Subjects Archives: Labor

The relationship between oppression and class has always been an important question for Marxists and has been the subject of numerous debates between socialists and among the left more broadly.

Arielle Concilio speaks with Marxist labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein on the lessons of the Teachers’ Spring and the signs of a resurgent labor movement in the U.S.

Measures aimed at protecting US industry have affected small companies across sectors.

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.

Ambassador Nikki Haley’s decision last week to withdraw the United States from the United Nations Human Rights Council is remarkable. The United States is the first nation in the body’s 12-year history to voluntarily remove itself from membership in the council while serving as a member.

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).

Four decades ago Ed Sadlowski was the elected leader of 130,000 blue-collar workers, part of a United Steelworkers (USW) membership then totaling 1.4 million, about twice what it is today.

Unions and “work ethic”

First there was the Great Gatsby curve. Then there was the Proust index. Now, thanks to Neil Irwin, we have the Marx ratio.

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).

Does anyone really need any additional evidence of the lopsided nature of the current recovery?

In a 2014 study, Sorapop Kiatpongsan and Michael Norton asked about 55,000 people around the globe, including 1,581 participants in the United States, how much money they thought corporate CEOs made compared with unskilled factory workers.

In view of the historic May Day, May 1st, analysts from Monthly Review, the famous independent socialist magazine, identify tasks the working classes should press with. The following interviews were conducted in early April with John Bellamy Foster, Professor and Editor of Monthly Review; Fred Magdoff, Professor Emeritus, and one of Monthly Review’s closest associates; […]

Dennis Broe traces the history of the representation of labour on screen, and finds inspiration for celebrating May Day and continuing Marx’s struggle against capitalism.

There are two kinds of on-going ‘attack’ on the materiality of the body (and nature) in capitalist society. A discursive attack inspired by post-structuralism; and an actual, objectively-existing, material attack by capital and its state. The latter is the focus of this article.

In Chávez The Radical XIV, Chávez reflects on the contradictions of public planning and the transition to a socialist economy, within a system that remains dominated by capitalism.

At the Labor Notes conference in Chicago this coming weekend, 2,500 rank-and-file activists will attend the largest gathering ever hosted by the now Brooklyn-based labor education project. This will be the nineteenth Labor Notes conference, which started in 1981.

Unions have no choice but to put major resources into confronting the reality of precarious work and organising around whatever can be won in the workplace. Otherwise they will simply wither.

The main theorist of dependency anticipated trends of neoliberal globalization. He analyzed productive globalization, the centrality of exploitation and the relative weight of surplus value transfers. But the employment crisis exceeds what was envisaged by Marini, in a scenario disrupted by the mutation of the United States, the collapse of the USSR and the rise of China.

It happened gradually, but thanks to the U.S. media, economic news has largely been reduced to stock market reporting. Want to know how the economy is doing? Check the S&P 500 Index. Want to know whether the latest Trump proposal is good or bad? Check the S&P 500 Index.