Subjects Archives: Economic Theory

  • Bailout Costs $8.5 Trillion: Interview with Nomi Prins

      The Real News: The 800 billion announced Tuesday and 7.76 trillion from the Bloomberg estimate add up to $8.56 trillion or $26,500 for every man, woman, or child in the United States.  We spoke to journalist and author Nomi Prins about where these trillions might come from. Nomi Prins: . . . All of […]

  • Ferment and Fetters in the Study of Kurdish Nationalism

    Hakan Ozoglu. Kurdish Notables and the Ottoman State: Evolving Identities, Competing Loyalties, and Shifting Boundaries.   Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004.  xv + 186 pp.  $35.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-7914-5993-5. Identifying Kurdish nationalism as “one of the most explosive and critical predicaments in the Middle East,” the author notes that “the subject regrettably […]

  • Monopoly-Finance Capital and the Crisis

      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: […]

  • Thomas Ferguson and Robert Johnson, Authors of “Bridge Loan to Nowhere”

      Play now: Download: mp3 file Cf: “Bridge Loan to Nowhere,” The Nation (22 September 2008) This interview was broadcast on the “Media Matters with Bob McChesney” program (AM580) on 28 September 2008. | | Print

  • The Myth of the Tragedy of the Commons

    Will shared resources always be misused and overused?  Is community ownership of land, forests, and fisheries a guaranteed road to ecological disaster?  Is privatization the only way to protect the environment and end Third World poverty?  Most economists and development planners will answer “yes” — and for proof they will point to the most influential […]

  • Crisis of Social Partnership: Collapse of National Pay Talks in Ireland

      The 21 year old social partnership pact between unions, employers and the Government in Ireland is entering one of its periodic crises as one national pay agreement Towards 2016 begins to run out and talks on a successor have collapsed. The Government is expected to attempt resuscitation in late August or early September, writes Padraig […]

  • Iran Should Sue to Stop US Attack

      Francis Boyle, Professor of International Law at the University of Illinois, proposes that Iran sue the U.S. in the World Court to enjoin it against threats to attack Iran. Part 1: The Libya Precedent “We filed papers with the International Court of Justice in the Hague, on behalf of Libya against the US and […]

  • Afghanistan Threatens to Become Obama’s Vietnam

      On the occasion of US Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s visit to Berlin, Christine Buchholz, a member of the Left Party executive board, comments: Many hopes are tied to Barack Obama, since George W. Bush is the most unpopular American President ever, and Obama promises to improve the social situation and bring the Iraq […]

  • From Marx to Morales: Indigenous Socialism and the Latin Americanization of Marxism

    Over the past decade, a new rise of mass struggles in Latin America has sparked an encounter between revolutionists of that region and many of those based in the imperialist countries.  In many of these struggles, as in Bolivia under the presidency of Evo Morales, Indigenous peoples are in the lead. Latin American revolutionists are […]

  • Global Economic Crisis: Interview with John Bellamy Foster

    The current global financial crisis is said to originate with a few dodgy “sub-prime” mortgages made by US banks to poor people. Yes, the financial crisis that began in late 2007 is associated with the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market.  But that is just one aspect of a much larger financial crisis and that […]

  • Critique of the Arab Left: On Palestine and Arab Unity

    The situation of the Arab Left is similar to “the phenomenon of the transformation of the Left” on the global scale and a reflection of it.  The reason is simple: the Arab Left, as a general rule though with some exceptions, was never a “Left” in the dialectical materialist sense.  It has always been a […]

  • Opening Doors to New Alliances: A Review of New Departures in Marxian Theory by Stephen A. Resnick and Richard D. Wolff

      NEW DEPARTURES IN MARXIAN THEORY by Stephen A. Resnick and Richard D. Wolff BUY THIS BOOK Being a Marxist requires considerable gumption — especially in the United States.  Those who take Marxism seriously in a hostile intellectual and political environment are only too aware of this struggle.  At worst, interest in Marxism is perceived […]

  • Our Views on the Black Brick Kiln and Other Incidents and Recommendations for the 17th Party Congress

    Let us refer to a famous poem by Mao that stirs excitement among us all: “A cuckoo is crying in the midnight until she throws up blood; she believes that her crying can bring the east wind back!”  We deeply hope our respected leaders will stir up the east wind! General Secretary Hu Jintao and […]

  • The Big Picture

    A People’s History of the World by Chris Harman Universal or synoptic histories are not favored by professional scholars.  As specialists, they prefer the detailed monograph to sweeping world histories.  They look askance at those naive enough to believe that global history can be encompassed in one volume.  They know better, they say. It is […]

  • Favorite Color: Red

    KARL MARX: A Life by Francis WheenBUY THIS BOOK It is fitting that a man who framed a dialectic based on violent contradiction — on thrust and counter-thrust, struggle and counter-struggle — should have lived a life fraught with contradictions.  In Francis Wheen’s biography, Karl Marx is neither hero nor nemesis, but a man of […]

  • A Historic Turn: What Is at Stake beyond the Wolfowitz Scandal?

      The Boards of the World Band and the International Monetary Fund that are meeting in Washington D.C. on 14-15 April are in dire straits.  The President of CADTM-Belgium, Eric Toussaint, explains. The Spring meetings of the WB and the IMF are taking place this weekend.  What is at stake? These two institutions are going […]

  • Capitalism’s Three Oscillations and the US Today

    Throughout its history and across its geography, capitalism has swung back and forth between private and state forms.  The former reduces while the latter enlarges the state’s intervention in the economy.  The economic events that precipitate swings (in both directions) have been various mixes of recession and widening inequality.  Political oscillations have paralleled the economic. […]

  • Leadership Development Unionism

      NOTE: The paper below was written in the early months of January 2001.  While the paper’s anticipation of the centrifugal forces pulling at the labor movement and the possibility of international unions “literally leaving the AFL-CIO” unfortunately proved prescient of the Change to Win split, it has been even more difficult than anticipated to […]

  • Where Is the German Trade Union Movement and Where Is It Going?

      Germany is the world’s leading exporter and the third largest industrial economy, following Japan and the United States.  German multi-nationals are drowning in supreme opulence, yet the wages of German workers remain severely depressed.  The Wall Street Journal, engaging in low-intensity class struggle labor journalism, confirmed in its January article “German Unions See Leverage […]

  • Act Now to Save Net Neutrality

      Annual Fundraising AppealFriends of MRZine and Monthly Review! The continuing existence of MRZine and Monthly Review depends on the support of our readers.  Unlike many other publications, we make all new Monthly Review articles, as well as MRZine articles, available online, free of charge.  We do so without drawing any advertising money at all […]