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On the federation of economic communes: Engels and Dühring
Those who “go beyond” Karl Marx’s programme of economic liberation based on the socialisation of the means of production and “reach” a programme based on the federation of economic communes remind me of this promise of Sartre.
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Greenwash
Alethea Warrington describes how the fossil fuels industry hopes to change its image but not its practice.
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Billionaires and the Pandemic
WEALTH distribution data are notoriously difficult to interpret. This is because variations in stock prices affect wealth distribution, so that a stock market boom suddenly makes the rich appear much richer, while a stock market collapse makes wealth distribution less unequal overnight.
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Peter Linebaugh interview
Peter Linebaugh interviewed by Johnny Flynn of Independent Left.
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Disability, Covid and Capitalism
With phrases like “protect the vulnerable” & “underlying conditions” currently all around us, disability activist Ruth Flood looks at the horrendous treatment of disabled people under capitalism.
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Debt disaster with no escape
According to the IMF, about half of Low Income Economies (LIEs) are now in danger of debt default. ‘Emerging market’ debt to GDP has increased from 40% to 60% in this crisis.
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Triple Crisis in the Anthropocene Ocean. Part Three: The heat of 3.6 Billion Atom Bombs
Since 1987 the ocean has warmed 4.5 times as fast as in the previous three decades. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projects that even if emissions are substantially reduced, by 2100 the ocean will heat 2 to 4 times as much as it has since 1970–and if emissions are not cut, it will heat 5 to 7 times as much.
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Silence is violence
If I’m not a part of the solution, then I’m a part of the problem.
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The IMF smokescreen
Global emissions fell by 8.8 per cent in the first half of this year amid restrictions on movement and economic activity owing to the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new report.
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Hopes rise of extension of New START arms control treaty as Russia offers to freeze arsenal
Russia on Tuesday offered to freeze its current arsenal, and proposed an extension of the treaty by one year. The treaty signed in 2010 capped the number of nuclear warheads by the two countries and its deployment.
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Ruthless criticism
But where did Marx’s critique of mainstream economics come from? It certainly did not emerge in one fell swoop, as a ready-made theory of capitalism. And it wasn’t produced in isolation, independently of the society within which it was first produced and then further elaborated.
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Paradise for human victims of corporate persons
Any day now, Zambia will be the first African country to slip into a private debt default. It can only pay interest on the $3 billion in dollar-denominated bonds if it totally ignores the needs of the Zambian people.
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COVID and the trade-off
Sweden has a relatively low level of urbanisation, is away from continental Europe and has a population prepared to apply social distancing with some discipline, the cumulative COVID death rate in Sweden is not far short of Italy and Spain, and is way higher than its Nordic neighbours, Denmark, Finland and Norway, which did impose early and much stricter lockdowns.
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Marx, Engels and metabolic rift – Part Two
The development in 1909, by the German chemists Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch of a technique for taking Nitrogen out of the atmosphere to produce ammonia (NH3) allowed for the production of synthetic fertilisers (and explosives) on an industrial scale.
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Marx, Engels and Metabolic Rift – Part One
Despite our assumed position as Earth’s dominant species, we have seen our society effectively shut down by a virus. Friedrich Engels’s caution against hubris, written over a century and half ago, seems particularly apt.
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Zero Covid: Our way out
As cases continue to rise, Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin argues that the only way to avoid a winter crisis and future rolling lockdowns is an All-Ireland Zero Covid strategy which protects workers and puts public health first.
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Capitalism, slavery, and economic white supremacy
What is at stake when we talk about the economics of North American slavery? Over the last 75+ years it has been whether capitalism superseded slavery or whether capitalism and slavery were co-constituted, capitalism to some extent relying on slavery.
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Competing with Nature: COVID-19 as a capitalist virus
He’s turned it into a political propaganda unit to the point that it is unable to deal even with a major outbreak within our own borders. The U.S. is beginning to exhibit the features of a failed nation state.
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Contagion in art
As the world continues to grapple with COVID-19, Maeve McGrath takes a look at how artists have depicted plagues and epidemics in times gone past.
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How online learning companies are using the Pandemic to take over classroom teaching
Experts warn the rush to outsource teaching to private companies is bad for students, teachers, and taxpayers.