning ways. By narrow margins, both the House of Representatives and Senate have agreed on a budget proposal that calls for an increase in the federal deficit of $1.5 trillion dollars in order to fund a major reform of the U.S. tax system that will make the rich and powerful even more so.

Colombia is in an environment of almost permanent mobilization of social and political movements due to the government’s failure to follow through on the agreements it has made in different spaces of negotiation, its continued campaign of violence against members of  social movements, and its silence in the face of renewed paramilitary violence in the territories of Colombia.

The island of Barbuda is currently devoid of human life, a bleak reality that is both unfathomable in its scope and seemingly inevitable under the conditions of racialized capitalism. The severity of Hurricane Irma’s impact was undoubtedly worsened by the gross consumption of natural resources, particularly by nations that historically benefitted from colonialism and the construction of empire.

Last week saw a flurry of humiliating pitches by North American cities for Amazon to pick them as the location of the corporation’s second headquarters.

The Mars family has made billions selling us M&Ms, Snickers, and countless other Halloween treats for a century now.  But when it comes to paying tax, the Mars family seems to be all tricks and no treats.

Frank Little and the IWW is a family story—Jane Botkin’s own family story, as she rightly says. It is hers because she did not know anything about her great uncle growing up. She puts the story together, piece by piece, before our eyes, and that is large part of the pleasure of this text.

“Neo-liberal capitalism” is the term used to describe the phase of capitalism where restrictions on the global flows of commodities and capital, including capital in the form of finance, have been substantially removed.

In this interview, author and activist Michael Albert discusses his new book, RPS/2044: An Oral History of the Next American Revolution.

There is now a political appointee of the Trump administration at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), John Konkus, reviewing grant solicitations and proposals in the public affairs office.

The 25-year national gamble on charter schools has been a losing bet, resulting in a series of missed opportunities and creating a tragic distraction from what most education researchers agree are the real inequities underlying the so-called achievement gap, former Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch said this week.

The implications of Marxist state theories developed by Nicos Poulantzas and Ralph Miliband are useful for framing issues related to leftist strategy in twenty-first century Venezuela. A relationship exists between each of the theories and three issues facing the Chavista movement: whether the bourgeoisie (or sectors of it) displays a sense of ‘class consciousness’; the viability of tactical and strategic alliances between the left and groups linked to the capitalist structure; and whether socialism is to be achieved through stages, abrupt revolutionary changes, or ongoing state radicalization over a period of time. During Poulantzas’ lifetime, his concept of the state as a ‘strategic battlefield’ lent itself to the left’s promotion of ‘strategic alliances’ with parties to its right. The same concept is compatible with the ‘process of change’ in Venezuela, in which autonomous movements play a fundamental role in transforming the old state and the construction of new state structures.