Subjects Archives: Capitalism

There is an entire genre of theory explaining why the Western capitalist democracies did not undergo socialist revolution in the 20th Century, as Classical Marxism had predicted.  Not surprisingly, most of this material comes from the Left itself.1 We can include Antonio Gramsci’s work on hegemony in this genre, as well as the entire output of […]

This is a serious subject.

The summit meeting of leaders of the eight most highly industrialized powers on the planet took place July 7-9 at a mountain retreat on the banks of the Toyako, a lake formed inside a volcanic crater located in the north of the island of Hokkaido, in the northern reaches of the Japanese archipelago. It would be hard to choose a site more removed and distant from the madding crowd than this.

  David Harvey is a Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the City University of New York (CUNY) and author of various books.  He has been teaching Karl Marx’s Capital, Volume I for nearly 40 years.  Help keep this open course online: donate.

Prophecies of Downfall The fact that Marx finally began with the composition of his long-planned economic work in the winter of 1857/1858 was directly occasioned by the economic crisis that broke out in the autumn of 1857 and the concomitant expectations of a deep trauma from which capitalism would no longer recover.  “I am working […]

As May Day approaches, there are four things that are worth remembering: For workers, May Day does not celebrate a state holiday or gifts from the state but commemorates the struggle of workers from below. The initial focus of May Day was a struggle for the shorter workday. The struggle for the shorter workday is […]

John Bellamy Foster, Marxist ecologist and editor of Monthly Review, addressed the Climate Change I Social Change Conference on “Capitalism and Climate Change,” Sydney, April 11, 2008.  Foster’s talk was part of a panel discussing “Climate Change and Its Social Roots.”  The conference was organized by Green Left Weekly.  Below is Foster’s talk in five […]

Tuesday, March 18 marked the fifth anniversary of the arrest of more than 70 quislings, the capos of imperialism’s fifth column in Cuba who, paid by the U.S. government, violate the laws of the land and share the opinion that this dark corner of the world should be swept off the map. On that date…

In this reflection I will go by news received from different sources, including international cable services, –without specifically recognizing any of them as the information source, but strictly abiding by the text of the news- books, documents, the Internet, and even questions asked to well-informed sources.

The empire is not resigning itself to being the only loser at the Rio Group meeting held in Santo Domingo on March 7. It wants to set up the bloody mess once more. That is not difficult to demonstrate.

The ideology of neoliberal globalization has been on a roll since the early 1980s.  It was not in fact a new idea in the history of the modern world-system, although it claimed to be one.  It was rather the very old idea that the governments of the world should get out of the way of […]

Many aspects of our “efficient” capitalism combined to produce the credit meltdown that now threatens ever more aspects of the global economy.  One was the private rating companies’ failure to accurately assess and honestly reveal the risks of securities based on a “bundle” of loans (securities that provide their owners with a portion of that […]

“O there are times, we must confess To harboring a whim — we Like to picture old Karl Marx Sliding down our chimney” — Susie Day “Help fund the good fight.   By contributing to MR, you help reinforce the left and reclaim the future.” — Richard D. Vogel “To do my part, I just […]

“O there are times, we must confess To harboring a whim — we Like to picture old Karl Marx Sliding down our chimney” — Susie Day “Help fund the good fight.   By contributing to MR, you help reinforce the left and reclaim the future.” — Richard D. Vogel “To do my part, I just […]

“O there are times, we must confess To harboring a whim — we Like to picture old Karl Marx Sliding down our chimney” — Susie Day “Help fund the good fight.   By contributing to MR, you help reinforce the left and reclaim the future.” — Richard D. Vogel “To do my part, I just […]

The Los Angeles Times reports that Disneyland is retooling its boats-on-water rides because of the raging obesity epidemic in the United States, “to deal with the delicate problem of bottoming-out boats.” People are simply getting too fat for the existing rides, including the now satirically named “It’s a Small World”: “Forty-one years after the whimsical […]

Author’s Note:  The appearance of General Petraeus’s Counterinsurgency Field Manual, published recently for the US book trade by the University of Chicago Press, has created a stir because of charges of pilfered scholarship, damage to the reputation of UC, and the role of anthropologist Montgomery McFate in writing the book.  The mission of social science […]

The recent UAW ratification of the Chrysler contract that contains many of the same provisions that were adopted in the labor agreement signed with GM last month is another major blow to the jobs and welfare of US autoworkers.  Globalization, the Big Three’s grand strategy of pitting the workers of North America against one another […]

Everything went well during the summer of 2007.  The economy was in an upswing and stock-market prices rose even faster.  Then the end of the housing boom in the United States triggered an international financial crisis.  Up to now it has been contained by heavy central-bank intervention; but the euphoria is gone.  The world of […]

Understanding globalization, the main trend of capitalism at the beginning of the 21st century, is critical because of the many ways that it is undermining the lives and communities of working people in North America and around the world.  Few industries in the developed nations that are not specifically location-bound have been able to resist […]

When the United States and its NATO allies started the war on Kosovo, Cuba immediately defined her position on the front page of the newspaper Granma, on March 26, 1999. This was done in a Declaration of her Ministry of Foreign Affairs under the title of “Cuba’s appeal to end NATO’s unjustified aggression against Yugoslavia.”