Subjects Archives: Financialization

  • Another “Reform” Fraud from Chidambaram

      Analytical Monthly Review, published in Kharagpur, West Bengal, India, is a sister edition of Monthly Review.  Its April 2007 issue features the following editorial. — Ed. The “reform” offensive that started in 1991 as New Economic Policy has continued 15 years with different cover stories — as “recovery from BOP crisis” or “shining India” […]

  • 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 […]

  • Straight from the Billionaire’s Mouth

    Social critics, from Ida B. Wells to Noam Chomsky, recognize that the elite press can serve as the best tool against the elite.  Today’s business magazines have no problem “naming the system,” and they write with clarity and frankness on the inner workings of capitalism and imperialism.  My good friend and correspondent Skip recently sent […]

  • Neoliberalism and Canada’s Ruling Class

    For a discipline explicitly engaged in the study of power, particularly as exercised in liberal democracies, it is striking how little Canadian political science has actually examined the concentration of private economic power, the political organization of the business classes and the extension of that power into the political realm.  Indeed, Canadian political science has […]

  • Capital and Empire: An Interview with John Bellamy Foster

    Q.  2007 is the 140th anniversary of the publication of Volume One of Marx’s Capital.  In your opinion, what is its main contribution to understanding contemporary capitalism? Marx’s object in Capital was to explain capital as a social relation in the fullest dialectical sense and in the process to describe its law(s) of motion.  I […]

  • Income Inequalities, Living Wages, and Union Organizing

    It is now accepted across a wide spectrum of political thinking that the period of neoliberalism has sharpened income inequalities.  This has occurred along a number of dimensions.  The capitalist class has seen an increase in wealth from an increasing concentration of assets, a rapid run-up in asset prices, and corporate profits restored to historically […]

  • The Paris III Conference on Assistance to Lebanon: Who Aids Whom? [La conférence de Paris III pour le soutien au Liban : qui aide qui ?]

    Le 25 janvier 2007 se tenait, à Paris, la Conférence internationale de soutien au Liban, dite « Paris III », convoquée et présidée par Jacques Chirac. Etaient réunis les représentants de trente-six pays, notamment la secrétaire d’Etat américaine Condolezza Rice, et de quatorze institutions internationales dont le nouveau secrétaire général des Nations Unies Ban Ki-Moon, […]

  • 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 […]

  • Naked Imperialism: An Interview with John Bellamy Foster

    NAKED IMPERIALISM:The U.S. Pursuit of Global Dominance by John Bellamy FosterREAD EXCERPTBUY THIS BOOK John Bellamy Foster’s Naked Imperialism: The U.S. Pursuit of Global Dominance was published by Monthly Review Press in May 2006.  It consists of essays written between September 2001 and September 2005, addressing the origins of today’s undisguised imperialism, led by the […]

  • A Thing with Transcendental Qualities: Money as a Social Relationship in Capitalism

    An Introduction to Marx’ Notion of Money What is money?  This question hardly plays a role in everyday commerce.  What matters is that there is enough.  Bourgeois economic theories reduce money to its economic function.  But the ubiquity of money is fateful and presupposes certain conditions.  Hence, the critique of financial markets is incomplete when […]

  • When Economists Didn’t Buy the Free Market. . . : An Interview with Michael Perelman

    RAILROADING ECONOMICS: The Creation of the Free Market Mythology by Michael PerelmanBUY THIS BOOKRead Michael Perelman’s blog: UNSETTLING ECONOMICS: A Progressive Look at Economics and the Rest of the Screwed Up World. Michael Perlman is a longtime professor of economics at California State University, Chico.  A prolific author, his newest book is titled Railroading Economics: […]

  • In the Land of Bolivar

      Caracas, Venezuela — Under the elevated lines in the Kensington section of Philadelphia, the Kensington Welfare Rights Union has been waging a battle against poverty that has taken them to center stage of the World Social Forum in Caracas, Venezuela.  Led by Cheri Honkala, a formerly homeless mother, the KWRU began by building encampments […]

  • “Airline Workers United” Forms to Fight Concessions Industrywide

      Things seem to keep going from bad to worse for workers at Northwest Airlines (NWA).  While striking mechanics and cleaners face a bitter winter after more than four months on the picket line, pilots, flight attendants, gate/ramp agents, baggage handlers, customer service reps, and other union workers face a fresh round of givebacks against […]

  • New Orleans:

      The world watched as people of New Orleans were herded into the Superdome, only to find themselves in a wretched and unsanitary place with no food, water, or proper medical care. Those in areas of high flooding fled to their rooftops, begging rescue helicopters to airlift them to safety. Many died trapped in their […]