Subjects Archives: Capitalism

​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.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the rate of inflation rose to 8.6% in May, the latest high in a period of rapid growth in prices following the COVID-19 recession in March 2020. Indeed, inflation is now higher than it has been in the past 40 years.

The global food crisis has now grown to such proportions that everyone is talking about it (even though world leaders are doing relatively little about it).

SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR: U.S.-led sanctions are inadvertently undermining the dollar’s post-Second World War dominance. The growing number of countries threatened by U.S. and allied actions is forcing victims and potential targets to respond pro-actively.

ADAM Smith and David Ricardo had been haunted by the idea of capitalism ending up in a “stationary state”, by which they meant a stable state of zero growth.

June is Pride Month. It is a time to celebrate. It’s also a time to remember the struggle for equal rights, a history we are continually encouraged to forsake, fragment, and forget.

In a wide-ranging discussion with ROAPE’s Peter Dwyer, Andreas Malm engages with African political economy, the climate emergency, anti-capitalist alternatives to development and the radical thought and politics of Frantz Fanon and Walter Rodney. Colin Stoneman introduces ROAPE readers to Malm’s work and politics.

Central banks all over the capitalist world are raising, or are about to raise, interest rates as a means of countering the currently rampant inflation, which is certain to push a world economy that is barely recovering from the effect of the pandemic, back towards stagnation and greater unemployment.

For three decades, contemporary public discourse on the Philippines has been marked by reference to a period called the “post-Marcos era.” Weeks after a high-stakes national election, that widely-accepted historical marker is suddenly obsolete. 

The age of classical colonialism in Africa changed the course of history. Exploited trade agreements and pseudo alliances between African nobility and European merchants led to heightened warfare, looting, and genocide across the continent.

Since early April, Sri Lanka has been engulfed by a wave of mass protests demanding the resignation of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. Thousands of workers and students have mobilised in the most significant mass movement in 30 years.

On Friday, May 6, the Federal Reserve released data showing that consumer credit (debt) has been accelerating since the fourth quarter of last year, with revolving credit (largely credit card debt) speeding up at an even greater pace since the third quarter of 2021.

U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell said his goal is “to get wages down,” complaining workers have too much power in the labor market. Economist Michael Hudson says this is “junk economics,” and corporate monopolies are driving inflation, not wages.

SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR. A class war is being waged in the name of fighting inflation. All too many central bankers are raising interest rates at the expense of working people’s families, supposedly to check price increases.

One million people in the United States have died of COVID-19. Coronavirus was written on their death certificates as the cause.

For over two years now, the world has been facing a pandemic the like of which has not been seen for a century, and which has already taken 15 million lives according to the WHO, without being anywhere near an end.

Economist Michael Hudson discusses the decline of the U.S. dollar, the sanctions war on Russia, his concept of “free-trade imperialism,” and financial parasitism.

This week, Grace talks to John Bellamy Foster, professor of sociology at the University of Oregon and editor of Monthly Review. They discuss Marx’s theory of nature and the relationship between humanity and nature under capitalism.

Prices of commodities can be broken down into the three main components: labour costs (v= the value of labour power in Marxist terminology, non-labour inputs (c =the constant capital consumed, and the “mark-up” of profits over the first two components (s = surplus value appropriated by the capitalist owners). P = v + c + s.

Celebrating the life and mourning the loss of our co-founder and co-director Kathy Boudin.