Geography Archives: Global

This is an essay in six voices, from long-time activists who participate in the North American ecosocialist network System Change Not Climate Change.

It’s some achievement to get me sympathising with Mark Zuckerberg. But denunciations from a powerful combination of a parliamentary committee in the UK and self-appointed watchdogs of the new media like the Guardian almost managed it. – Jonathan Cook

Historically, capitalism develops institutions and ideologies that justify surplus extraction and capital accumulation. In the last decades of the twentieth century, the financialization of capitalism initiated a new era of accumulation which is known in academic contexts as finance-capital-driven neoliberalism.

Both Sweezy and Dimitrov agree that fascism arises in the middle class and becomes a threat when the bourgeoisie embraces it, but Sweezy’s unique contribution is to demonstrate fascism’s relationship to the postwar transitional period of class equilibrium.

This Tricontinental Newsletter on a phrasebook for imperialism is intriguing if shorter than usual.

In an interview with The Wire, the well-known Marxist scholar talks about the surge of populist and right-wing politics and the future of neoliberalism, capitalism and technology.

Some people, some companies, some decision makers in particular, have known exactly what priceless values they have been sacrificing to continue making unimaginable amounts of money. And I think many of you here today belong to that group of people.

These two matters—the battle of ideas and the new intellectual—take up the first two parts of this dossier. The third part enters a brief discussion of our political context and offers a map of our concerns and our research. We look forward to your response to our invitation to a dialogue.

If everyone listened to the scientists and the facts that I constantly refer to—then no one would have to listen to me or any of the other hundreds of thousands of school children on strike for the climate across the world. Then we could all go back to school.

New report predicts the impact of climate change on Nepal’s mountains may be much worse than we thought.

While Facebook claims impartiality in its crackdown on “coordinated inauthentic behavior,” the loyalties of the man charged with carrying out that mission. if his resume is any indication, are not with the users.

The next phase of rebellious art, I have thought all this time, belonged to the rise of the Underground Comix of the later 1960s, with one tip of the hat to the campus satire magazines that in some places gave artists like Austin’s Gilbert Shelton a start, and another to Harvey Kurtzman’s failed magazines after Mad, especially Help! (1961-65).

Humanity now faces two simultaneous existential threats, either of which would be cause for extreme concern and immediate attention. These major threats—nuclear weapons and climate change—were exacerbated this past year by the increased use of information warfare to undermine democracy around the world, amplifying risk from these and other threats and putting the future of civilization in extraordinary danger.

Erik Olin Wright was radicalized in the 1960s and remained a Marxist because his moral compass simply wouldn’t allow him to drift away. With his death, the Left has lost one of its most brilliant intellectuals.

Inequality is sexist. It is also transphobic and racist. This is a reality demonstrated by Oxfam’s recent report on wealth and inequality, and a reality well understood by the people who live it.

Dr Martin Luther King’s writings and speeches “should be a part of the curriculum of public schools,” said Larry Hamm, chairman of the People’s Organization for Progress, based in Newark, New Jersey.

Last month Branko Milanovic published a blog post about the Yellow Vest movement against the fuel tax in France. He was worried–like many analysts–that the uprising proves it will be virtually impossible to roll out the policies necessary to reduce carbon emissions. He’s convinced that people simply won’t accept it.

The scale of environmental crisis is absolutely terrifying. So I was very pleased to read Victor Wallis’ new book Red-Green Revolution which aims to both explain capitalism and environmental destruction and offer a clear strategy for building a movement to challenge both.

Late last year, U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton went to Miami (USA), where he coined a new–chilling–phrase: troika of tyranny. It echoed former U.S. President George W. Bush’s phrase, axis of evil. Bush’s axis included Iran, Iraq and North Korea.

​Silvia Federici is one of the most important feminist thinkers of our time–anyone looking for profound analyses of the role of housework, violence against women, or the importance of control over the body in capitalism inevitably encounters her writings.