Subjects Archives: Movements

“Reformed” captain Jair Bolsonaro already committed to the “market” the handover of all decisions in the economic area to large capital, under the hegemony of financial capital and foreign corporations (as personified in Paulo Guedes and his Chicago Boys, including Levy in the Brazilian Development Bank-BNDES).

On January 1 in India, 5.5 million women formed a 620-kilometer wall across the length of the state of Kerala to fight for women’s rights to the Sabrimala temple. On the same day, Cuba celebrated 60 years since the 1959 revolution, which has been a persistent thorn in the side of global capital ever since.

The ideological battle must be fought not only with words but also with the production of images and visuals that propel the work of movements forward.

Act Five for the popular Yellow Vest revolt against poverty in France came on 15 December–but it was not the finale. The movement remains vibrant and determined, especially in big southern towns such as Toulouse and Bordeaux.

The onslaught of extreme weather and the increasingly stark scientific assessment leave no doubt that we face an ecological and civilizational emergency. But in the year since COP23 in Bonn, Germany, a constant stream of headlines and reports have confirmed that governments are not on track to meet their climate commitments.

A lot has been written and said critical of millennials. The business press has been tough on their spending habits.

It’s now official: workers around the world are falling behind. The International Labor Organization’s (ILO) latest Global Wage Report finds that, excluding China, real (inflation-adjusted) wages grew at an annual rate of just 1.1% in 2017, down from 1.8% in 2016. That is the slowest pace since 2008.

The honest answer is that I was asked to write something reflecting on Trump by my then editor at Scribe. In the immediate wake of the 2016 presidential election, many people were dumbfounded by the news out of the U.S. How could such an odious figure–such a transparent bigot and fraud–win power?

How to respond to the rise of national populism? The phenomenon is evident not only in Trump’s U.S. but throughout Europe, as shown in this book’s comprehensive review of changes in mass opinion. The book also attempts to provide a solution to the problem, one that will defend democracy, but in doing so it inadvertently highlights the bankruptcy of the liberal outlook.

The first model is a radical critique of all forms of bourgeois right, including employment rights, which are considered to constitute an ideological reflection of the capitalist mode of production, and therefore an inseparable companion of exploitation.

It has been almost a year since we got off the ground. Our offices across the world humming with activity. You have received forty-four newsletters from us, eleven dossiers and one notebook and one working document. More is on the way as we enter our second calendar year.

Lithuania is being shaken by an unprecedented teachers strike, which has now entered its fourth week and is causing severe anxiety, distress and panic among the ruling class and its political representatives. Already, Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis has been forced to sack not only the hated Education Minister, Petrauskienė, but also two other Ministers: for Culture, and the Environment.

Guzslován Gábor of the Federation of Metal Workers Union of Hungary talks about the impact of the ‘slave law’ passed by the far-right government of Viktor Orbán and the massive protests against it.

Bolsonaro has his eyes on Washington and the Trump administration, which is looking to the Jair-Eduardo pair, father and son, to facilitate its attacks on Cuba and Venezuela.

Political commentators see AMLO as a bigger threat than Bolsonaro.

On trial with other members of the Rhenish District Committee of Democrats in 1849, Karl Marx argued in a Cologne court that their prosecution was based upon “laws which the Crown itself has trampled into the dirt”.

Since November 17, France has been witnessing the massive Gilets jaunes or ‘Yellow Vests’ protests against the anti-working class policies of the Emmanuel Macron government. The protests against the rising economic burden on the people are also spreading to many other European countries.

In this interview with Venezuelanalysis, we talk to a central figure in a voluntary workers’ initiative to jumpstart industrial plants, both state‐owned and worker‐controlled.

It is sad to see how completely misrepresented Adam Smith (1723-1790) is when pundits call upon him to vindicate neoliberalism and the status quo. It seems many have not really bothered to read his works.

Nothing shows the crisis of neo-liberal capitalism more clearly than the popular uprising in France that is occurring under the banner of the “Yellow Vest” movement.