Subjects Archives: Political Economy

Can we ever get equal care for all?  We can’t — at least, not by going down dead-end roads. A year ago hope was alive for equal health care for all.  Bush was defeated, and the Democrats won control of both houses of Congress.  Throughout 2009, though, every week brought a slap across the face […]

Vali Nasr.  Forces of Fortune: The Rise of the New Muslim Middle Class and What It Will Mean for Our World.  New York: Free Press, 2009.  320 pp. This empirically informative yet analytically defective book labors to dissect the complexities of political and economic development in the Muslim world, strongly focusing on Iran, Turkey, Pakistan, […]

  William I. Robinson es profesor de sociología, estudios globales y estudios latinoamericanos en la Universidad de California-Santa Bárbara. | | Print  

How is it that we could be facing a crisis of empire, of imperialism, of war, of conflict internationally, we could be facing an environmental crisis on a scale that threatens the whole planet as we know it, and we could be facing at the same time being in the midst of the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression? And how do we deal with all these problems simultaneously?

Labor productivity soared in the United States in 2009.  According to the Transport Times of December 3, 2009, productivity increased by 6.4% in the second quarter and leaped by 8.1% in the third quarter. Labor costs fell at a 2.5% rate in the third quarter of 2009, capping the biggest 12-month drop in seven years. […]

Well before the financial crisis broke out so violently in the US and caused ripple effects all over the world, most people in developing countries were already reeling under the effects of dramatic volatility in global food and fuel markets.  In 2007 and 2008 prices of most primary commodities first increased very rapidly, to a […]

N.B. The statement in the article below simply attributed to FETRAELEC President Angel Navas is actually one first published by Marea Socialista. — Ed. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez ordered the suspension of programmed power outages in the capital city on Wednesday, and asked for the resignation of his minister for electricity, citing errors in the […]

The signs of recession are more noticeable to those who live here — restaurants and coffee shops have lost most of their customers, and construction has practically ground to a halt.  Emigration has soared. Latvia has set a world-historical record by losing more than 24 percent of its economy in just two years.  The International […]

It should be noted that the words of the four trade unionists quoted in the last section of this article — Vilma Vivas, Stalin Pérez Borges, Ismael Hernández, and José Meléndez — are all part of the statement of Marea Socialista (mentioned but once in the article), so they should not be regarded simply as […]

For at least a month now in Ecuador there has been a battle over regulation of the media.  It has been in the front pages of the newspapers most of the time, and a leading daily, El Comercio, referred to the fight as one for “defense of human rights and the free practice of journalism.” […]

I’m not at all somebody who wants to enshrine Monopoly Capital: An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order as the new centerpiece in the old “what Marx said” religion.  But, really, I do stand by my conclusion that Baran and Sweezy’s 1966 book was the #1 social science book of the century, Marxist […]

  Mark Fisher is the author of Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? out recently from Zer0 Books.  As a blogger he writes K-Punk.  Capitalist Realism is one of the most acute diagnoses of contemporary politics as it is played out in one small island off the coast of Europe.  After skewering the marketisation of […]

Climate change is already causing considerable damage and hundreds of millions of poor people are suffering the consequences.

The United Nations conference to address climate change in Copenhagen over the last week has illustrated several crucial features of contemporary politics, as Obama completes a year in power, the NATO plots a military surge into the war spanning from Palestine to Afghanistan, and an economic recovery staggers along. Three Features of Political Climate First, […]

  The following table shows Iranian defence expenditure in each year since 1989 in local currency and constant US$ as well as the military burden, defined as spending as a proportion of GDP. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in 2007 Iran’s defence expenditure was one of the lowest in the Middle […]

The youth is more interested than anyone else in the future. Until very recently, the discussion revolved around the kind of society we would have. Today, the discussion centers on whether human society will survive. These are not dramatic phrases. We must get used to the true facts. Hope is the last thing human beings can relinquish. With truthful arguments, men and women of all ages, especially young people, have waged an exemplary battle at the Summit and taught the world a great lesson.

  Every gathering with a foretold script.  The security barriers mark a neutered zone for dissent.  Finally though, there is this one day in Brooklyn.  The air is traversed (by bridge) and the marchers walk from one bank to another.  It isn’t a miracle but it is beautiful.  x number of women and men for […]

The news from the Danish capital gives a picture of chaos. After planning a conference with about 40 thousand people in attendance, the hosts find it impossible to honor their promise. Evo, the first of the two presidents of ALBA-member countries to arrive, stated some truths derived from the millennium-old culture of his people.

The historical geography of capitalist development is at a key inflexion point in which the geographical configurations of power are rapidly shifting at the very moment when the temporal dynamic is facing very serious constraints.  Three-percent compound annual growth (generally considered the minimum satisfactory growth rate for a healthy capitalist economy) is becoming less and […]

  Paul Jay, Senior Editor, The Real News Network: So let’s talk about Copenhagen.  If in fact most of the scientific community is quite persuaded in the climate change science, and certainly they are, and all the world governments say they are, what’s preventing us from getting a serious agreement, and particularly with China and […]