-
The inhumanity of capitalism
For over two years now, the world has been facing a pandemic the like of which has not been seen for a century, and which has already taken 15 million lives according to the WHO, without being anywhere near an end.
-
Cambridge Analytica reborn? Private spy agency weaponizes Facebook again
For all the public outcry, official probes and hearings, financial penalties, apologies and proposed regulations, Facebook remains the world’s foremost surveillance tool–weaponized in all manner of malevolent ways by any number of hostile elements.
-
Prevent pandemics and halt climate change? Strengthen land rights for Indigenous peoples
Land is and means different things to different people. Indigenous, pastoralist, and rural farming communities are especially dependent on land, which is widely recognised by conservation organisations. Such communities are often uniquely vulnerable to the effects of ecosystem destruction while simultaneously having strong social norms and cultural values that support ecosystem preservation.
-
In a world of great disorder and extravagant lies, we look for compassion: The Nineteenth Newsletter (2022)
These are deeply upsetting times. The COVID-19 global pandemic had the potential to bring people together, to strengthen global institutions such as the World Health Organisation (WHO), and to galvanise new faith in public action.
-
Turning the Earth into money w/ John Bellamy Foster
This week, Grace talks to John Bellamy Foster, professor of sociology at the University of Oregon and editor of Monthly Review. They discuss Marx’s theory of nature and the relationship between humanity and nature under capitalism.
-
Inflation: wages versus profits
Prices of commodities can be broken down into the three main components: labour costs (v= the value of labour power in Marxist terminology, non-labour inputs (c =the constant capital consumed, and the “mark-up” of profits over the first two components (s = surplus value appropriated by the capitalist owners). P = v + c + s.
-
Corine Pelluchon, “Das Zeitalter des Lebendigen. Eine neue Philosophie der Aufklärung” [“The Age of the Living. A new philosophy of the Enlightenment”]
Lucidly argued and touching in its appeal, Corine Pelluchon’s latest book ‘Les Lumières à l’âge du vivant’ will be a theoretical source both for ‘green’ and ‘red’ movements alike.
-
Beyond Eurocentrism
With the publication of Orientalism in 1978, Edward Said would become one of the most influential scholars of our era. The book transformed the study of the history of the modern world, as it offered insights into how racist discourses created and maintained European empires.
-
Fall-out of the Ukraine conflict on India’s economy
The Problem Is Actually At Home
-
Cost of the Ukraine War felt in Africa, Global South
While international news headlines remain largely focused on the war in Ukraine, little attention is given to the horrific consequences of the war which are felt in many regions around the world. Even when these repercussions are discussed, disproportionate coverage is allocated to European countries, like Germany and Austria, due to their heavy reliance on Russian energy sources.
-
Marxist Ecology in the light of Contemporary Ecological Thought: reflections on the Ontological questions in dark, deep and Marxist ecology
There has been an extensive debate within Marxism concerning the question of nature and its concomitant questions about the interaction of nature and culture or nature and society.
-
Toward building a “New World”
If you really want changes requiring the dismantling of capitalism–and this does include the changes necessary to the imagined “green economy,”–then you will join in these efforts rather than condemning the project that inspires them.
-
Marxist anthropology in a world of surplus population
Anthropologists, who have always been curious about the lives of people outside Europe and outside wage-labor, have good reason to be interested in the concept of the surplus population.
-
Peace Movement needs to demand dismantling of NATO
NATO went from fighting socialism to enforcing global empire.
-
How the corporate interests and political elites watered down the world’s most important climate report
The IPCC scientist in Working Group III in charge of proposing a concrete mitigation plan, that is, to reduce emissions and seek viable solutions (technological, economic, and social) to the biggest crisis ever faced by humankind. The science has never been clearer: we must drastically reduce emissions to have a chance of maintaining the climate stability that allows us to live on this planet.
-
Pixels and mortar: the politics of video game worldbuilding
With the worlds of architecture and video games becoming increasingly intertwined, Gerry Hart examines how video games communicate through their design.
-
Lenin’s ‘The State and Revolution’
The starting point for his argument was the class nature of the capitalist state. Drawing on the writings of Marx and Engels, Lenin demolishes the idea that the state is a neutral body standing above social classes. Instead, he argues that the state exists as a means for one class to maintain its dominance over another.
-
Mitigation of Climate Change Report 2022: “Litany of broken climate promises” – UN Chief
In a video message, António Guterres said the report “is a file of shame, cataloguing the empty pledges that put us firmly on track towards an unlivable world.” According to the new publication, the planet is on a pathway to global warming of more than double the 1.5-degree limit agreed in Paris.
-
2005-22′: The crisis of western capitalism behind the left and far right radicalism
It is simply impossible to understand what is going on now in the world if we don’t take into consideration the crisis the globally dominant Western capitalism has been facing since 2008.
-
“When I Have the Land”: 200 years in search of Agrarian Reform
On April 17, 1996, 19 peasants of the Brazilian Landless Movement were assassinated in the municipality of Eldorado Dos Carajás, in the south of the state of Pará. The event took place during a peaceful mobilization organized to demand the expropriation of idle land from local landowners.