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Neoliberal apotheosisCOP26 creates the global fire market and offers it to capitalist arsonists, at the expense of the people
The balance sheet is clear: on paper, Glasgow clarifies the ambiguous Paris goal by making it more radical (1.5°C is now the target) and mentions the responsibility of fossil fuels; but in practice, the conference did not take any steps to stop the catastrophe.
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Profiting from the carbon offset distraction
Carbon offset markets allow the rich to emit as financial intermediaries profit. By fostering the fiction that others can be paid to cut greenhouse gases (GHGs) instead, it undermines efforts to do so.
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The feminist building-blocks of a just, sustainable economy
Jayati Ghosh finds in a UN Women report a blueprint for an economy which serves the public—rather than the other way around.
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The base-superstructure: a model for analysis and action
Although Marx himself only mentioned the “base” and “superstructure” in (by my count) two of his works, the base-superstructure “problem” remains a source of serious contention for Marxists, our sympathizers, and our critics.
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Impending planetary disaster should unite us, yet we remain more divided than ever
Charles Bukowski has a quote: “We’re all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.”
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‘From what present are we historicizing the left?’ Arab Lefts: Histories and Silences — Alina Sajed
There has been renewed interest in the long 1960s over the last few years, not least spurred by the anniversary, in 2018, of the 1968 global uprisings.
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Ernest Mandel – Selected Writings I
The IIRE has released the first volume of the Selected Writings by Ernest Mandel (1923-1995).
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Leonard Peltier may finally get out of prison after more than 4 decades
Peltier has served about four-and-a-half decades in prison for a crime–the killing of two FBI agents in a 1975 gun battle at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota–that even his erstwhile prosecutor now admits that Peltier did not commit.
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Totalitarian cyber-creep: Mark Zuckerberg in the Metaverse
Never leave matters of maturity to the Peter Panners of Silicon Valley. At their most benign, they are easily dismissed as potty and keyboard mad.
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Can Joan Robinson’s ideas cast some light on today’s profound economic challenges?
2023 marks the fortieth year since the passing of Joan Robinson and her one-hundred-and-twentieth anniversary.
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Climate injustice at Glasgow COP-out
Former Irish President Mary Robinson observed, “People will see this as a historically shameful dereliction of duty,… nowhere near enough to avoid climate disaster.”
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Anti-communism, anti-Blackness, and imperialism
In this talk prepared for the Albuquerque Anti-War Coalition‘s Anti-Communism & Imperialism panel discussion, Dr. Charisse Burden Stelly discusses how anti-communism and anti-Blackness are intrinsically intertwined structures of white supremacist and capitalist control.
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Helena Sheehan – ‘Science and Technology Studies: A Marxist Narrative’
The author of several books, including the definitive study ‘Marxism and the Philosophy of Science: A Critical History’, Professor Sheehan traces the historical entanglements of Science and Technology Studies with Marxist thought, as well as her own biography as a scholar and activist.
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What role does the military play in climate change?
A gaping hole in the COP26 official agenda was the oversized role of the military industrial complex in environmental devastation. The US is a global leader on this front with the Pentagon being a bigger polluter than 140 countries combined.
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COP26: greenwashing and Plutocratic misadventures
COP26 reaffirmed what has been obvious from the beginning: the Northern colonial and capitalist states most responsible for creating the climate crisis are unwilling to place people before profits in order to address the planet’s looming ecological collapse and humanitarian catastrophe.
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Philosophers with no clothes: A Review of ‘The War Against Marxism’
Tony McKenna’s new book is an important defence of Marxism, against thinkers who have confused and obscured its revolutionary core, argues Chris Nineham
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WTO finished without TRIPS waiver
The World Trade Organization (WTO) will soon decide on a conditional temporary waiver of Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS).
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‘Moderna is trying to turn this people’s vaccine into a rich people’s vaccine’
CounterSpin interview with Peter Maybarduk on NIH/Moderna patent
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Media’s anti-‘woke’ mania moves social justice to the fringe
“Woke” is the label the aggrieved conservative suburbanite puts on the indignity of having to call their Starbucks barista “they” and finding Ibram X. Kendi on their child’s school reading list.
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In the name of saving the climate, they will Uberise the farmlands: The Forty-Sixth Newsletter (2021)
The organisers of COP26 designated themes for many of the days during the conference, such as energy, finance, and transport. There was no day set aside for a discussion of agriculture; instead, it was bundled into ‘Nature Day’ on 6 November, during which the main topic was deforestation.