Subjects Archives: Political Economy

In Marx there is a concept of an alternative to capitalism that provides a foundation for the needed effort to reinvigorate anti-capitalist movements. But a richer, more adequate understanding of socialism that addresses the realities of contemporary capitalism today still awaits us.

There are strong reasons to expect a recession within the next year or so. And it will likely hit an increasingly vulnerable working class hard.

This is a book that has been pronounced dead or obsolete many times, but it keeps bouncing back, with the latest recovery in interest and sales just after the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. So why do so many people all over the world still read (or try to read) Karl Marx’s Capital today?

Yanis Varoufakis’s entire proposal regarding debt was and is unacceptable from a left-wing point of view because it presupposes evacuating any debate as to the legality and legitimacy of the debts whose repayment is being demanded of Greece.

Let this be a warning to economists, labor leaders, Democratic officials and all progressives fighting  for economic and social justice: “progressive-appearing” economic proposals from Trump  are likely to be thinly veiled attempts to suck in unsuspecting allies in support of a neo-fascist, authoritarian movement that is increasingly showing its true colors. They are designed, quite clearly, to build support for Trump and his business allies. Don’t be fooled, don’t be bought off, and be vigilant.

It is a devastating fact that James Baldwin is our contemporary; so much so, that the matter of his relevance seems either pressing or redundant depending on to whom one speaks. Raoul Peck’s I Am Not Your Negro, a “cinematic séance” (The Guardian), is being taken as the completion of Baldwin’s unfinished Remember This House, […]

New technological platforms like Uber are promising to reshape society: but what is the impact for people and the world we live in? What does this mean for our environment?

We may be living through one of those moments in history that future historians will look back on as a watershed, a period of flux that marked a transition to quite different economic and social arrangements. Unfortunately, in human history a ‘moment’ can be a very long time.

During their storied careers, Magdoff and Sweezy edited the journal Monthly Review, which Sweezy co-founded in 1949, and which still stands as the longest continuously published socialist magazine in the United States.

The hegemony of international finance capital, which led to economies “opening” themselves up to the vortex of global financial flows, demolished both Nehruvian dirigisme and East Asian neo-mercantilism. And the same hegemony has now brought the world capitalist economy to a crisis from which it is in no position to recover.

Monopoly vs. competition

Lower the curtain, change the scene. The atmosphere in the government building in Berlin on August 2nd is fully different, not a bit of similarity. Those present, most in tailored apparel, sit in soft leather chairs and sip aromatic drinks from fine glassware. Who are they? Germany’s power people!

Amazon is an unusual company. With a market capitalization hitting $500bn at the end of July and no profit to show, it is not a company trying to be a part of the market, it is trying to become the market.

I recommend this book, along with the rest of Standing’s body of work, as an example of the kind of outside-the-box thinking the Left needs in place of the dinosaur Old Left’s organization and policy models if it is to be relevant to the new economy.

I think Marxism analyses the contemporary world in a way which nobody else did. Lenin had said the strength of Marxism lies in the fact that it is true. The point is that it is a genuine scientific discovery.

Why are so many modern capitalist societies addicted to militarism? On the one hand, these societies are intensely growth oriented and expansionist. On the other hand, militarism is a convenient way of absorbing economic surplus and thereby countering the stagnationist propensity of monopoly capitalism.

The decline in unionization is one of the most important factors promoting the concentration of income at the upper end of the income distribution. The statement may not surprise you, but the fact that this was the conclusion of an IMF study of the causes of inequality might.

How does race relate to class in capitalism? Is it intrinsic and essential to the reproduction of capital, or merely an accidental feature of particular capitals? In this recent essay by Richard Seymour, and originally published on his Patreon, Seymour considers a debate within Marxism on the relationship between class, race and capitalism.

The latest issue of the London Review of International Law features an interesting review essay by Robert Howse, in which he makes the case for progressive international lawyers attending to the discipline of economics and the insights that can be gained from it, in particular from what he sees as more progressive economists. Howse’s essay […]

The indirect effect of ​the increase in income inequality is economically more injurious than the erosion of company earnings or a stock market downturn.