Geography Archives: Global

The 2020 crisis we’ve endured isn’t an aberration of the system but, as Alex Callinicos argues, an aspect of its permanent crisis.

Large parts of the world—outside of China and a few other countries—face a runaway virus, which has not been stopped because of criminal incompetence by governments.

The reefs will die. That seems certain. The UNEP report will not circulate. That seems equally certain. The Marshall Islands and Rwanda will file their updates. That has already happened. Meanwhile, the United States and its allies will sit on the sidelines, expanding fracking with a “who cares” attitude.

Reflections on COVID-19, capitalism, empire, and the worst year ever from the Hood Communist editorial staff.

If there was one revolution that marked the beginning of the end of the colonial epoch and that inaugurated a new worker-led civilisation, it was the Haitian Revolution of 1804. Enslaved Africans defeated the four major European powers of the day, won their freedom, and declared an independent republic.

The ecological crisis—the disasters of earth, water, air and fire that are afflicting the global environment and the human society that depends on it—is a crisis of capitalism’s making. Karl Marx famously described capital as coming into the world “dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt”.

Water is essential for life, access to fresh water is a human right, and most importantly, water is sacred. Water is life.

Here’s a list of the top 12 books of the year to help us understand and address the economic, social, and ecological challenges the world is facing at the end of 2020, from the dynamic group of young economists at Diversifying and Decolonizing Economics (D-Econ, d-econ.org).

The farmers’ movement for the repeal of the three farm laws which affect them closely but have been rammed through without consulting them, has now entered its second month.

In this powerful new documentary, filmmaker James Erskine utilises journalist Linda Lipnack Kuehl’s interviews with Billie Holiday’s associates to illustrate how the singer overcame adversity to become one of the greatest artists in American music.

This is most clearly shown in what is allowed by the powers that run the financial system.

A tribute to Friedrich Engels’ “The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State” and the groundwork for feminism by the jubilarian.

To prevent climate catastrophe, revolutionary decisions are needed based on a widespread understanding of the “dialectics of nature”, which Friedrich Engels, on his joint mission with Karl Marx, sought to explain.

COVID-19 is a new disease, but many of us from immigrant families know all too well the trauma of having our livelihood threatened and our lives put in imminent danger of death. The pandemic situation is not too dissimilar to our life experiences. It is natural, especially for those who have been politicized, to look at it with a skeptical eye.

In December 2020, on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the signature of the Paris Agreement on Climate, the UN General Secretary sounded the alarm because the situation has fundamentally worsened. In this article we analyze what the World Bank and the IMF have done in connection with the environmental crisis and climate change.

Fifty years after it was published, The State in Capitalist Society remains indispensable for any socialist movement with ambitions of government.

If “the revolutionary spirit of the last centuries, that is, the eagerness to liberate and to build a new house where freedom can dwell, [which] is unprecedented and unequaled in all prior history” properly begins with the bourgeois revolutions of the late eighteenth century, few would dispute that this eagerness for fundamental social transformation was in very large part carried into the world of the twentieth century by socialism’s revolutionary aspirations to transcend the capitalist order itself.

The Trump administration thwarted an investigation specifically into the US. But that didn’t deter those who believe an independent inquiry is necessary.

A decade has now slipped by since a man named Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in the Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid on 17 December 2010. Bouazizi, a street vendor, took this extreme step after policemen harassed him for trying to survive.

Amazon represents the pinnacle challenge to union organizers and socialists throughout the country. Are we in a 1919 moment, still a generation of failures away from breakthrough success? Or closer to 1935, approaching the tipping point of winning real worker power?