Subjects Archives: Capitalism

Many commentators and academics interested in African development have in recent decades shown a disinclination or disdain towards incorporating ‘global capitalism’ into their analyses of countries of the continent.

The get-rich-quick scheme, banned in China and elsewhere, is invading U.S. communities unchecked, posing as an “equalizing, democratizing” currency. It’s not.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned that the country is now just weeks away from hitting the debt ceiling.

September proved to be a month of unprecedented firmness in fertilizer prices, bringing strong trends of the previous year to another level entirely.

The United States marked a grim milestone Oct. 1 as the 700,000th death from COVID-19 was officially registered. Since January of 2020 the United States has also counted over 43 million cases, the most of any country on the planet for both deaths and infections.

THE period of neo-liberalism witnesses an increase in the share of economic surplus in total output both in individual countries and also for the world as a whole.

Towards the common objectives of anti-imperialist struggle.

Life under capitalist rule is perilous. We can’t survive on our own, and we can’t rely on society to support us.

As teachers, we’re tasked with educating our students, students who are increasingly, like their teachers, becoming politically conscious and called to act. Yet the dominant political theories and forms of action are inadequate for real revolutionary transformation.

Welcome to Renegade Inc. With China’s increasing wealth, Western investors want some of the action. One of those investors is a bullish gentleman called George Soros.

MARXIST theory develops with changing times, as capitalism itself develops, which is why it remains a living doctrine. On the question of the role of the peasantry in the revolutionary process that leads to the transcendence of capitalism, there have been significant developments in Marxist theory, which I propose to discuss here.

In order to commit murder or mayhem under this program, vouchers must be submitted within one week prior to the actions contemplated or within a month afterward. Persons who commit violent acts without valid vouchers will be asked to enter into Voluntary Consent Agreements to desist from unauthorized murder or mayhem, and up to one tenth of any ill-gotten gains will be donated voluntarily to the charity of their choice, without any implication of admission of guilt.

What the recent actions of the Mi’kmaq land and water defenders at Elsipogtog demonstrate is that direct actions in the form of Indigenous blockades are both a negation and an affirmation.

While the framework of “vectoralism” proposed by McKenzie Wark in Capital is Dead: Is This Something Worse? proves inadequate for understanding contemporary political economy, the concept of value chains developed by Intan Suwandi (Value Chains: The New Economic Imperialism) offers a promising alternative.

As developing countries struggle to cope with the pandemic, they risk being set back further by restrictive fiscal policies. These were imposed by rich countries who no longer practice them if they ever did. Instead, the global South urgently needs bold policies to ensure adequate relief, recovery and reform.

Changes in historical conditions can elevate a secondary contradiction to a primary, and antagonistic contradiction, in an instant.

Capitalism is supposed to be all about economic growth, through the dynamism that is created by competition. This growth is meant to be driven by investment (or accumulation) which, in turn, is used to justify the shares of national income that are delivered to private profits, to the owners of capital.

By the end of April 2020, the coronavirus epidemic outbreak was reaching millions. Thousands were dying daily. Nearly one third of the worldwide population was experiencing different degrees of forced quarantine.

The latest IPCC report paints a picture of five potential futures for humanity. In the worst one, if corporations keep calling the shots, we could see catastrophic warming of up to 5.7˚C.

It is a sign of just how serious matters have become—with the UN COP26 talks on climate in Glasgow this November now regarded by many as a last-ditch effort to achieve a global solution on behalf of humanity as a whole—that the early draft versions of Part II and Part III of the IPCC’s, ‘Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis’, were leaked during the summer.