MR Online
A Monthly Review project providing daily news and analysis of capitalism, imperialism and inequality rooted in Marxian political economy
I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news to the American Greens, but if they haven’t been following the evolution of Greens in Europe, especially Germany, they are in for an unpleasant surprise. The Greens are now practically the most warlike party in Europe.
A full generation has elapsed since the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) collapsed in late 1991. Two years earlier, in 1989, the communist states of Eastern Europe dissolved, with the first salvo fired when Hungary opened its border.
The Green party was at first an iconoclastic bunch, leftish, even radical. Its deputies, often women, showed up in the Bundestag knitting or even wearing woolen sweaters, shocking the conservatives. But its radicals grew older; many got rewarding professional jobs; its fundamentalist wing (“fundis“) lost out to the pragmatic “realos“ (realists). The Green retreat has […]
The German Democratic Republic (DDR) was a socialist state founded in 1949 as a democratic, antifascist reaction to the Second World War. It redistributed land, socialised the means of production, and collectivised the agricultural system.
Germany, once viewed as an exaggerated model of exactitude and discipline, is currently in a muddle.
Surprise, surprise! Things worked out quite differently than expected at the congress of the LINKE, the left-wing party.
The 2014 coup is now called with masterly irony in Wikipedia “The Revolution of Dignity.” That is a Big Lie even Josef Goebbels would have envied.
The U.S.-American night-mare, tight-lipped and pouting, was finally forced to gallop off to its luxurious stable in Florida. Almost every European joined in “Hurrah!” cheers as it watched him go!
At a time when peasant masses in the country are engaged in a valiant struggle for the repeal of the Central government’s three infamous laws, and have laid peaceful siege to Delhi, braving rains and bitter cold, it is worth recalling Friedrich Engels’ study of the peasant war in Germany in 1525, that also celebrated […]
Maas underscored that Berlin “does not need to talk about European sovereignty if that is understood as us (Germany) doing everything in future the way Washington wants.”
The survival of polar bears, we know, is sadly threatened. The survival of a more colorful bear species seems assured. HARIBO (an acronym of HAns RIegel BOnn), which makes those little “gold bears” sweets, was founded in a laundry room in 1920.
Friedrich Engels was born 200 years ago today. Modern reformists like to cite Engels as an authority. But until his very last day, Engels fought against reformist ideas and for revolutionary principles.
It is difficult to fully understand the Marxian critique of political economy without some understanding of Hegel. No less an authority than Lenin wrote that “it is impossible completely to understand Marx’s Capital, and especially its first chapter, without having thoroughly studied and understood the whole of Hegel’s Logic.”
Ding-dong, the wicked witch is dead! A wicked but very male Witch of the East seemed to be crushed under a houseful of angry voters, though this house, unlike Dorothy’s in The Wizard of Oz, was definitely not from Kansas!
The collection begins with the essay, ‘Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919)’, that more broadly reviews Luxemburg’s theoretical contributions and political interventions from 1871 to 1919.
Above all, the better part of that generation, to which Brecht belonged, still aimed at the ultimate defeat of capitalism.
This Saturday many Germans, party leaders and media pundits above all, will recall October 3, 1990, when their dreams of a unified Germany became reality.
The Modi regime believes that no matter how impoverished the people are their electoral support can always be won by promoting Hindutva and effecting a communal polarization. It is an utterly cynical view, but then, the present dispensation represents the acme of cynicism.
Leftists are also arguing over a political-economic understanding of the conditions created by the virus. For example, in Konkret, Justin Monday criticized the current crisis rhetoric by indicating that the deployment of labour-power is not being fundamentally called into question, but only deferred.
Ups and downs in Germany are less dramatic than in Minsk or the USA, now suffering under the corona pandemic, terrifying forest fires and worrisome election-fever. But Germany, too, could veer left or right.
MR Press News Climate & Capitalism Monthly Review