Subjects Archives: Political Economy

  • Trump on Infrastructure and making America great again.

    Trump and the infrastructure of fascism

    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.

  • James Baldwin

    Forgetting to remember

    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, […]

  • pexels photo computer platform economy money credit card

    The hidden environmental impacts of “platform capitalism”

    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?

  • Illustration: Andrzej Krauze

    After neoliberalism, what next?

    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.

  • Paul M. Sweezy and Harry Magdoff

    New School announces Harry Magdoff and Paul Sweezy fellowships

    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.

  • Flashback Of 1997 & Today's Financial Crisis – Here's Why You Should Be Scared

    Twenty years after the Asian financial crisis

    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

    Monopoly vs. competition

    Monopoly vs. competition

  • Berlin Bulletin by Victor Grossman

    Diesels and honorable men

    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

    Amazon: becoming the market

    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.

  • Guy Standing

    Book of the day: The Corruption of Capitalism by Guy Standing

    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.

  • Marine Drive in Mumbai

    Prabhat Patnaik on contemporary capitalism and the shape it takes in India

    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.

  • Militarism in the Age of Trump, Part II

    Militarism and monopoly capitalism

    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.

  • We can do it with $15 an hour and a union

    Unions fight inequality

    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.

  • Black Workers Power

    Does David Roediger disagree with Ellen Meiksins Wood?

    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.

  • General formula for capital

    Political economy for radical lawyers

    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 […]

  • Toilet paper money roll

    The mega rich are getting mega richer

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

  • The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) media manipulation

    The American empire and its media

    Largely unbeknownst to the general public, many media executives and top journalists of almost all major U.S. news outlets, political and business magazines, public broadcasters and press agencies have long been members of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

  • Black unemployment rate

    Race and ethnicity discrimination in the U.S. labor market

    These racial/ethnic differences mean that our general push for more and better jobs must be accompanied by policies designed to overcome the discriminatory and segmented nature of the US labor market.

  • 2017 Changes to Social Security

    Social Security may bust the Federal budget – but not how you think

    Both Democrats and Republicans have used social security funds to hide government debt—i.e., to trick the public. This was made possible by a huge surplus engineered by fund actuaries to account for baby boomers. In the next few years the fund will need to cash in on its bonds and this will cause the federal debt to balloon.

  • Eugene Victor Debs

    Eugene Debs and the Kingdom of Evil

    Eugene Victor Debs was not only the builder of the social movement in America but arguably the most important political figure of the 20th century, before being crucified by the capitalist class when he and hundred of thousands of followers became a potent political threat. The most notable moments of Debs life were the railroad strikes in 1894, his campaign for Congress in 1916 until he was arrested under the Sedition Act by President Wilson and finally his speech moments before his sentencing in 1918.