Subjects Archives: Capitalism

Over the 1980s and 1990s we witnessed the simultaneous rise of two reactionary political projects, Hindutva and neoliberalism, to a position of dominance in India.  Such a combination is not unusual, in that neoliberalism is usually allied with and promoted by socially reactionary forces (such as the hyper-nationalism of the “bureaucratic-authoritarian” dictatorships in Latin America, […]

Today, I read that the US Federal Reserve had opened a new line of credit for the Central Banks of Mexico, Brazil, South Korea and Singapore.

John Bellamy Foster: We need to go down to 350 parts per million [the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere], which means very big social transformations on a scale that would be considered revolutionary by anybody in society today — transformation of our whole society quite fundamentally.  We have to aim at […]

Here is Capital, Volume One, pictured as a word cloud identifying 125 words that most frequently appear in the volume and representing the size of each word in proportion to its frequency (the more frequently a word is used in the volume, the larger it is in the picture). Click here to download the word […]

  金融危機是全球化資本主義的罩門？ 知名經濟學者阿敏專訪 Samir Amin: “It’ a monster, yes, it’s a monster, but it’s a monster which can be defeated also.  This pattern of globalization, this pattern of the exclusive rule of dominant capital, that is, of oligopolies, is not acceptable and is not accepted.  The breakdown is starting by the financial crisis, because financial […]

In Zulia, Chavez made reference to “comrade Sarkozy,” and did so with a certain irony but he meant no offense. On the contrary, he was rather recognizing the sincerity of the president when he spoke in Beijing in his capacity as chairman of the European Community.

This widening and deepening economic crisis is transforming US politics.  New possibilities are emerging for activists and potential activists if they can see and respond creatively to them. One possibility follows from rethinking the Obama candidacy in the light of recent German politics.  Obama has already garnered an historically disproportionate share of the campaign contributions […]

Six months ago the United States was already deep in a financial crisis — the roots of which were explained in this article.   Yet, the conditions now are several orders of magnitude worse and are affecting the entire world.  We are clearly in the midst of one of the great crises in the history […]

Don’t panic!  That’s the panicked cry of governments and central bankers around the world.  Meanwhile their behaviour shows that they expect a very, very deep recession. After repetition over more than a quarter of century — by mainstream economists, ministers, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund — neo-liberal platitudes have been forgotten.  Today, we […]

  Klassekampen: Is the credit crisis a symptom of overaccumulation of capital?  It seems to me that investments worldwide, but especially in the United States, were funneled into the traditionally “safe” housing market following the bursting of the dotcom-bubble.  This overinvestment in turn generated a new bubble, thus causing today’s havoc.  Is this correct? JBF: […]

The Will Miller Lecture, University of Vermont, October 28, 2008 Like many people who do not live around here, and maybe some who do, I had not heard of Will Miller, so, on being invited to be part of the Will Miller Social Justice Lecture series, I went to the organization’s Web site and learned […]

I did not want to write a third consecutive reflection, but I can not leave that for Monday.

There is one accurate response to Bush’s “democratic capitalism”: Chavez’s democratic socialism. There wouldn’t be a more accurate way to express the big contradiction that exists between North and South in our hemisphere, between the ideas of Bolivar and those of Monroe.

Capitalism happens.  When and where it does, capitalism casts its own special shadow: a self-critique of capitalism’s basic flaws that says modern society can do better by establishing very different, post-capitalist economic systems.  This critical shadow rises up to terrify capitalism when — in crisis periods such as now — capitalism hits the fan.  Karl […]

A new crisis of capitalism, in the style of 1929.  The theories of casino capitalism are confirmed.  The US government contradicts itself again and heavily intervenes, demonstrating that its confidence in the market isn’t as great as its propaganda displayed.  Neoliberal capitalism spills its guts, and the theories of the Left — Keynesian or anti-capitalist […]

  Jamaica became independent from Britain in 1962.  After almost a decade of “democratic socialist” experimentation in the 1970s, it was made a “model state” for Reaganism and neoliberalism in the Caribbean and Central America during the 1980s, having already undergone an IMF structural adjustment program in 1977.  As a result of economic and political […]

Modern economic class struggle, the unremitting, sometimes hidden, sometimes open, fight between capitalists and workers that erupted in the 19th century and dominated the 20th, is taking on new forms and dimensions in the 21st century. The stakes of this continuing conflict are higher than they have ever been.  Every aspect of human life on […]

  The Movement of Financial Capital In recent years, there has been an intensive, continuous process of concentration and centralization of corporations operating and controlling the entire production process of global agriculture. Concentration is the concept used in political economy to explain the movement of large corporations to combine, accumulate, and become large groups.  Thus, […]

Perhaps some governments are unaware of the concrete facts, and so for that reason Raúl’s message setting Cuba’s position seemed to us to be very timely. I shall be generous in the aspects that cannot be dealt with in a brief and precise official statement.

  “When we talk about a financial crisis, it’s really only a symptom. . . .  Financial adventurism is essentially what we have been witnessing for the last thirty or forty years, exploding from time to time in the form of financial crisis.  It’s really adventurist, speculative capital which has to find in some way […]

On October 19, 1950, more than 400 thousand voluntary Chinese combatants, on orders from Mao Zedong, crossed the Yalu and waylaid the US troops that were advancing towards the Chinese border. The US units, surprised by the vigorous response of the country they had underestimated, were forced to withdraw towards a region near the southern coast, pushed back by the joint action of the Chinese and North Korean forces. Stalin, who was immensely cautious, offered far less support than Mao had anticipated, though the MiG-15 aircrafts piloted by the Soviets, over a limited 42.5-miles front, proved valuable help during the initial stage of the conflict in protecting land forces during their intrepid advance.