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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.
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Personal data–the skyscraper of data you knew nothing about
We know it’s bad but not quite how bad. We know we should do more about protecting our personal data but either we can’t be bothered or don’t know how.
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States collaborating with the far-Right
It is not the collapse of Conservatism causing the rise of the far-right in America, Europe and Britain, it is the opposite. It is, however, important to understand that this is exactly how fascism comes to power.
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BBC Panorama hatchet job on Labour antisemitism is a farce
The BBC’s Panorama on antisemitism in the Labour Party provides no real evidence and shows how cynical the smear campaign is, argues David McAllister
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Redwashing capital
Left tech bros are honing Marx into a capitalist tool
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Breaching a “carbon threshold” could lead to mass extinction
Carbon dioxide emissions may trigger a reflex in the carbon cycle, with devastating consequences, study finds.
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Theatre of the oppressed as a political method
This article focuses on the ‘poetics’ of the Theatre of the Oppressed. These are a set of forms and techniques that challenged the traditional model of theatre. Coudray argues that the key to Boal’s politics lay in the form and the process over the content of the plays.
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Making capitalism history
To perish or to radically transform the way we relate to one another and to nature, that is the question humanity has never had to face until now.
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Frantz Fanon against Facebook: how to decolonize your digital-mind
From the Algeria to algorithms, Lizzie O’Shea argues that Frantz Fanon’s ideas have much to offer us as we seek to understand, and resist, some of the most profound challenges of living in the digital age.
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The city vs. Big Tech
The battle against Big Tech has now decisively emerged as a new front in the fight for the right to the city
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A new theory of strikes for a new labour movement
Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Progress in Political Economy — The idea of mass strikes within the Marxist tradition has been most powerful against capitalism. With the idea of strikes, Marx wants to bring about an epistemological change in the working class, “so they would know that they are, together, ‘the agent of production’, and that if they stopped, then production stopped.” Different models of mass strikes have been practised and reterritorialised worldwide from its origins in Western Europe. There has been debate on how the working class today responds to the current changes of capitalist development.