Geography Archives: Italy

In 1949, Paul Sweezy and Leo Huberman created Monthly Review.  In the same year, Paul Baran and I began to teach in the San Francisco Bay Area: Baran at Stanford, myself at UC Berkeley.  As the years unfolded, we worked together politically in the area with the same social aims and values.  Meanwhile, the two […]

A small but moving episode marked the regular annual meeting of the German organization Fighters and Friends of the Spanish Republic 1936-1939 (Kämpfer und Freunde der Spanischen Republik 1936-1939).  It was the first such meeting without a single veteran; the last volunteer in Germany, Fritz Teppich, died last winter, and none of the tiny, decreasing […]

Germany suffered two losses last week and underwent one very intimate decision.  Whether the latter was a win or a loss depends on your (point of) view — about male circumcision. Most important to most Germans was probably their hope to win the European soccer championship, held this year in Poland and the Ukraine.  Germany […]

Introduction The Greek crisis represents the deepening of a long systemic contradiction whose origins lie in the 1960s, in the stagnation of monopoly capitalism and the emergence of the South.  The industrial centers of the world economy were struck by a crisis of profitability, which was displaced outward in space and forward in time by […]

What is the matter with Germany’s Left Party?  Or, more bluntly, can it be saved?  What is the truth about the charismatic leader Oskar Lafontaine, from West German Saarland, who suddenly, surprisingly withdrew from the fight for party leadership?  Is he really out of the running?  And is that good or bad?  What are the […]

  The crisis is not relinquishing its grip on Europe.  From autumn 2008 to early 2009 the world market experienced the deepest slump in economic output since the Second World War.  This is a global crisis.  Even in emerging economies like China, Brazil, or India economic growth declined and could not compensate for the recession […]

Here’s “good news” and “bad news” from Germany.  The good news: the Christian Democratic Union of Angela Merkel took a real whipping in the election in North Rhine-Westphalia (usually abbreviated to NRW), the largest German state in terms of population.  Her smiling, almost benign mien, with little bluster or braggadocio, disguises less and less her […]

Protests against the Formula One Grand Prix held in Manama on 22 April could have reminded the world that repression in Bahrain is still ongoing.  But once more the so-called international community by and large turned a blind eye: no diplomatic pressure, certainly no “crippling” international sanctions.  The Grand Prix went ahead as planned.  A […]

You’ve written about Beckett, Stevens, Blanchot, and others.  Literature seems a fundamental concern.  Indeed, your own prose is somewhat more literary than other contemporary philosophers’.  What is the significance of literature for you? Well, it’s very important.  When I stopped playing in punk bands when I was about 19 or 20, I decided I was […]

  Spring 2012.  Merkel and Sarkozy rush from summit meeting to summit meeting, in order to save the euro.  The yellow press smears the people of Greece.  The struggle over a solution to the crisis is intensifying dramatically: by early 2013, an authoritarian-neoliberal alliance of business lobby groups, the financial industry, the EU Commission, the […]

Sasha Lilley: Protests against Wall Street have inspired many people to move their money from big banks to smaller banks and credit unions and encourage others to do the same.  Why might you be skeptical of this effort? Doug Henwood: There are several reasons.  First of all, I think a lot of the big banks […]

In circles close to the former Zapatero administration, attempts have been made to represent former Prime Minister Zapatero as the politician who “sacrificed himself to save Spain,” comparing him to former German Chancellor Schröder who, though aware that he would antagonize his electoral base with his clearly neoliberal policies, went ahead with them, for he […]

The Great Depression of the 1930s saw the outbreak of a multitude of radical social movements on the Left and on the Right — or ones that were simply sui generis like the “Share Our Wealth” campaign launched by the fiery Louisiana populist politician Huey P. Long, Jr.  Long came from a poor pinewoods parish […]

Over the weekend, Fitch — the major rating company that, with its fellow majors, Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s, dominate the business of assessing the riskiness of debt instruments — took a highly publicized step.  It downgraded the credit-worthiness of the sovereign debts of many European countries.  What a spectacle!  These rating companies were distinguished […]

Hurray!  Merkel won the day!  It took a long night of backroom bargaining, but except for that Tory, David Cameron, all European Union members agreed to save the euro, save the economy, save the world!  It had been on the brink of disaster, Sarkozy warned on the eve of the meeting: unless we reach agreement […]

Victor Nieto is a cartoonist in Venezuela.  Cf. Vitaly Churkin, “Russia Against Any Sanctions on Syria” (2 December 2011); “Done Deal: Russia Supplies Cruise Missiles to Syria” (RT, 2 December 2011). var idcomments_acct = ‘c90a61ed51fd7b64001f1361a7a71191’; var idcomments_post_id; var idcomments_post_url; | Print

  General strikes were common in Europe and in the U.S. towards the end of the nineteenth century and in the first decades of the twentieth century.  They provoked great debates within the labor movement and within the revolutionary parties and movements (anarchist, communist, socialist). Much discussed were the importance of the general strike in […]

In recent years Marx has again been featuring in the world’s press because of his prescient insights into the cyclical and structural character of capitalist crises.  Now there is another reason why he should be re-read in the light of Greece and Italy: the reappearance of the ‘technical government’. As a contributor to the New […]

In a recent debate the candidates for the Republican presidential nomination treated cutting the deficit as the panacea that would address the European crisis and prevent the United States from having a similar fate.  This diagnosis is wrong but it is unfortunately not unique to the Republicans in this country.  In fact, it is this […]

  The Social Economy Context The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement has clearly expressed the hopes and great potentialities of the working class both in the U.S. and globally.  The 99 percent are speaking up and saying that they will no longer do the bidding of the 1 percent.  In essence it is the revolt […]