Subjects Archives: Capitalism

The search for the political truth will always be a difficult task even in our times, when science has placed in our hands a huge amount of knowledge. One of the most important was the possibility to know and study the fabulous power of the energy contained in matter. The person who discovered that energy […]

This Reflection could be written today, tomorrow or any other day without the risk of being mistaken. Our species faces new problems. When 20 years ago I stated at the United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro that a species was in danger of extinction, I had fewer reasons than […]

Eneko Las Heras, born in Caracas in 1963, is a cartoonist based in Spain. | Print

A young veteran was just arrested for murdering homeless people in Los Angeles.  Regardless whether he is actually guilty, a large number of terrible acts have been committed by returning veterans traumatized from the war.  None of the studies of which I’m aware accounts for such costs (including the cost of imprisoning them) in the […]

It is not a matter of being optimistic or pessimistic, knowing or not knowing elementary things, of being responsible or not for events. Those who would like to be thought of as politicians should be thrown onto the trash heap of history when, as the norm goes, they have no idea about everything or almost […]

When Steve Miller, the vulture capitalist who drove Delphi into the ditch of America’s dreams, declared, “Bankruptcy is a growth industry,” he was smiling, but he wasn’t joking. Bankruptcy in the US isn’t a sign of economic distress or mismanagement.  It’s a business plan — calculated, cunning, and void of redeeming social value.  American Airlines […]

Who controls capital, and what does capital control?  The concept of “capital” in this context must be corporate enterprise.  By this metric the commanding heights of capital in the United States would be the Fortune 500 or 1,000, perhaps a thousand or so more, with an array of satellite firms numbering in the tens of […]

John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff at Occupy Wall Street.  Photo by Carrie Ann Naumoff This is a reconstruction from notes of a talk delivered at a teach-in on “The Capitalist Crisis and the Environment” organized by the Education and Empowerment Working Group, Occupy Wall Street, Zuccotti Park (Liberty Plaza), New York, October 23, 2011. […]

John Bellamy Foster: Economic crises are functional to the system in that a crisis helps capital readjust its imbalances, disproportions, as Marxian theories often say, and it sets the basis for a renewed period of expansion.  So, regular business-cycle crises . . . help the system. . . .  But, in addition to cycles . […]

The Knowledge Liberation Front proposes bankruptcy and basic income as “knowledge against financial capitalism.”  But does this proposal not actually serve as knowledge for financial capitalism: i.e., Bankruptcy + Basic Income = Social Democracy under the Neoliberal Regime of Accumulation?  An example of how the Left, not the Right, innovates capitalism? — Ed. See, also, […]

The US Census Bureau recently reported what most Americans already knew.  Poverty is deepening.  The gap between rich and poor is growing.  Slippage soon into the ranks of the poor now confronts tens of millions of Americans who long thought of themselves as securely “middle class.” The reality is worse than the Census Bureau reports. […]

What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know about Capitalism is a short, accessible introduction to the ecological crisis that is intended for a wide audience — why did you decide to write a book like this, and why now? In the fall of 2008 I attended a conference where discussion of the environment was prominent, although […]

A is for Airstrike; B is for Barack Obama; C is for Capitalism.

There is a pervasive view that growth under capitalism, though it may worsen poverty, even absolute poverty, to start with, eventually leads to a lowering of poverty.  The experience of the English Industrial Revolution is invoked in this context.  There has been a huge debate among economic historians about the impact of the Industrial Revolution […]

Iran’s biggest economic problem is the growing production slump at its factories and workshops.  For both workers and the business elite, Iran’s domestic industrial troubles are far more pressing — and generating far more public anxiety — than international sanctions. The biggest danger for Iran in 2011 is the combination of higher unemployment and inflation […]

The anti-colonial struggle in the third world countries had brought together workers, peasants, agricultural labourers, artisans, middle class intellectuals, and even the national bourgeoisie into one camp, demanding decolonisation.  This was a reflection of the fact that colonialism, or imperialism (if one uses the term in an inclusive sense to refer to all stages of […]

  David A. Kideckel.  Getting By in Postsocialist Romania: Labor, the Body, and Working-Class Culture.  Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008.  xii + 266 pp.  $65.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-253-34957-6; $24.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-253-21940-4. During the last twenty years, Romanian mass media and most Romanian intellectuals have typically portrayed the miners of the Jiu Valley in Romania […]

Capitalism is supposed to bring in modernity, which includes a secular polity where “babas” and “swamys”, qua “babas” and “swamys”, have no role.  Many have even defended neo-liberal reforms on the grounds that they hasten capitalist development and hence our march to modernity.  The Left has always rejected this position.  It has argued that in […]

One less emphasised lesson from the global financial crisis was that developing countries that are successful in attracting foreign financial investors take a hit when such a crisis occurs because of a reverse flow of capital.  Foreign financial firms needing to cover losses or meet commitments at home withdraw their capital, generating a credit crunch […]

I absolutely love how shamelessly frank Naguib Sawiris‘s tweets tend to be. . . Hossam el-Hamalawy is an Egyptian socialist, journalist, and photographer.  Visit his blog: .  Follow Hossam el-Hamalawy at .  This article was first published in his blog on 21 May 2011 under a Creative Commons license. | Print