-
Billionaires and the Pandemic
WEALTH distribution data are notoriously difficult to interpret. This is because variations in stock prices affect wealth distribution, so that a stock market boom suddenly makes the rich appear much richer, while a stock market collapse makes wealth distribution less unequal overnight.
-
Ruthless criticism
But where did Marx’s critique of mainstream economics come from? It certainly did not emerge in one fell swoop, as a ready-made theory of capitalism. And it wasn’t produced in isolation, independently of the society within which it was first produced and then further elaborated.
-
Limits of mainstream economics today
Keynes’s criticisms of neoclassical economics set off a wide-ranging debate that came to define the terms of—and, ultimately, the limits of debate within—mainstream economics.
-
Mainstream economics today: Keynesian
Once it was created as a new theory of capitalism, neoclassical economics expanded its influence—in its original countries as well as elsewhere.
-
Mainstream economics today
Readers today will be more familiar with contemporary mainstream economics than with the mainstream economics of Marx’s day. So, let’s start there.
-
Economic theories and systems
In the previous chapter, we saw that Marxian economics represents a two-fold critique: a critique of mainstream economic theory and a critique of capitalism, the economic and social system celebrated by mainstream economists.
-
Money After Redlining with Rebecca Marchiel
In this episode, Money on the Left hosts speak with Rebecca Marchiel, Assistant Professor of History at University of Mississippi, about her important new book, After Redlining: The Urban Reinvestment Movement in the Era of Financial Deregulation (University of Chicago Press, 2020). After Redlining tells the story of the anti-racist urban reinvestment movement in early […]
-
Marxian economics for the 21st century?
It’s an obvious question for those of us living now, in the twenty-first century. Is Marxian economics still relevant?
-
Why Marxian economics?
One of the best reasons for studying Marxian economics is to understand all those criticisms—the criticisms of mainstream economic theory and the criticisms of capitalism.
-
Deutsche Bank money laundering scandal could create greatest economic crisis in history
The leak of the FinCEN Files over the weekend has rocked global markets and augurs a financial crisis of epic proportions as Deutsche Bank hovers over the precipice.
-
Beyond the mainstream
This is certainly not the first time people have looked beyond mainstream economics.
-
Contemporary relevance of Marxian economics
My goal is to write a textbook that can fulfill two purposes: first, a stand-alone book for courses that are focused on Marxian economics or survey courses that have a section devoted to Marxian economics; second, it will also be useful as a companion text in a course that is based on reading all of or major selections from Karl Marx’s Capital.
-
Times remain hard, especially for low-wage workers
The current economic crisis has hit workers hard. Unemployment rates remain high, with total weekly initial claims for unemployment insurance benefits continuing to grow.
-
Chart of the day
The number of continued claims for unemployment compensation, while below its peak, rose from the previous week and was more than 29 million American workers—a figure that includes workers receiving Pandemic Unemployment Assistance.
-
If humanity is to have any future at all
The history of capitalism as a world system is punctuated by struggles for world hegemony between declining hegemonic powers and rising states, usually leading to world wars. We are now in such a period, which had been building for some time under Obama and is now being pursued much more openly and belligerently under Trump.
-
Billionaires—pandemic edition
2019 was a very good year for the world’s wealthiest individuals. The normal workings of global capitalism created both more billionaires and more combined wealth owned by those billionaires.
-
“A disturbing milestone”: America’s top 12 plutocrats now own $1 Trillion in wealth
New figures from the Institute for Policy Studies show that, despite a pandemic that has stunted the economy for months, America’s billionaire class is becoming richer than ever, adding nearly $700 billion to their fortune since the nationwide lockdown in March.
-
“Your Economics Professor Is Almost Certainly a Charlatan”
Mary Filippo began in 2004 to audit economics classes in the hope that she could “learn something about globalization. Does it really help people in developing countries? What are its downsides?” She did not learn these things.
-
Why do we need to Transform Economics, and how do we do it?
First, a lot of it is simply wrong: that is, it is misleading about how economies work and the implications of economic policies and processes. For decades now, a significant and powerful lobby within the discipline has peddled half-truths and absolute falsehoods on many critical issues.
-
Xi’s article on Marxist political economy in contemporary China to be published
An article by President Xi Jinping on opening new horizons of the Marxist political economy in contemporary China will be published Sunday.