Professor Tadeusz Kowalik (1926-2012) was a noted Polish economist who played a major role in Polish economic debates for more than a half century. A graduate of the University of Warsaw, Kowalik was a student of the distinguished Polish Marxist economist Oskar Lange and like his teacher, was a prominent advocate of market socialism […]
Geography Archives: Asia
Countries in the continent of Asia
Brain Surgery Excises Obama Ambivalence for Rads
NEW YORK, N.Y. — In what promises to be a real boost for the U.S. presidential incumbent, a team of doctors has devised a “miraculous” new method of brain surgery that purportedly will enable thousands of radical leftists, progressives, and revolutionaries to vote — on purpose — for Barack Obama in the fall election. The […]
Imperial Sovereignty in the Automated Battlefield: Interview with Aijaz Ahmad
Aijaz Ahmad: Since the Vietnam War the United States has been developing what they then called the “automated battlefield.” Now, after about 40 years, we are now seeing some very, very advanced expressions of that, where the entire battlefield is being automated, to use the whole spectrum of technologies that they have . . . […]
The Emerging Left in the “Emerging” World
Ralph Miliband Lecture on the Future of the Left, London School of Economics, London, U.K., 28 May 2012 It is a great honour and privilege for me to be invited to deliver this lecture in the Ralph Miliband series on the future of the Left. Ralph Miliband was not just an outstanding social scientist and […]
The World Seen from the South: Interview with Samir Amin
I would like to focus this interview on three distinct but related questions: your vision of the world and the possibilities of changing it; your conceptual and political proposal on the implosion of capitalism and delinking from it; your analysis of the global context, seen especially from Africa and the Middle East. What is your […]
Resisting Drones in Missouri: “Let Justice Flow Like a River. . .”
The United States District Courthouse in Jefferson City, Missouri, is a modern and graceful structure sitting on a bluff over the Missouri River. Less than one year old, it is a virtual temple in white marble, granite, and glass, its clean lines all the more immaculate in contrast to its nearest neighbor, the crumbling 19th […]
Against Eco-incarceration: Class Struggle and Indigenous Rights in India
Whereas once the primitive was our savage other, today the native is the bearer of an alternative future. In the late 1980s the Kayapo Chief Raoni, with his spectacular feathered headdress, accompanied the pop star Sting on concert tours to enlighten western audiences of the ecological disaster in the Amazon that came hand-in-hand with human […]
Greece at a Crossroads: Crisis and Radicalization in the Southern European Semi-periphery
Introduction The Greek crisis represents the deepening of a long systemic contradiction whose origins lie in the 1960s, in the stagnation of monopoly capitalism and the emergence of the South. The industrial centers of the world economy were struck by a crisis of profitability, which was displaced outward in space and forward in time by […]
March Against Homophobia Celebrates New Outlook in Cuba
“This discussion has changed my mind about homosexuality. Now I understand what my Lesbian friend went through. When she graduated from medical school in Cuba, she cried. She told me that she could live her life the way she wanted to when she was in Cuba. But now she would return to Honduras as […]
Always Occupy
And so I left Montserrat, a place of brief and merciful funerals. She does a good burial, Montserrat — the only place in the world where the barefoot gravedigger rules. He gets to choose the hymns sung, judge the quality of the choir’s voices, and keeps up a running conversation as he joyfully sets about […]
Impoverishing Europe
The crisis is not relinquishing its grip on Europe. From autumn 2008 to early 2009 the world market experienced the deepest slump in economic output since the Second World War. This is a global crisis. Even in emerging economies like China, Brazil, or India economic growth declined and could not compensate for the recession […]
The 67th Anniversary of the Victory over Nazi Fascism
No political action can be judged outside its epoch and circumstances. No one knows even one percent of the fabulous history of man; yet, thanks to that history, we know events that exceed the limits of the imaginable. The privilege of having known some of the people involved, including the places where some of the […]
An Imperialist Springtime? Libya, Syria, and Beyond
Samir Amin: You see, the US establishment — and behind the US establishment its allies, the Europeans and others, Turkey as a member of NATO — derived their lesson from their having been surprised in Tunisia and Egypt: prevent similar movements elsewhere in the Arab countries, preempt them by taking the initiative of, initiating, […]
“It’s Time to Invent”: Economist Prabhat Patnaik on the Global Crisis
After an engaging half-hour interview with India’s pre-eminent Marxist economist during a conference at New York University, I told a friend about my one-on-one time with Prabhat Patnaik. “There are Marxists in India?” came the bemused response. “I thought India was the heart of the new capitalism.” Indeed, we hear about India mostly as a […]
Tracing the Roots of Intersectionality
Intersectionality as a key concept in women’s studies has up until the present proven rather durable. Feminist journals are peppered with it and feminists use it pretty much without having to explain what they mean, the term’s affinity with feminism taken for granted and its import unquestioned. Attend any women’s studies meeting, and sooner or […]
A Palestinian in Indefinite Detention — 10 Years Ago in the United States
The 66-day hunger strike of Palestinian prisoner Khader Adnan brought overdue attention to Israel’s practice of detaining Palestinians for lengthy periods without criminal charges. It also brought attention to the same practice in other countries, including the United States, where, as Salon.com columnist Glenn Greenwald pointed out, indefinite detention is “now firmly in place” for […]
Learning from Rhee
On the evening of February 7, Michelle Rhee, former chancellor of DC public schools and the public face of the opaquely funded StudentsFirst, addressed an audience of some four thousand people at the Paramount Theater in Oakland. The lecture was divided in three parts. First, Rhee introduced herself and described her leadership of the DC […]
Imperialists and Their Islamists in Syria: Interview with Aijaz Ahmad
“No genuine democratic nationalist movement in the world has ever asked for any imperialist intervention.” — Aijaz Ahmad Aijaz Ahmad is a Marxist critic in India. Prabir Purkayastha is a member of the Delhi Science Forum. Video by NewsClick (15 February 2012). See, also, Prabir Purkayastha, “Why Syria Matters: Interview with Aijaz Ahmad” (27 November […]
Lenin on Freedom
“But see how quickly the slave of yesterday is straightening his back, how the spark of liberty is gleaming even in his half-dimmed eyes” (Lenin 1905 [1963]: 541). Lenin and freedom — it is perhaps a jarring juxtaposition for many. Was not Lenin the harbinger of what is occasionally called the most dictatorial and authoritarian […]
The Black Freedom Movement and Chris Hedges’ Misuse of History
“We want freedom now, but we’re not going to get it saying ‘We Shall Overcome.’ We’ve got to fight until we overcome.” — Malcolm X “A social movement that only moves people is merely a revolt. A movement that changes both people and institutions is a revolution.” — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. On the […]
