An important work of Marxist history and theory restores class struggle to central place in explaining how capitalism arose and grew, and can eventually be overcome.
Subjects Archives: Capitalism
Future of western democracy being played out in Brazil
Geopolitical and global economic reverberations will be immense. The Brazilian dilemma illuminates all the contradictions surrounding the Right populist offensive across the West, juxtaposed to the inexorable collapse of the Left. The stakes could not be higher.
The ‘Christine Lagarde Memo’
This secret memo was discovered in the waste basket of a high-ranking staffer in the European Commission. The memo from “the Coalition” begins “Dear Angela, Teresa, Emmanuel…” and has a further list of first names—heads of state and secretaries or ministers of finance, health and human services—were mostly scribbled over with marker.
Sharing, not selling: Marx against value
The originality of Marx’s Capital is often underestimated. Countless commentaries have appeared, but only a few have taken the full measure of Capital’s truly unique and counter-intuitive outlook. Critics generally assume that Marx was pursuing familiar questions of economics or philosophy in a fresh way–that his aim was to explain profits, history, or ontology.
The Battle for Paradise
Naomi Klein gives a stirring account of the struggle against disaster capitalism in Puerto Rico after 2017’s Hurricane Maria, finds Ellen Graubart.
Future look 2025: the privatisation of the NHS–welcome to Little America
Back in 2019, the US/UK trade deal called the Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (ATIP) was signed by Washington and the new Prime Minister of Gt Britain after the failure of the previous administration to secure a deal with the European Union.
The challenges for the Left in Europe and the Eurozone
The policies dictated by the European leaders have six fundamental objectives; Bail-out the private banks with public funds, preserve the Eurozone perimeter, bring neoliberal policies to bear more heavily on Greece, reinforce a Europe-wide authoritarian form of governance and more.
Global instability and the development project: is the twenty-first century different?
Ever since the global financial crisis of 2008–2009, the trajectory of the world economy has been hesitant, unstable and prone to many risks. Output recovery has been limited and fragile; and, more significantly, even in the more dynamic economies, it has not increased good-quality employment or reduced inequality and material insecurity.
U.S. public school teachers: declining pay, growing militancy
Strikes continue to be an effective way for teachers to improve their living and working (and by extension student learning) conditions. And, polls show that a strong majority of parents continue to support them. Popular support for teacher strikes remains strong The education pollster PDK recently asked adults what they thought about teacher salaries and […]
For greenhouse gases, half is not good enough
Although a truth of science is not equivalent to the consensus of scientists, neither historically nor now, there are times when scientific facts (or truths) are of such compelling importance that a near consensus of scientific practitioners ought to be regarded as fact. Yes, when I began smoking cigarettes at age fifteen there was something […]
Gender, Labor, & Law with Emma Caterine
In this episode, we speak with Emma Caterine (@emmacaterineDSA), a law graduate and writer with more than a decade of experience working within economic justice, feminist, LGBTQ, and racial justice movements. We talk Democratic Socialists of America, MMT, the advantages of a federal jobs guarantee over a universal basic income, the place for sex work […]
UN scientific paper suggests capitalism has to die in order for the planet to be saved
Capitalism and global sustainability are incongruous with one another, according to a recent paper for the UN’s 2019 Global Sustainable Development Report.
Social reproduction: what’s the big idea?
Key to social reproduction theory (SRT) is an understanding of the ‘production of goods and services and the production of life are part of one integrated process’, or in other words: acknowledging that race and gender oppression occur capitalistically.
Utopia and materialist critique
The argument I’ve been making during this series on utopia is that the utopian moment of the Marxian alternative to mainstream economics is critique.*
There is still time for an ecological revolution to prevent hothouse earth
The only thing that could alter this dire situation, all over the world, is the rise of another power in society. We need not millions but hundreds of millions of people, necessarily predominantly working class, in the street day in and day out.
It is imperative to reconstruct the Internationale of workers and peoples
For the last thirty years the world system has undergone an extreme centralization of power in all its dimensions, local and international, economic and military, social and cultural.
Facebook suspends teleSUR English without explanation, again
teleSUR English’s page has been removed from Facebook for the second time this year without any specific reason being provided. This is an alarming development in light of the recent shutting down of pages that don’t fit a mainstream narrative.
Capitalism killed our climate momentum not ‘human nature’
This Sunday, the entire New York Times Magazine will be composed of just one article on a single subject: the failure to confront the global climate crisis in the 1980s, a time when the science was settled and the politics seemed to align.
Racism and the logic of capitalism
The emergence of a new generation of anti-racist activists and thinkers battling police abuse, the prison-industrial complex and entrenched racism in the US, alongside the crisis over immigration and growth of right-wing populism in Europe and elsewhere, makes this a crucial moment to develop theoretical perspectives that conceptualise race and racism as integral to capitalism […]
Capitalism’s discourse on “development”
CAPITALISM’S discourse on “development” which has become quite influential all over the third world in the neo-liberal period proceeds as follows.
