Part One In his work Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Belknap Press, 2014), Thomas Piketty contributes much to understanding the inequalities of income, inheritance, capital, and wealth generated by the capital system. We are not likely to disagree with many of his insights based on his study of capital and wealth distribution. Among these […]
Geography Archives: Soviet Union (USSR)
Contains posts from both “Soviet Union” and “USSR”
Dissecting the Failure of Soviet “Socialism”
Michael A. Lebowitz. The Contradictions of “Real Socialism”: The Conductor and the Conducted. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2012. 222 p. In current discussions of twenty-first century socialism, the work of Michael Lebowitz has a unique merit: it is rooted in the experience of Cuba and Venezuela, where efforts in recent decades to move toward […]
Netanyahu, Censored Voices, and the False Narrative of Israeli Self-Defense
On March 3rd, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued an impassioned plea to Congress to protect Israel by opposing diplomacy with Iran. Referring to “the remarkable alliance between Israel and the United States” which includes “generous military assistance and missile defense,” Netanyahu failed to mention that Israel has an arsenal of 100 or 200 nuclear […]
Interview with KKE’s Kostas Papadakis on Why KKE Does Not Support SYRIZA: “We Are Against the EU, NATO, and Chains of Capitalism”
Greek Communist Party (KKE) MEP Kostas Papadakis firmly says: “SYRIZA has made very clear that it is not going to defy the EU or NATO. We say: What kind of left is this?” “The EU has no fear of SYRIZA. SYRIZA is not the oligarchy’s first choice, but it is the new face of social […]
An Early Activist Critique of Stalin’s 1934 Antihomosexual Law: “A Chapter of Russian Reaction” by Kurt Hiller
Introduction This article, titled “A Chapter of Russian Reaction,” translated into English here for the first time, was written in German by longtime homosexual activist Kurt Hiller (1885-1972) from London and published in the Swiss gay journal Der Kreis in 1946. Hiller had been active in Germany’s first homosexual-rights organization, the Wissenschaftlich-humanitäre Komitee (Scientific […]
The “Responsible Nuclear State”: The United States and the Bomb
In light of the revelations that the United States was prepared to use nuclear weapons in the event of war between the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the Republic of Korea, it may be worth revisiting the idea that America represents a “responsible” nuclear power, in opposition to countries like Iran and […]
1918
Looking back at the years of fury and carnage, Colonel Angelo Gatti, staff officer of the Italian Army (Austrian front), wrote in his diary: “This whole war has been a pile of lies. We came into war because a few men in authority, the dreamers, flung us into it.” No, Gatti, caro mio, those few […]
Socialism and Workers’ Self-Directed Enterprises
Global capitalism has huge problems coping with the second worst collapse in its history. Its extreme and deepening inequalities have provoked millions to question and challenge capitalism. Yet socialists of all sorts now find it more difficult than ever to make effective criticisms and offer alternatives that inspire. Part of the problem lies with classic […]
In Shared Sorrow: Remembering ‘Comrade’ Nirmal da
This tribute to one of India’s finest radical economists first appeared in Analytical Monthly Review, May 2014. AMR, published from Kharagpur, West Bengal, India, is a sister edition of Monthly Review. Nirmal Kumar Chandra (1936-2014), referred to by his dear friend, Ashok Mitra, in The Telegraph (April 4, 2014) as “The Compleat Economist”, was in […]
On Capital, Real Socialism, and Venezuela: An Interview with Michael A. Lebowitz
Gülden Özcan and Bora Erdağı: In some of the interviews you gave, you talked about your own everyday life experiences that led you to discover that Marx’s total critique of capitalism is an unfinished project. In this discovery, you emphasized elsewhere that your class background and political struggle you were involved in have played an […]
Germany’s Left Party on the EU and NATO
Running up a down escalator is itself mighty difficult. Trying to keep your footing both on an up and a down escalator at the same time is simply hard to imagine. Yet it gives an idea of Germany’s present Ukrainian policy. Soon after Soviet soldiers left East Germany between 1989 and 1994, the newly-unified country […]
Russia and the Ukraine Crisis: The Eurasian Project in Conflict with the Triad Imperialist Policies
Moscow, March 2014 1. The current global stage is dominated by the attempt of historical centers of imperialism (the US, Western and Central Europe, Japan — hereafter called “the Triad”) to maintain their exclusive control over the planet through a combination of: so-called neo-liberal economic globalization policies allowing financial transnational capital of the Triad to […]
Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century: Its Uses and Limits
Thomas Piketty. Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014. $39.95. Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty has caused a stir, which it deserves. Capital 21, as we will abbreviate the title, grapples with a prominent current issue: outrageously unequal incomes and wealth. It is a data-rich, […]
Ukraine Between “Popular Uprising for Democracy” and “Fascist Putsch”
Let’s begin with Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s version. One can think what one likes about deposed Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich, but his election in 2012 was recognized as legitimate by international observers and, after a certain hesitation, by the defeated candidate, Yulia Timoshenko. In fact, relatively honest elections were just about the only positive […]
Venezuela: Socialism Is Still a Real and Inspiring Possibility
In one of his last important public discourses, popularly known as the Golpe de Timón speech, the late President Hugo Chávez told a joke about an indigenous tribe and a priest. The priest baptized the indigenous people giving them Christian names, held communion, and told them not to eat meat on Friday but rather fish […]
The “Brown International” of the European Far Right
In the lead-up to the international day of action against fascism on 22 March, Thanasis Kampagiannis, writing in the latest issue of Σοσιαλισμός από Κάτω (Socialism From Below), the theoretical journal of the Greek Socialist Workers Party (SEK), looks at the danger of a major far Right breakthrough in May’s European Parliament elections and […]
Barbarism on the Horizon: An Interview With István Mészáros
Mr. István Mészáros, you are coming to visit Brazil to talk about György Lukács. As a profound expert of the work of the philosopher, how do you evaluate the importance of his ideas today? György Lukács was my great teacher and friend for twenty-two years, until he died in 1971. He started publishing as a […]
Will the ANC Sell-out Workers?
“ANC President, Nelson Mandela delivered an opening address to the September COSATU Special Congress. Having completed his prepared speech, comrade Mandela put aside his notes and spoke directly and spontaneously to the 1 700 worker delegates. He asked a question that was uppermost in the minds of many.” — The African Communist (1993) COMRADES, […]
Michael D. Yates Interviewed by Cedric Muhammad (for the Final Call)
The following is an interview of me (MDY) conducted by Cedric Muhammad (CM), who is an aide to the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, the National Representative of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam. An abbreviated version of the interview appears in The Final Call, the Nation of Islam’s newspaper (available at www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/Business_amp_Money_12/article_100637.shtml). […]
Crises of Capitalism and Social Democracy
John Bellamy Foster is best-known as author of Marx’s Ecology (2000; in which he corrects the popular misapprehension that Marx did not ‘get’ environmental limits), and as editor of Monthly Review (monthlyreview.org), the journal founded by Marxist economist Paul Sweezy in the late 1940s. In his latest book, The Endless Crisis (2012; written with […]
