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Crisis, which crisis? climate change and capitalism
The essays compiled in this special issue of Key Words address the theme of crisis. But which crisis?
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Marxism and the philosophy of science
Marxists are primarily known for their concern with the development of human society and political struggle. As materialists, however, Marxists necessarily look to developments in science and new ways of understanding the material world.
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Miliband’s masterpiece
Fifty years after it was published, The State in Capitalist Society remains indispensable for any socialist movement with ambitions of government.
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Arctic fires: “You have to go to a different planet to find a more persistent type”
Here’s a sentence for you: The Arctic is burning. Yes, that Arctic—the traditionally cold and wet one, large swaths of which are being consumed by an astonishing number of wildfires, from Russia to Greenland to Alaska.
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Homage to OSPAAAL, the organisation of solidarity for the peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America
We live world where the aspirations of the workers and peasants are arrogantly dismissed. It is a world where the violence of a B-52 bomber is seen as reasonable, whereas the cries for an end to hunger are seen as utopian.
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Killer heat in the United States: Climate Choices and The Future of Dangerously Hot Days
Extreme heat is poised to rise steeply in frequency and severity over the coming decades, bringing unprecedented health risks for people and communities across the country.
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China & World trade
Just in case you had forgotten that China is a major part of the global economy, here is a chart from the Bank of England’s Financial Stability Report.
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How fast is the climate changing?
Are recent weather patterns a prescient warning that Climate Change is upon us? Yes, according to John Molyneux, and time is running out.
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Apocalypse economics and economic apocalypse
Unfortunately for humanity, the naturalizing of capitalism by dominant mainstream neoclassical economics establishes a bulwark against the posing of vital economic questions which challenge capitalist rationality.
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Why Karl Marx was right about capitalism
From the moment Karl Marx put pen to paper, pro-capitalist political commentators and academics have attempted to bury his ideas. But successive generations of political activists have continually turned to Marx’s ideas, from the best working class fighters who joined the various communist and socialist parties in the early 20th century to the student radicals who stood up to the horrors of Vietnam war in the 1960s, embracing his searing indictment of capitalism and his argument for revolution.
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The discovery and rediscovery of metabolic rift
Ian Angus discusses the scientific developments that led Marx to develop metabolic rift theory, and a new generation to rediscover it in our time.
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As the ocean waters rise, so do the islands of garbage
Trump has made nasty remarks about how Asian countries are the great polluters of the planet. Trump, in his shudderingly ignorant way, said that the United States of America would use its power to prevent Asians from destroying the planet.
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‘This is the beginning’: new study warns climate crisis may have been pivotal in rise of drug-resistant superbug
Research argues that deadly Candida auris “may be the first example of a new fungal disease emerging from climate change.”
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A historian’s view of post-fascism
Whatever we are facing [in world politics], it is not twentieth-century fascism. Hell keeps on disgorging new demons to beset us. And as seasoned exorcists know, each must be called by its proper name before it can be cast out.
– (possibly J. R. R. Tolkien’s Gandalf) -
The exploitation time bomb
Worsening economic inequality in recent years is largely the result of policy choices that reflect the political influence and lobbying power of the rich. There is now a self-reinforcing pattern of high profits, low investment, and rising inequality–posing a threat not only to economic growth, but also to democracy.
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The digital revolution and its discontents
In this talk, Tanner Mirrlees scrutinizes the rhetorics of “technological optimism,” “technological pessimism,” and “technological revolutionism,” discusses the political economy of communication, highlights how capitalism’s basic logics endure in the “digital age,” and concludes with an overview of how workers, citizens, and publics are trying to redesign and rebuild the digital age in support of working class power, participatory democracy, and social justice.
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Today’s Struggle for a Green New Deal: Lessons from the Freedom Budget of the 1960s
The potential mass appeal of the Freedom Budget failed to materialize in part because “realistic” compromises were made by its supporters: partisans of the Green New Deal should not make the same mistake.
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Debt update
While the ratio of debt to GDP fell in 2018—for the first time in a decade—for both advanced & emerging market economies it remains high, much higher than at the start of the 2007-08 crisis; and has also continued to rise in some major economies.
https://mronline.org/2019/07/22/debt-update/ -
Revolutions are not the train ride, but the human race grabbing for the emergency brake
Impossible to deny the reality of poverty in our world. Studies of the data on income and wealth routinely show that billions of people on the planet live with minimal access to resources. These studies demonstrate that poverty cannot be measured merely by the financial resources that are not available; they demonstrate how billions of people have no access to electricity, safe drinking water, education, or health care.
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An extraordinary Twitter exchange with Richard Tol
I had an extraordinary Twitter Exchange with Richard Tol over the last few days. I’ve written this post to preserve that exchange in case, at a future date, Tol decides to delete his tweets. They provide a superb window into the thinking that lies behind mainstream economic modelling of climate change, and why this has led to humanity dangerously delaying taking action against climate change.