Dr. Jo Anne Welsch, currently working on vaccine development for low and middle income countries at a global health organization, discusses how vaccines are developed and tested, and the implications of the process for the coronavirus.
Geography Archives: Global
John Pilger: Can we trust our governments in what they say to us about Coronavirus? No, we can’t, absolutely not!
On this episode of Going Underground, we speak to legendary journalist and film-maker John Pilger about the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
Pandemic and socialism
As COVID-19 grips the world, in country after country, there is socialization of healthcare and of production of some essential goods, which markedly departs from the capitalist norm
Femicide does not respect the quarantine
Days, weeks, months, an indeterminate amount of time as the world seems paralysed by the journey of SARS-CoV-2. The lack of certainty increases the anxiety. This virus, as Arundhati Roy writes, ‘seeks proliferation, not profit, and has, therefore, inadvertently, to some extent, reversed the direction of the flow [of capital].
Erich Fromm’s Marxist Sociology forty years later
Erich Fromm (1900-1980), who passed forty years ago March of this year, was a leading Marxian sociologist who made considerable contributions to U.S. sociology and to U.S. Marxism. Best known for books such as Escape from Freedom, The Sane Society, and The Art of Loving, Fromm’s account of authoritarianism and critique of mid-twentieth century “consumer […]
The Coronavirus is stirring the impulse to communism
The Coronavirus pandemic has laid bare the most acute problems of our collective life, its main contradictions.
Why are we still exchanging goods on the market?
Empty hotel rooms, bare supermarket shelves, factories producing jet engines and luxury cars instead of ventilators, governments competing with each other to purchase testing kits and masks. This way of organising society doesn’t make sense.
This pandemic is ecological breakdown: Different tempo, same song
Comparisons between the toll of COVID-19 and climate change are not helpful because they view each as two separate “things”
Mike Davis on pandemics, super-capitalism and the struggles of tomorrow
The coronavirus pandemic is overwhelming to comprehend. There are now hundreds of thousands of confirmed cases. Tens of thousands have died. Nations are on lockdown as the disease continues to spread. The planet is in crisis.
Spoken Word Poetry – ‘this world we live in’
TheTamim is a young and very passionate boy who writes about his upmost emotions and feelings, not only towards the world but also distintive individuals across history.
U.S. gig and informal workers strike demanding better protection during COVID-19 outbreak
Workers at Amazon, Instacart and Whole Foods protested on March 30 and 31 over concerns about unsafe working conditions, inadequate safety measures and lack of enough pay.
A dialectical delight
A review of Donny Gluckstein and Terry Sullivan, Hegel and Revolution (Bookmarks, 2020), £7.
These migrant workers did not suddenly fall from the sky
Madness engulfs the planet. Hundreds of millions of people are in lockdown in their homes, millions of people who work in essential jobs–or who cannot afford to stay home without state assistance–continue to go to work, thousands of people lie in intensive-care beds taken care of by tens of thousands of medical professionals and caregivers […]
Chart of the day
Although claims are at record highs, many Americans across the United States have been unable to successfully apply for unemployment insurance because an unprecedented level of claims is overwhelming state labor department websites and jamming up phone lines.
What is the ‘metabolic rift’?
The MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY takes a look at how Marxists can explore the relation between capitalism, socialism and the environment.
Catastrophe capitalism: climate change, COVID-19, and economic crisis
Obviously, the situation associated with the sudden appearance of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the COVID-19 pandemic is grim all over the world. Both the causes and the consequences are closely related to capitalist social relations.
COVID-19 proves workers, not bosses, are essential
The Marxist argument that it’s the labour of workers, and not the supposed intelligence and entrepreneurial spirit of bosses, that keeps society running, has long been ridiculed by defenders of capitalism. In the conditions created by the COVID-19 pandemic, however, the truth of Marx’s claim has been brought into sharp relief.
Ecosocialism or barbarism: an interview with Ian Angus
In an interview with roape.net, ecosocialist and writer Ian Angus discusses the environmental crisis, the Anthropocene and Covid-19. He argues that new viruses, bacteria and parasites spread from wildlife to humans because capital is bulldozing primary forests, replacing them with profitable monocultures. Ecosocialists must patiently explain that permanent solutions will not be possible so long […]
COVID-19 and Circuits of Capital
COVID-19, the illness caused by coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, the second severe acute respiratory syndrome virus since 2002, is now officially a pandemic. As of late March, whole cities are sheltered in place and, one by one, hospitals are lighting up in medical gridlock brought about by surges in patients.
We won’t go back to normal, because normal was the problem
It is hard to remember that just a few weeks ago, the planet was in motion. There were protests in Delhi (India) and Quito (Ecuador), eruptions against the old order that ranged from anger at the economic policies of austerity and neoliberalism to frustration with the cultural policies of misogyny and racism. Ingeniously, in Santiago […]
