Subjects Archives: Capitalism

Human capital theory cannot solve our economic woes. David Ridley says we need a socialist alternative.

Do you ever feel undervalued at work—like you contribute much more than your pay packet suggests?

Universality must be at the core of any progressive electoral platform.

The major economies are moving closer to recession, if they are not already there; and yet inflation rates continue to rise (for now). 

Alejandro Pedregal – in conversation with Max Ajl

Capitalism is a system that has an innate tendency to get into a cul-de-sac of crisis, and the only way it knows for coming out of crisis is by further exploitation of the working class.

So, is this the moment of collapse in the Chinese model of development and the end of all that talk about ‘moving towards socialism’ etc? Many Western experts think so.

Today the federal minimum wage is $7.25! Let that sad fact sink in. Right now you can barely buy a gallon of gas in some parts of the country with that little cash.

I just read this NYT column by Bryan Stryker, on how Democrats can win back the working class. I have no idea how its proposals poll, but as an economic matter, they will do little to help the working class.

Over the last year, real average weekly earnings fell 3.9% as inflation outpaced pay raises and average weekly hours fell by almost an hour.

There are many misconceptions about Scandinavian capitalism. A very common one is the belief that since the Scandinavian countries developed vigorous capitalist economies, without ever having acquired any colonies of their own, they constitute a clear refutation of the claim that capitalist development necessarily requires imperialism.

The population of the world is enduring crises from climate change that, until recently, climatologists thought may only happen decades from now. 

It is a testament to the power of On Necrocapitalism: A Plague Journal that a set of interventions written across the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic should remain so potent and resonant as we approach its fourth year.

John Bellamy Foster explains the capitalist ‘solution’ master-minded by global finance to resolve the imminent environmental crisis: create a multi-quadrillion dollars worth of assets on the back of everything nature does and expropriate it from the global commons to make a profit. Worse still: it is already happening.

After Sakhalin-2, Moscow also plans to nationalise Sakhalin-1 oil and gas development project by ousting U.S. and Japanese shareholders. But Moscow will make an exception for India so that OVL which holds 20% stake will remain & continue to work.

In wars like the present one, politics on the home front cannot be permitted to give aid and comfort to the enemy. In the U.S. and NATO campaign, the Russian oligarchs and their businesses are targets and also weapons of the plan for regime change in the Kremlin.

Under capitalism, corporate dishonesty has become so commonplace that most of us take it for granted.

To Wall Street and its backers, the solution to any price inflation is to reduce wages and public social spending. The orthodox way to do this is to push the economy into recession in order to reduce hiring. Rising unemployment will oblige labor to compete for jobs that pay less and less as the economy slows.

Robert Hennelly’s ‘Stuck Nation’ is a vigorous and well-researched analysis of the exploitative and racist nature of US capitalism, but falls short of a convincing way to be rid of it, argues John Clarke

​The U.S. social democratic journal Jacobin recently published an article by Ben Burgis that was a half hearted defence of Marx’s theory of exploitation.