Geography Archives: Global

2020 is the birthday year of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, whom most of us know as Lenin. If still alive, he would be 150 years old.

Ecosocialism and the de-growth movement are among the most important currents of the ecological left. Ecosocialists agree that a significant measure of de-growth in production and consumption is necessary in order to avoid ecological collapse.

Readers today will be more familiar with contemporary mainstream economics than with the mainstream economics of Marx’s day. So, let’s start there.

The ruling class is ruthless in trying to exploit crises, but we shouldn’t underestimate the turmoil it’s in and the opportunities to advance the struggle, argues Chris Nineham

Darius Simpson & Scout Bostley – “Lost Voices” (CUPSI 2015)

Gradual reforms can’t do the job: only profoundly radical measures can ensure human survival in an epoch of global sickening.

In the previous chapter, we saw that Marxian economics represents a two-fold critique: a critique of mainstream economic theory and a critique of capitalism, the economic and social system celebrated by mainstream economists.

This all could’ve gone differently. Bob Woodward revealed that Donald Trump knew in February that COVID was airborne, information both men declined to share with the rest of the us until just now.

Drapeau writes that the Communist Manifesto “considered Western imperialism as a progressive and beneficial force drawing underdeveloped societies into bourgeois civilization”.

It’s an obvious question for those of us living now, in the twenty-first century. Is Marxian economics still relevant?

Modern Times, directed by Charlie Chaplin, was released in 1936, in the depths of the Great Depression. It opens with a clock marking the beginning of the working day and a sentence: “A story of industry, of individual enterprise—humanity crusading in the pursuit of happiness.”

In April 2020, a month after the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared the pandemic, the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) warned that the numbers of people who lived with acute hunger around the world would double due to COVID-19 by the end of 2020 ‘unless swift action is taken’.

One of the best reasons for studying Marxian economics is to understand all those criticisms—the criticisms of mainstream economic theory and the criticisms of capitalism.

The joint statements between two countries are usually riveted on a particular event but in extraordinary circumstances involving great powers, it could assume an epochal character and can be viewed as diplomatic communication that reflects what the Germans call the zeitgeist

The report, released September 10th, describes how the over-exploitation of ecological resources by humanity from 1970 to 2016 has contributed to a 68% plunge in wild vertebrate populations, inclusive of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish.

Continuing Ian Angus’s examination of the ‘deadly trio’ of CO2-driven assaults on ocean life. Part two: The ocean is losing its breath.

For Jairus Banaji, theory and history are tightly interwoven: without history, theory ends up ‘bad abstraction’; without theory, the intelligibility of history is doomed to fail.

This is certainly not the first time people have looked beyond mainstream economics.

Marxian economists recognize, just like mainstream economists, that capitalism has radically transformed the world in recent decades, continuing and in some cases accelerating long-term trends.

This text was the contribution of Ernest Mandel to a 1978 commemorative colloquium for the Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch (1885–1977) and was first published in 1980.