Subjects Archives: Political Economy

  • Over 170 years after Engels, Britain is still a country that murders its poor

    Over 170 years after Engels, Britain is still a country that murders its poor

    Spending cuts, deregulation, outsourcing: between them they have turned a state supposedly there to protect and support citizens into a machine to make money for the rich while punishing the poor. It’s never described like that, of course. Class warfare is passed off as book-keeping. Accountability is tossed aside for “commercial confidentiality”, while profiteering is dressed up as economic dynamism. One courtesy we should pay the victims of Grenfell is to drop the glossy-brochure euphemisms. Let’s get clear what happened to them: an act of social murder, straight out of Victorian times.

  • French Election Posters

    The 2017 French Elections: A Grim Farce

    The experience of the last three decades has clearly demonstrated that social struggles in and of themselves are not sufficient to stop the drift to the right and re-establish a dynamic of social advances. That requires going beyond defensive strategies and creating a positive alternative project that is authentically social and democratic.

  • Capitalists Tipping Scales "Change"

    Finance, Crisis, and Stagnation

    In this presentation Mexie begins to elaborate the theory of monopoly capitalism developed by Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy, incorporating recent theoretical development by John Bellamy Foster and Robert McChesney. Mexie has produced a number of other videos on the topic as well.

  • Tim Portlock, CA$H_4_GOLD

    This new museum imagines a world where capitalism is dead

    Visitors will be invited to reflect on capitalism as if looking back at it from a world in which capitalism is dead. “Much of the evidence of capitalism is either eroding over time or simply not known or easily accessible to the public,” the mission statement reads. “Our ambition is to connect and integrate these many efforts before the evidence is erased forever.”

  • May-Corbyn

    The general election in Great Britain

    When it came to the general election in Britain, everything was settled in advance. The Conservative Party led by Theresa May was supposed to prevail. The Labour Party, victim of its own confusion, its refusal to support the will of millions of members and voters who wanted to put an end to the straitjacket of the European Union, was supposed to be trounced.

  • Venezuelan Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez

    Venezuela responds to Pence

    Responding to the United States vice president’s recent statements that “democracy is undermined” in Venezuela, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez strongly rejected Pence’s claims.

    The Bolivarian leaders denounced the plan to destabilize Venezuela as “imperialist,” saying that the “extremism” and “militarism” of the U.S is a “serious threat to humanity.”

  • venezuelan-right-wing

    The political defeat of the Venezuelan right-wing

    Foreign support to the Venezuelan right in the form of money, weapons, and propaganda is ongoing. Some oil corporations, such as Exxon Mobil, are directly involved in destabilization policies.

  • No War on Korea

    The need for a new U.S. foreign policy toward North Korea

    USA-North Korean relations remain very tense even though the threat of a new Korean War has receded. Yet the U.S. government remains determined to tighten economic sanctions on North Korea and continues to plan for a military strike aimed at destroying the country’s nuclear infrastructure.

  • Capitalism or Socialism

    What is to constitute the new “yes” is the problem

    For Klein, developing a meaningful anti-shock politics involves some combination of what Sanders represented and what Clinton symbolized: Sanders with respect to class and economics, Clinton as far as race and gender, and everything else. Imperialism and war scarcely enter the argument.

  • Populism and ‘post truth’

    Populism has emerged as the latest bad word in the liberal commentary on current politics in the West. The understanding is simple. Populist politicians are supposed to appeal to the ‘people’ and stoke their jealousy against those who are economically, socially and politically successful. Another word used in liberal discourse to identify extreme right wing is ‘post truth’, designated as the word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries. The implication is that popular opinion now is easily swayed by emotionally charged rhetoric and fake news having no factual basis. The claim that this is happening only now is odd.

  • The continental revolution

    Between the end of the Civil War and the early 20th century, the United States underwent one of the most profound economic transformations that any country has ever experienced. In 1865, the United States lagged far behind Britain in manufacturing output; by 1900, it would surpass the totals of Britain, France, and Germany combined.

  • Globalization chart

    Globalization and executive compensation

    Growing inequality has been one of the most salient features of the US economy over the last 40 years. A variety of explanations for this rapid growth in top incomes have been proposed, including growing firm size new technology, the market for superstars, poor governance, and changes in top tax rates.

  • ‘What we see this week is a shallow farce, beginning with a plan to move air traffic control to a private, non-profit corporation run by the airlines.’

    The thing about Trump’s infrastructure plan is: it doesn’t really exist

    The Republican leaders of Congress killed off Trump’s much touted infrastructure plan months before he even reached the Oval Office. What we are left with is a farce.

  • A Theory of Imperialism

    New Perception of Imperialism

    If accumulating wealth is the basic objective of capitalism, organising production using wage labour is only one of the ways it can be achieved. What finance does is to open an alternative route to reach the same objective, that is via transaction.

  • Roaul Peck

    Roaul Peck’s newest film: “The Young Karl Marx”

    The Young Karl Marx poster in GermanHaitian writer, producer, and director, Roal Peck—whose blockbuster documentary I Am Not Your Negro has become the highest-grossing non-fiction release from Magnolia Pictures—has chosen the Young Karl Marx as the topic of his next film.

  • David Clarke, nominated for assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security

    Trump nominates actual fascist David Clarke for Department of Homeland Security

    Words like fascist and authoritarian get thrown around too promiscuously. But there is no other way to describe David Clarke, who today announced that he was named assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. (The Department has not confirmed Clarke’s appointment.) Clarke occupies the extremist, anti-democratic fringe of far-right officials, even by the standards of the Trump administration.

  • Protesting Miners in Iran

    Silicon Valley’s toys contribute to Iran’s 2017 presidential election

    With a few days to go to Iran’s upcoming presidential elections on 19 May, six candidates could survive the vetting process of the Guardian Councils.… The role of the media, both in Iran and throughout the diaspora, to shape public opinion is significant. Iranian state media, radio and television are supposed to give the “hopefuls” an opportunity to continue campaigning for office, as they speak about their future plans and defend past performances, but they often fall short.

  • World Economi Forum on Africa, May 2017

    South Africa’s business community has not stepped up honestly

    Prof Patrick Bond from the University of the Witswatersrand (Wits) tells Business Day TV why the World Economic Forum, which held its annual Africa meeting last week, serves the interests of the ruling elite at the expense of communities.

  • Jim Crow in the U.S.

    Road to Trump’s Climate Change Hell Paved by Obama and Clinton

    Monthly Review Press author Gerald Horne, Robert Pollin and Paul Jay discuss the debate within the Trump White House on whether to leave the Paris climate accords or just undermine them; and how this relates to the fight within the Democratic Party.

  • Trump press conference

    Slandering Populism

    Populism properly understood is about popular and democratic opposition to the rule of the money power—to the reign of concentrated wealth. It emerged from radical farmers’ fight for social and economic justice and democracy against the plutocracy of the nation’s Robber Baron capitalists during the late 19th century. It was a movement of the left.