-
Equality and scarcity
Many would remember that the Soviet Union and other Eastern European socialist countries used to be characterized by long queues of consumers for several commodities.
-
Robbing the soil, 1: Commons and classes before capitalism
“All progress in capitalist agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the worker, but of robbing the soil.” (Karl Marx)
-
Capitalism and alienation
Capitalism is deeply unjust. It is a system under which labour power has itself become a commodity and is bought and sold on the market like any other object of exchange
-
The Uncontrollability of Globalizing Capital
We live in an age of unprecedented historical crisis. Its severity can be gauged by the fact that we are not facing a more or less extensive cyclic crisis of capitalism as experienced in the past, but the deepening structural crisis of the capital system itself.
-
With COVID-19, World Health Organisation’s fall from grace is complete
In complete contrast to its founding ideals, the WHO is now captured by wealthy countries and corporations at the cost of millions of poor globally.
-
Review of Keti Chukhrov – ‘Practicing the Good: Desire and Boredom in Soviet Socialism’
As the title reveals, Chukhrov is particularly interested in two aspects of Soviet socialism: desire and boredom. For a libidinally conditioned capitalist subject, socialism as a non-libidinal economy appears boring and unsexy.
-
Prashad to Harvey: “You live on the other side of imperialism”
Taken together, these form a devastating critique of world renowned Marxist David Harvey’s insistence that the concept and theory of imperialism is not relevant to understand today’s world.
-
…For Brother Glen
A poem in remembrance of Glen Ford, whose untimely death on July 28, 2021, we deeply mourn.
-
The Visionary Marxist
Is fundamental, revolutionary change possible from within a social and economic system so shaken that questions of dual power are not likely to be raised?
-
Moving Beyond Capitalist Agriculture: Could Agroecology Prevent Further Pandemics?
The current complex of COVID-induced crises fits hand-in-glove with the system’s “normal” operation. Stability has been the delusional realm of a small sliver of the Global North, awash in post-World War Two imperialism and the repeated reinvention (and re-imposition) of various plantation systems of cheap and racialized labor.
-
Defending Marx and Braverman: taking back the labour process in theory and practice
Writing his 1974 book Labour and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century, U.S. Marxist and political economist Harry Braverman noted that Karl Marx had demonstrated that processes of production are constantly transformed by the driving force of capital accumulation.
-
Creating a democratically run economy: lessons from World War II price control struggles*
Many activists in the United States are working to build a movement for a Green New Deal transformation of the economy. Not surprisingly, a growing number look to the World War II conversion of the U.S. economy from civilian to military production for inspiration and policy ideas.
-
Climate Change: Why we can’t trust mainstream media
A Q&A on capitalism, media, and climate.
-
The importance of Marxist materialism in an age of opinions
“The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.” — Karl Marx, ‘Theses on Feuerbach’
-
European duplicity undermines anti-pandemic efforts
Despite facing the world’s worst pandemic of the last century, rich countries in the World Trade Organization (WTO) have blocked efforts to enable more affordable access to the means to fight the pandemic.
-
The other side of ecocide
The other side of ecocide thrives in the fertile ground of radical socioecological theory.
-
Food riots show the need for a basic income grant
As rioters target supermarkets, activists call on the government to help those who cannot survive amid rising prices and mass unemployment.
-
The United States tries to take advantage of the price Cubans are paying for the blockade and the pandemic
This small island of 11 million people has created five vaccine candidates and sent its medical workers through the Henry Reeve International Medical Brigade to heal people around the world.
-
Rethinking Japan’s Red Years
The New Left is generally seen globally as emerging from the aftermath of the “revelations” about Stalin in Khrushchev’s “secret speech”’ at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in early 1956, and the reaction to the Soviet invasion of Hungary later that same year.
-
The Tokyo Olympics are in peril
The masses of Tokyo want to postpone or cancel the games, but the government says it’s the IOC’s decision, not the host country’s, sovereignty be damned.