Subjects Archives: Capitalism

The same proposals that were demonized yesterday as radical socialism are embraced today to save the society from collapse.

A great hazard looms. Under duress and as chaos mounts, capital may find it useful to revert to the extremist, even brutal, measures figuring in its past.

How could Karl Marx (1818–1883) help us interpret the current crisis? His theory of history offers critical resources to interpret the unprecedented crisis which is shaking the world today, while indicating at the same time that ‘the world after’ so much mentioned could only be anti-capitalist.

Cuba’s preparation for COVID-19 began on January 1, 1959. On that day, it laid the foundations for what would become the discovery of novel drugs, bringing patients to the island, and sending medical aid abroad. Coping with HIV/AIDS, dengue fever and Ebola helped Cuba develop the ability to cope with pandemics, both internally and abroad.

As COVID-19 grips the world, in country after country, there is socialization of healthcare and of production of some essential goods, which markedly departs from the capitalist norm

With the U.S. failing and China taking a leadership role in the international response to this crisis, could the COVID-19 crisis mark a turning point in the transition to a multipolar world in which China will be just as important as a world leader as the United States?

Socialist ideas have been jeered and sneered at by the same establishment now faced with the consequences of their profit driven contempt. We should be done with those bellowing cheerleaders of capitalism, argues Eamonn McCann.

Comparisons between the toll of COVID-19 and climate change are not helpful because they view each as two separate “things”

In the light of the current pandemic, here is a rough excerpt from my upcoming short book on Engels’ contribution to Marxian political economy on the 200th anniversary of his birth.

Ali raps in his verses that America is not the great place people make it out to be. He reminds us that slavery was present only two generations ago and extremely violent hate crimes occurred in the country. He also compares paying taxes to paying a homeless man for crack. Tax money is just supporting the war in the Middle East.

There is no magic money tree – the ‘rescue packages’ aim to rescue a rotten system, and won’t work.

In a move seemingly reserved only for cartoonish villains, one of Austria’s best-known millionaires, Attila Doğudan, CEO of DO &CO—one of the largest culinary companies in Austria, and who employs over 11,000 people worldwide—has used the COVID-19 crisis to orchestrate a widespread layoff campaign against all restaurant employees within Austria.

Obviously, the situation associated with the sudden appearance of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the COVID-19 pandemic is grim all over the world. Both the causes and the consequences are closely related to capitalist social relations.

“Corona is a black light and America is a cum-stained hotel room,” comedian Megan Amram colorfully tweeted a couple of weeks ago. Her observation has only grown more accurate since.

When health policy is looked at from the point of view of which issues involve a direct confrontation with ruling-class interest, which involve simply relative benefits to a class, and which are neutral, we can predict which kinds of measures are possible—highlighting the lie in the notion society is trying to improve health for all.

When trying to interpret, understand and analyze the daily flow of news, I tend to locate what is happening against the background of two distinctive but intersecting models of how capitalism works. 

Snuggle in with us for another Cocoon Session where we give you a really cool and easy trick to hack your anxiety, talk about the way the quarantine is changing the world good and bad, and finally Caitlin has her proof that humans are not the problem after all.

The coronavirus pandemic is a serious public health problem and the human suffering caused by the spread of this virus will be enormous. If it massively affects countries of the Global South with very fragile public health systems that have been undermined by 40 years of neo-liberal policies, the death toll will be very high. We must not forget the critical situation of the Iranian population, victim of the blockade imposed by Washington, a blockade that includes medicines and medical equipment.

COVID-19 has challenged humanity: on what principles do you organise your society? The pandemic could have been defeated by cooperation, planning, transparency, and social solidarity. But instead, it was born into a society based on competition, secrecy, lies, and greed.

The political answer is not acceleration but refusal. And this is indeed what is has begun to manifest, in a variety of social rebellions. This includes the strikes of gig economy labor, the protests of Silicon Valley tech workers, anti-surveillance movements, urban protests against the smart city, defections from social media sites, algorithmic-bias busting, and “techlash” against the oligopolistic concentration of digital powers.