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Populism properly understood is about popular and democratic opposition to the rule of the money power—to the reign of concentrated wealth. It emerged from radical farmers’ fight for social and economic justice and democracy against the plutocracy of the nation’s Robber Baron capitalists during the late 19th century. It was a movement of the left.
Since March 13, 2017, over 50 local indigenous peasants known as Sedulur Kendeng, from Central Java, Indonesia, have been sitting with their feet in cement boxes in protest before the Presidential Palace. This is their second such protest in eleven months.
The fact that a large number of refugees, especially from countries which have been subjected of late to the ravages of imperialist aggression and wars, are desperately trying to enter Europe is seen almost exclusively in humanitarian terms. While this perception no doubt has validity, there is another aspect of the issue which has escaped […]
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 […]
Global capitalism is the 800-pound gorilla. The twin ecological and economic crises, militarism, the rise of the surveillance state, and a dysfunctional political system can all be traced to its normal operations. We need a transformative politics from below that can challenge the fundamentals of capitalism instead of today’s politics that is content to treat […]
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 […]
Dawn Paley is a Canadian author. Drug War Capitalism (AK Press, November 2014) is her first book. We conducted an e-interview as protests grew against police and military policies in Mexico and the U.S. The drug war on both sides of the border has played no small role in generating such dissent. Seth Sandronsky: Can […]
This article was first published by the Hankyoreh on 25 November 2014; it is reproduced here for non-profit educational purposes.
Many Venezuelans think that fracking — the dangerous extraction of oil and gas through hydraulic fracturing of sedimentary rocks — is a conspiracy on the part of the United States to drive them into ruin. That is not the case, but it is an understandable error, in part because of the US’s long history of […]
I. The Piketty Argument Thomas Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-first Century embodies an immense amount of empirical research into the distribution of wealth and income across the population for a number of advanced capitalist countries going back for over two centuries. In particular Piketty has made extensive use of tax data for the first […]
NYC Climate Convergence, September 20, 2014 A. The Environmental Crisis The “environmental crisis” is actually a number of crises, including the following: climate change; acidification of the oceans (related to elevated atmospheric CO2 levels); pollution of air, water, soil, and organisms with harmful substances; degradation of agricultural soils; destruction of wetlands and tropical forests; and […]
Despite the prolonged global economic crisis since 2007/2008, neo-liberal economic thought and practice continue to reign supreme. In his important book Capitalist Globalization: Consequences, Resistance, and Alternatives (Monthly Review Press, 2013), Martin Hart-Landsberg makes a number of key interventions unraveling the myth of neo-liberalism as well as the dynamics underlying capitalist accumulation. First, he identifies […]
The Environment and Capitalism: Response to Ian Angusby Sam Gindin The most critical question confronting anyone concerned with the environmental crisis is the political one: how to build a social force able to do something about it. The most important division among social activists is not between those who think an environmental collapse is imminent […]
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 […]
On 10 June 2014 FIFA released a “Frequently Asked Questions” pamphlet “Setting the Record Straight” on what it purports to be some misconceptions about FIFA’s role and the socio-economic impact of the FIFA World Cup. The release of the pamphlet is significant as it is the first time that FIFA has been forced by […]
Thomas Piketty‘s Capital in the Twenty-First Century is a six hundred and eighty-five page tome that definitively characterizes the empirical pattern of income and wealth inequality in capitalist economies over the past two hundred and fifty years, and especially over the last one hundred. It also documents the grotesque rise of inequality over the past […]
It was shortly after Moses’s encounter with the Burning Bush that God promised to take the people of Israel to the land of milk and honey. God, who could be extremely cryptic in his explanations (“I am that I am”), did not beat around the bush when it came to capturing his audience. For that […]
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, […]
The race of globalization is leaving the majority of the world’s population far behind. According to UNICEF, the richest 20% of the population gets 83% of global income, while the poorest quintile has just 1%.1 This trend is getting worse. A new UNDP report called “Humanity Divided” estimates that 75% of the world’s population lives […]
Tassos Tsakiroglou: How urgent do you consider the necessity to develop an understanding of the interconnections between the deepening impasse of the capitalist economy and the rapidly accelerating ecological threat? John Bellamy Foster: The urgency of understanding the interconnections between the economic impassse and the ecological emergency derives from the combined threats they pose to […]
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