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Marx, the ‘Metabolic Rift’ and Capitalism’s Assault on Nature
Marx’s theory that capitalism created a “metabolic rift” between human society and nature has re-emerged as an indispensable tool for understanding the climate crisis we face today.
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The Podcast conglomerate the media won’t name
Spoiler: It’s John Malone’s Liberty Media
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“If there is to be a livable future, it will be a future offline”
Jonathan Crary’s new book excoriates the digital world of late capitalism.
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Imperialism and the agrarian crisis
THE hegemony of imperialism is invariably associated with an agrarian crisis in countries of the global south; in fact agrarian crisis is just the other side of the ascendancy of imperialism. This is evident from the case of Indian agriculture.
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The perils of Pious Neoliberalism in the Austerity State: The Fifty-First Newsletter (2022)
The International Labour Organisation’s Global Wage Report 2022–23 tracks the horrendous collapse of real wages for billions of people around the planet.
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Nobel Peace Prize winners have deep CIA ties
Far-fetched as it sounds, this year’s winners are all connected to a CIA offshoot, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and parroted CIA / State Department / Pentagon talking points about Ukraine and Russia in their acceptance speeches.
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Our survival depends on a world without billionaires
The study looks at the impact of 125 of the richest billionaires globally, whose carbon emissions equal those of France, or 67 million people, and shows that just the richest 10 of those individuals own more wealth than the poorest 40% of humanity. The average billionaire in the study is responsible for carbon emissions over one million times higher than the average person in the bottom 90% of humanity.
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Anti-capitalism is the only way to save creativity from AI
Art costs money. Creativity takes time. The combination of time and money is in short supply within capitalist democracy.
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“Everything that is human is ours”: The political and cultural vanguardism of Antonio Gramsci and José Carlos Mariátegui
Within the heterogenous tradition of Marxism there are two diametrically opposed conceptions of popular culture: the elitist and vanguardist.
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Climate change: Co-extinction will cause loss of a quarter of species by 2100, says study
In a recent study published in Science, scientists analysed how the co-extinction of species accelerates the overall loss of biodiversity and predicted possible loss.
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What took them so long? New York Times, Guardian finally call for Assange’s freedom
At long last, these publications have acknowledged that the material published by Assange was of vital public interest and importance, noting that what he released “disclosed corruption, diplomatic scandals and spy affairs on an international scale” and “decisions that cost the country most heavily in lives and money.”
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The political economy of effective altruism
If “what should I buy?” springs from the consumption portion of income, then “how should I give?” pertains to the portion not dedicated to current or future consumption. The first question would be asked by a citizen of the 99%, the second by a one-percenter.
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On income and wealth inequality
THE fact that income and wealth inequalities have increased quite dramatically under the neo-liberal regime is beyond dispute. The empirical work by Piketty’s team bears out the increase in income inequality. They use income tax data to infer about the share of the top 1 per cent of the population of a country in its national income.
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‘Capitalism as Civilisation: A History of International Law’ review
Readers of the first volume of Capital sometimes mistakenly conceptualize capitalism in terms of a relationship between workers and a single capitalist. In doing so they fail to notice that for Marx capitalist society is not one big capitalist enterprise.
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Ian H Angus – “Groundwork of Phenomenological Marxism: Crisis, Body, World”
There is much more here than can be covered in a brief review, including interesting discussions of language, laughter, neo-mercantile capitalism, digital information and abstract nature, a correlate to abstract labor.
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EO: Bearing witness in the hell of speciesism
Once upon a time Dostoevsky wrote a passage in The Idiot (1868) about an abused donkey passed from owner to owner which inspired Robert Bresson’s classic 1966 film Au Hasard Balthazar.
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Taking ‘peace’ out of the Nobel Peace Prize
Despite the occasional polite nod to Alfred Nobel, the committee — which will name this year’s award on Saturday — has never made known his vision of peace through global demilitarization, writes Fredrik S. Heffermehl.
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Hypocrisy of the rich countries and the green energy’s storage problem
THE crux of the issue is that non-fossil, or even a low fossil fuel path, will need grid-level storage costs to drop by a factor of 10 times what they are today!
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The working class under neo-liberalism
A NEO-LIBERAL regime entails a spontaneous change in the balance of class power against the working class everywhere. This happens for a number of reasons.
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The United Nations promise of peace–also in Ukraine
The hybrid war in Ukraine has sadly revealed how ineffective the United Nations Organisation has been when it comes to preventing armed conflict or even negotiating a cease-fire when hostilities have broken out.