Subjects Archives: Capitalism

Ajay Banga was anointed World Bank president for promoting financial inclusion. Thanks to its success and interest rate hikes, more poor people are drowning in debt as consumer prices rise.

THE Modi government, ever solicitous of corporate interests, has launched a plan whereby real estate developers and other corporates will be allowed to destroy large swathes of India’s forest cover for starting projects that rake in profits. It is amending the Forest Conservation Act to remove those forest patches that are not deemed as such by the government from protection under the Act.

“Welfare for Markets” exposes the neoliberal links of basic income, and helps to explain why it is not a useful demand for the left, argues Dominic Alexander

Foster explains Marx’s ecological critique of capitalism and how the concept of “metabolic rift” highlights the alienation between humans and nature caused by capitalism’s focus on profit over sustainability.

Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek last week welcomed a UNESCO World Heritage Committee decision not to list the Great Barrier Reef as “in danger”. But what is “great news” to Plibersek is not great news for the reef. 

Ah, money, the driving force behind life in the modern world.

The India-Middle East-Europe transportation corridor may be the talk of the town, but it will likely go the way of the last three Asia-to-Europe connectivity projects touted by the west-to the dustbin. Here’s why.

The Trans Mountain oil pipeline expansion in British Columbia is running into another round of problems and generating even more opposition. ‘The controversial government-owned fossil fuel company is seeking regulatory approval to change its pipeline construction methods and route, after running into problems drilling a tunnel.’

The great cultural theorist Stuart Hall called Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth “the bible of decolonisation” as it encapsulated the urge for freedom across the colonial world. Fanon illuminates how racism represented an organising principle for capitalist classes by systematically devaluing the lives of the majority of the world’s population.

Éric Toussaint’s history of the World Bank shows powerfully how it and other international institutions have enforced imperialist exploitation, finds John Clarke

Amazon, like other tech giants, is selectively banning and deplatforming pro-Palestine content on its Merch on Demand platform, while racist and inflammatory merchandise continue to be sold.

This article, by Alan Thornett, was written for the current edition of the Green Left’s publication Watermelon in advance of the Green Party conference.

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Caitlin Johnstone): One of the most formative moments of my life was when I was running a small eco blog called Earth Mums in the mid-00s which focused on consumer solutions to the problem of environmental destruction. Back then I still believed that while capitalism was…

The recent bailout agreement between the International Monetary Fund and Sri Lanka fails to address the economy’s structural problems. Instead, it focuses on highly regressive measures that disproportionately affect the working poor and are likely to exacerbate the country’s ongoing debt distress.

The summit in Havana ends with document that also highlights the role of technology for development.

The time needed for understanding is delaying the radical decisions that are needed immediately. This premise is fundamental. If we wait for people to understand fully, we do not save ourselves. We do not save the planet.

Dilemmas of humanity abound. There is little need to look at statistical data to know that we are in a spiral of crises, from the environmental and climate crisis to the crises of poverty and hunger.

On August 26, a lone white gunman, 21-year-old Ryan Christopher Palmeter, fired 11 rounds from his semi-automatic weapon into the windshield of a car parked outside a Jacksonville Dollar General, killing the African American driver. Then he walked into the discount store, and fatally shot two other African Americans before turning the gun on himself.

India being the host country, the triumphalist tom-toming that G20 summit on September 9-10 was a “success” is both understandable and probably justifiable.

The planet has been laid to waste, and society pays for the waste in both money and lost years of life.