Subjects Archives: Political Economy

“By its nature,” Marx writes in the climactic passage of a magnificent but very dense section of the Grundrisse, capital “posits a barrier to labor and value-creation in contradiction to its tendency to expand them boundlessly. And in as much as it both posits a barrier specific to itself, and on the other side equally drives over and beyond every barrier, it is the living contradiction.”

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.

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.

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.

I think the left should stop talking about ‘neoliberalism’, as I argue in a recent journal article published in Capital & Class.

No matter how we measure it, most Americans are falling further and further behind the tiny group at the top.

A new book argues that words like “innovation” are doing more than telling you who to avoid at parties.

With what author and activist Naomi Klein calls “galloping momentum,” the “Green New Deal” promoted by Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., appears to be forging a political pathway for solving all of the ills of society and the planet in one fell swoop.

Monopoly capitalism emerged from “laissez-faire” capitalism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, allowing giant corporations to dominate the accumulation process.

In this episode, we’re joined by Jamee Moudud, a professor of economics at Sarah Lawrence College, Jamee draws on the tradition of critical legal studies to extend the constitutional theory of money to new historical and international contexts.

According to the new provision that was passed on Wednesday, employers can demand as much as 400 hours of overtime a year and can take three years to disburse the payments for the same.

After defeating a violent U.S.-backed coup attempt, Nicaragua’s elected government faces the NICA Act. The bill aims to force the Sandinistas from power by ratcheting up economic despair.

A philosopher, fisherman and former member of the Situationist International reflects on the Bolivarian Revolution.

Hello, Professor Drweski. My name is Maria Cernat. I am a feminist, an academic and a journalist writing for Baricada.org. I am a lecturer at the Communication Sciences and International Relations Department, Titu Maiorescu University. I was very curious, and I am sure our readers are too, about the situation in France. I have a few questions that I hope you could answer for our readers.

The United States is increasingly becoming dollarized. That’s because, for decades now, those at the bottom have been left behind, forced to attempt to get by in ever more precarious conditions.

Germany’s feverish political scene cooled off just a little. Two big sighs of relief permitted some people, at least temporarily, to stop chewing their fingernails.

As AMLO begins his presidential term in Mexico, he has been confronted by years of neoliberal policies, policies crafted by institutions like the IMF and the World Bank, who praised the selling off of Mexico’s assets as a model. When protestors contest this agenda—as they recently did at the G20 meeting in Buenos Aires—, the reply from leaders comes written in tear gas. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of farmers and thousands more of those who stood with them marched across Delhi to demand a parliamentary session to address the agrarian crisis.

Most economists and politicians sing the praises of competition. It is supposed to keep firms on their toes for the benefit of consumers and workers. Well, competition is certainly alive and well in the U.S., but the results are far from positive for working people.

The most significant feature of contemporary capitalism which is of relevance to the world of work is its inability to provide work to a substantial proportion of persons looking for it.