Subjects Archives: Capitalism

A poem in remembrance of Glen Ford, whose untimely death on July 28, 2021, we deeply mourn.

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?

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.

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.

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. 

A Q&A on capitalism, media, and climate.

“The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.” — Karl Marx, ‘Theses on Feuerbach’

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 thrives in the fertile ground of radical socioecological theory.

As rioters target supermarkets, activists call on the government to help those who cannot survive amid rising prices and mass unemployment.

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.

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 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.

In bourgeois society a violation of property rights is the supreme injustice. Hybrids provided a solution in agriculture. Commercial hybrids decrease the yield of the following generation. This means that farmers have to renew their seed every year. Hence, hybrids create a perpetual market for seed.

In Keynes’ words: “It is not the ownership of the instruments of production which it is important for the State to assume. If the State is able to determine the aggregate amount of resources devoted to augmenting the instruments, and the basic rate of reward to those who own them, it will have accomplished all that is necessary.”

In this episode, we’re joined by Rohan Grey (@rohangrey), President of the Modern Money Network, Director of the National Jobs for All Coalition, Research Fellow at the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity, and JSD student at Cornell Law school. Our conversation is dedicated to Rohan’s current work on the political, economic, and cultural implications of money’s digital future.

Ecological and social conditions are mostly ignored in a system in which profit is the goal: Fred Magdoff discusses capitalist agriculture

Canadians won’t settle for a return to how things were before the pandemic.

Reporters who parrot corporate claims of out-of-control theft play into a narrative that benefits big business and perpetuates carceral policies.

While a majority of U.S. adults still have more positive than negative perceptions of capitalism, less than half of the country’s 18 to 34-year-olds view the profit-maximizing market system favorably, and the attractiveness of socialism continues to increase among people over 35, according to a new poll released Friday.