FTA (Dir. Francine Parker, 1972). Preamble: “This film was made in association with the servicewomen and men stationed on the United States bases of the Pacific Rim, together with their friends whose lands they presently occupy.” Accepting his Oscar for Best Actor, Sean Penn jokingly referred to the Academy as lovers of “commies and homos.” […]
Geography Archives: Japan
Restructure the Big 3, But Not with Bankruptcy
MRZine Editor’s Introduction The crisis in which we find ourselves is not a crisis of the capitalist class, much less a crisis of the capitalist mode of production. Nor is it even a crisis of neoliberalism. It’s a crisis of the working class, plain and simple. What’s in store for us, especially in the […]
How to Spend the Money
The ongoing financial and economic crisis has had at least one significant impact on the world of ideas: it has brought back to the forefront the recognition of the crucial role of government expenditure in stabilising economies and averting or mitigating recessions. It is true that the continued opposition of some leaders, such as Angela […]
Keynes, Capitalism, and the Crisis
The essence of Keynes’s contribution was the demolition of Say’s law of markets. Say’s Law argued that supply created its own demand, so that there could never be an actual glut of production. Marx had rejected Say’s Law from the beginning, calling it “the childish babbling of a Say, but unworthy of Ricardo.” But neoclassical […]
What Difference Does Inequality Make?
Although many people believe inequality is socially divisive and adds to the problems associated with relative deprivation, what inequality does or does not do to us has remained largely a matter of personal opinion. But now that we have comparable measures of the scale of income inequality in different societies we can actually see […]
From the Crisis of Distribution to the Distribution of the Costs of the Crisis: What Can We Learn from Previous Crises about the Effects of the Financial Crisis on Labor Share?
Abstract The paper analyzes the possible distributional consequences of the global crisis based on the lessons of the past crises experiences. The decline in the labor share across the globe has been a major factor that led to the current global crisis. What we are going through is a crisis of distribution, and similarly the […]
Japan: Labor Think Tank Says Shorter Work Hours Can Create 4.53 Million Jobs
The Labor Movement Research Institute (Rodo Soken) of Japan says that the strict application of labor laws and regulations and the shortening of work hours would create 4.53 million jobs. Rodo Soken, which has close working relations with the National Confederation of Trade Unions (Zenroren), earlier estimated that 2.7 million jobs would be created by […]
Arabic Thought in the Illiberal Age
Peter Wien. Iraqi Arab Nationalism: Authoritarian, Totalitarian, and Pro-Fascist Inclinations, 1932-1941. SOAS/Routledge Studies on the Middle East Series. London: Routledge, 2006. x + 162 pp. $150.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-415-36858-2; $39.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-415-46182-5. Sometimes — when read against the backdrop of a particular time and place — a book resonates beyond the immediate […]
The World Bank’s Reforms: Different Image, Same Tune?
The World Bank’s Board of Governors has approved the first of a series of reforms aimed at amplifying the voice and influence of developing countries inside the World Bank Group. The centrepiece of these much-awaited reforms, announced in mid-February, is an additional seat for Sub-Saharan Africa on the Bank’s Board of Executive Directors, a change […]
AFL-CIO Supports Nationalizing the Banks: But Who Will Control and Run Them?
The AFL-CIO has announced that it now supports nationalizing the nation’s banks rather than continuing to spend billions of dollars in repeated efforts to restore them to solvency. The American labor federation, which represents 10 million workers, released a draft statement expected to be approved by its executive council today stating, “We believe the debate […]
How Should Venezuela Face the Coming Recession?
How Should Venezuela Face the Coming Recession? Presently much of the industrialized world is in a severe economic recession. The United States, Europe, and Japan are definitely in one and other important countries such as China are close to being in one. So far most South American countries have not entered into a recession. […]
Interview of John Bellamy Foster on The Great Financial Crisis
John Bellamy Foster is editor of Monthly Review and professor of sociology at the University of Oregon. He is the coauthor with Fred Magdoff of The Great Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences, recently published by Monthly Review Press. MW: Do you think that the American people have been misled into believing that the current financial […]
The Asian Face of the Global Recession
Delegates to the World Economic Forum at Davos this year came despondent and left in despair. Both the discussions and the new evidence released at and during the Forum indicated that the global crisis was not just bad, but worse than originally anticipated. One damaging projection came from the IMF in its January 2009 Update […]
Will Keynesianism Be Enough to Halt the Investment Decline?
The 4th quarter US GDP figures confirm that the economic downturn, in its domestic aspect, is taking the classic form of an investment-led decline. As seen in Figure 1 US fixed investment already started to fall from the 1st quarter of 2006 onwards — US consumer expenditure and GDP, in contrast, continued to rise […]
The Global Collapse: a Non-orthodox View
This is the longer version of an essay by the author released by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) on 6 February 2009. Week after week, we see the global economy contracting at a pace worse than predicted by the gloomiest analysts. We are now, it is clear, in no ordinary recession but are headed for […]
Muslim Pilgrimage to Manzanar
In April 2008, the Greater Los Angeles Area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-LA) led a group of over 100 Southern California Muslims on an educational trip to Manzanar, the first Japanese internment camp established during World War II. Along with Southland Muslims, some 1,500 people from California and beyond attended the […]
Dresden and the Nazis
A large-scale anti-fascist action in Dresden last weekend ended with brutal violence. February 13th has for years been a day of solemn ceremonies in this city on the Elbe, the capital of Saxony. It marks the date in 1945 when British and American planes destroyed the heart of Dresden, a treasure chest of baroque architecture […]
The State of Japanese Capitalism
Japan’s economy shrank at an annual rate of 12.7 percent last quarter, the worst decline since 1974. It is estimated that 125,000-400,000 more workers will be jobless by the end of March. Japanese capitalism is visibly incapacitated, and so is its finance minister. Minister Nakagawa at a Post-G7 Press Conference Rome, 14 February 2009 […]
Obama to Coddle Bankers
Emily Dickinson once advised: “Tell all the Truth but tell it slant.” Evidently the New York Times‘ headline writers are taking advice from the enigmatic poet. The headline on the story on how the Obama administration will be going easy on banks and bankers getting bailout money blamed it all on the Treasury Secretary: “Geithner […]
The Crisis of Global Capitalism and the Environment: Interview with John Bellamy Foster, Editor of Monthly Review and Professor of Sociology, University of Oregon, for Eleftherotypia (Greece)
CP: After twenty-five years of sporadic growth and extreme polarization of income and life conditions around the world, actually existing neoliberalism seems to be on the verge of collapse. Where do you situate the current crisis in the history of the development of global capitalism? JBF: Neoliberalism has clearly collapsed. But as Fred Magdoff […]
