Subjects Archives: Class

“Ecosocialist politics is based on recognizing that a sound ecological policy cannot be achieved within a capitalist framework. In order to restore (to the extent possible) the health of the ecosphere, it is necessary that economic decisions be no longer based on the capitalist goals of maximizing profit and accumulating wealth.”

Widespread privatisation of public goods in many societies is systematically eliminating human rights protections and further marginalising those living in poverty, according to a hard-hitting new report. The report was transmitted to the UN General Assembly on 19 October.

“In Chicago instead of funding healthcare, the things we need, we have been divested from. And that’s part of a neoliberal project that’s been hegemonic since the 1970s… capitalism sets the conditions for everything that’s happened.”

This secret memo was discovered in the waste basket of a high-ranking staffer in the European Commission. The memo from “the Coalition” begins “Dear Angela, Teresa, Emmanuel…” and has a further list of first names—heads of state and secretaries or ministers of finance, health and human services—were mostly scribbled over with marker.

At a time when the American population is radicalizing, when popular movements are coalescing around “radical” demands—Medicare for All, the abolition of ICE, tuition-free college, etc.—it can be useful to draw collective inspiration from the Workers’ Bill proposed by the U.S. communist party in 1930.

‘The essential difference between the various economic forms of society, between, for instance, a society based on slave-labour, and one based on wage-labour, lies only in the mode in which this surplus-labour is in each case extracted from the actual producer, the labourer.’ —Marx

Marxists have long understood that the workplace is the primary strategic site of class struggle, and that class struggle is essential for cohering a radicalized working-class majority with the capacity and will to overthrow capitalism in favor of socialism. At the same time, Marxists recognize our moral responsibility to oppose—and the strategic necessity to fight—all forms of exploitation and oppression.

The argument I’ve been making during this series on utopia is that the utopian moment of the Marxian alternative to mainstream economics is critique.*

Marketplace’s Kai Ryssdal is no class warrior.

To this day, “NUMSA has not deviated from its perspective of Marxism, Leninism and its goal of building a socialist South Africa,” says Karl Cloete

In this episode, we speak with Fadhel Kaboub (@fadhelkaboub), associate professor of economics at Denison University and President of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity. Fadhel outlines a new critical approach to postcolonial political economy, arguing that re-gaining financial sovereignty is a crucial next step for postcolonial nations hoping to achieve social, economic, and environmental justice.

As we head into the 2018 elections feminists of all sorts must make sure that there is a revolutionary commitment to restructure the massive system of oppression maintained by sexual violence. Becoming a part of the existing structure is not enough—nor is simply being female.

Joe Hayns talks to Kim Moody about how global capital is reshaping the terrain of class struggle-and how workers are adapting.

The constant threat of detention and deportation discourages the undocumented employee from demanding or organizing for more pay and better working conditions—and this status is preferred by big corporations and the superrich, who profit handsomely as a result.

In this episode, Money on the Left cohost Maxximilian Seijo (@maxseijo) expands upon the argument made in his video essay, “Inglorious Basterds: Nazi Desire Fully Employed,” which takes a neochartalist lens to Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds (2008).

Liberals like to talk about all kinds of social ills and identity-laden tensions—but not class struggle. That’s their persistent and enduring blindspot.

In our inaugural episode, we consider the recent resurgence of full employment politics in the United States from both a political and historical perspective with historian David Stein (@davidpstein).

The 2016 presidential exit polls “substantially underestimated the number of Democratic white working-class voters…and overestimated the white college-educated Democratic electorate,” New York Times columnist Thomas Edsall (3/29/18) writes.

The term “white working class” captured much of the media analysis which sought to explain Trump’s meteoric rise and subsequent victory to the highest office in the United States. The obsession with polling and voting trends based in demographics is certainly nothing new.

Even in a comic-book movie, black American men are relegated to the lowest rung of political regard. So low that the sole white leading character in the movie, the CIA operative Everett Ross (Martin Freeman), gets to be a hero who helps save Wakanda.