Karl Marx was born, two centuries ago, on this day–May 5. In today’s world, it’s impossible to ignore Marx, the greatest proletarian revolutionary.
Geography Archives: Global
Marx’s ecology: recovered legacy
While mainstream ecological theory has been dismissive of Karl Marx, serious research in recent decades has recovered some of his very important insights on ecological issues. The most systematic and thorough investigations on Marx’s ecological views are those of John Bellamy Foster and his friends from Monthly Review.
Karl Marx at 200: why the workers’ way of knowing still matters
Thinking of the relevance of Karl Marx on the 200th anniversary of his birth on 5 May 1818, takes me back to a wonderful picture of him in Algeria. It was taken in his final year in 1882. Underneath the full white beard is that familiar glint in his eye. He is up to something.
Capitalism, poverty and praxis
Capitalism is an economic system driven by its own immanent tendencies, which the State that presides over it normally supports, sustains and accelerates.
Inequality and fairness
In a 2014 study, Sorapop Kiatpongsan and Michael Norton asked about 55,000 people around the globe, including 1,581 participants in the United States, how much money they thought corporate CEOs made compared with unskilled factory workers.
K is for Karl (Episode 3)
One day the people of Paris decided to stop work, build barricades and overthrow the government. That’s what we call a revolution.
K is for Karl (Episode 2)
In the second episode of K is for Karl, Paul Mason visits the places and influences around London which contributed to Marx’s writing of the Communist Manifesto. The year is 1847.
K is for Karl (Episode 1)
In the first of a series of five short films, British journalist and filmmaker Paul Mason searches for the roots of Marx’s thinking in Berlin, where he began his university studies in 1836.
May Day 2018: Exploitation, NO! Expropriation, NO! Unite for justice!
In view of the historic May Day, May 1st, analysts from Monthly Review, the famous independent socialist magazine, identify tasks the working classes should press with. The following interviews were conducted in early April with John Bellamy Foster, Professor and Editor of Monthly Review; Fred Magdoff, Professor Emeritus, and one of Monthly Review’s closest associates; […]
Wall Street admits curing diseases is bad for business
Goldman Sachs has outdone itself this time. According to Goldman Sachs, curing people of terrible diseases is not good for Wall Street.
Jill Stein breaks the silence on being a Russiagate target
Former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein has turned in her campaign materials to the Senate Intelligence Committee, and warns that Russiagate is being used to silent dissent.
Marx and the cinema
Dennis Broe traces the history of the representation of labour on screen, and finds inspiration for celebrating May Day and continuing Marx’s struggle against capitalism.
World Bank: abolish minimum wage, other labour laws
Let the state provide incomes and social protection, freeing up capital to exploit labour at will says working draft of new flagship report.
Engels and women’s oppression
What does Engels say about the root of women’s oppression? Is there validity to his argument today?
The true face of the global recovery
Optimistic assessments of the synchronised recovery across the world economy ignore the factors driving the weak upturn that make it fragile.
World employers report
The history of capitalism is actually a combination of two histories: it’s a history of employers attempting to hire workers and develop new technologies to make profits and expand the reach of capitalism; it’s also a history of workers banding together to improve wages and working conditions and imagine ways of moving beyond capitalism.
Why Marx? Why now?
Two hundred years have passed since the birth of Karl Marx. Few historical figures of any kind have been so influential ‑ surely no thinker has. Yet many now would dismiss his ideas as outdated, as flawed, as tending towards totalitarianism. Why should we remember him? What can we possibly learn from him now?
Anti-materialism, capitalism, and violence against the human body: some preliminary comments
There are two kinds of on-going ‘attack’ on the materiality of the body (and nature) in capitalist society. A discursive attack inspired by post-structuralism; and an actual, objectively-existing, material attack by capital and its state. The latter is the focus of this article.
Five revolutions: how bacteria created the biosphere and caused the first climate crisis
“Life is the mode of existence of protein bodies, the essential element of which consists in continual metabolic interchange with the natural environment outside them.”
Eleanor Marx: the Jewess of Jew’s walk
Eleanor Marx changed the world. Foremother of socialist-feminism, trade unionist, internationalist, her father’s first biographer and editor of his key works, she had left a colossal heritage in many spheres of life.
