Subjects Archives: Political Economy

  The Movement of Financial Capital In recent years, there has been an intensive, continuous process of concentration and centralization of corporations operating and controlling the entire production process of global agriculture. Concentration is the concept used in political economy to explain the movement of large corporations to combine, accumulate, and become large groups.  Thus, […]

Perhaps some governments are unaware of the concrete facts, and so for that reason Raúl’s message setting Cuba’s position seemed to us to be very timely. I shall be generous in the aspects that cannot be dealt with in a brief and precise official statement.

  “When we talk about a financial crisis, it’s really only a symptom. . . .  Financial adventurism is essentially what we have been witnessing for the last thirty or forty years, exploding from time to time in the form of financial crisis.  It’s really adventurist, speculative capital which has to find in some way […]

  Francis Boyle, Professor of International Law at the University of Illinois, proposes that Iran sue the U.S. in the World Court to enjoin it against threats to attack Iran. Part 1: The Libya Precedent “We filed papers with the International Court of Justice in the Hague, on behalf of Libya against the US and […]

  On the occasion of US Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s visit to Berlin, Christine Buchholz, a member of the Left Party executive board, comments: Many hopes are tied to Barack Obama, since George W. Bush is the most unpopular American President ever, and Obama promises to improve the social situation and bring the Iraq […]

On October 19, 1950, more than 400 thousand voluntary Chinese combatants, on orders from Mao Zedong, crossed the Yalu and waylaid the US troops that were advancing towards the Chinese border. The US units, surprised by the vigorous response of the country they had underestimated, were forced to withdraw towards a region near the southern coast, pushed back by the joint action of the Chinese and North Korean forces. Stalin, who was immensely cautious, offered far less support than Mao had anticipated, though the MiG-15 aircrafts piloted by the Soviets, over a limited 42.5-miles front, proved valuable help during the initial stage of the conflict in protecting land forces during their intrepid advance.

In April 2006, hundreds of thousands of immigrant rights protestors marched in cities across the United States.  They countered prolonged debates about the pros and cons of comprehensive immigration reform with a short but sweet affirmation, scrawled on placards: “No Human Being Is Illegal.”  Their direct assertion challenged the deeply entrenched practices of our government […]

There is an entire genre of theory explaining why the Western capitalist democracies did not undergo socialist revolution in the 20th Century, as Classical Marxism had predicted.  Not surprisingly, most of this material comes from the Left itself.1 We can include Antonio Gramsci’s work on hegemony in this genre, as well as the entire output of […]

With oil prices having more than doubled over the last 12 months, various reasons are being cited for the price increases. Adhip Chaudhuri, a visiting professor of economics at Georgetown University’s campus in Doha, Qatar, explains the cause and effect of high oil prices. Is the increase in oil prices plunging the global economy into […]

This is a serious subject.

The summit meeting of leaders of the eight most highly industrialized powers on the planet took place July 7-9 at a mountain retreat on the banks of the Toyako, a lake formed inside a volcanic crater located in the north of the island of Hokkaido, in the northern reaches of the Japanese archipelago. It would be hard to choose a site more removed and distant from the madding crowd than this.

  A side-by-side comparison of the two countries’ conventional military capabilities demonstrates the overwhelming superiority of the United States. It is time to inject realism into discussions about U.S.-Iranian relations. Hyping the threat about Iran obscures the bottom line: Iran does not currently represent an existential threat to the United States or its allies, and […]

People’s War in the Philippines Q1: The Arroyo regime has vowed to destroy or reduce the CPP, the NPA, and the NDFP to an inconsequential level before she steps down in 2010.  Is this possible?  Prof. Jose Maria Sison before a painting of the people’s war in the Philippines at the NDF Information Bureau in […]

On June 18, the Senate Finance Committee held a hearing to mark up an original bill, the “Iran Sanctions Act of 2008.”  Despite opposition to provisions in the bill from members of the Committee and the Bush administration, the committee overwhelming approved the bill 19-2. On June 17, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice wrote Senate […]

Over the past decade, a new rise of mass struggles in Latin America has sparked an encounter between revolutionists of that region and many of those based in the imperialist countries.  In many of these struggles, as in Bolivia under the presidency of Evo Morales, Indigenous peoples are in the lead. Latin American revolutionists are […]

  David Harvey is a Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the City University of New York (CUNY) and author of various books.  He has been teaching Karl Marx’s Capital, Volume I for nearly 40 years.  Help keep this open course online: donate.

One of the most important developments in Cuban Marxism in recent years has been increased attention to the writings of Ernesto Che Guevara on the economics and politics of the transition to socialism. A milestone in this process was the publication in 2006 by Ocean Press and Cuba’s Centro de Estudios Che Guevara of Apuntes […]

Prophecies of Downfall The fact that Marx finally began with the composition of his long-planned economic work in the winter of 1857/1858 was directly occasioned by the economic crisis that broke out in the autumn of 1857 and the concomitant expectations of a deep trauma from which capitalism would no longer recover.  “I am working […]

  Join us for a discussion of race, class, and the new economy with E. Paul Durrenberger, coauthor with Suzan Erem of On the Global Waterfront: The Fight to Free the Charleston 5. On the Global Waterfront, new from Monthly Review Press, tells the present-day story of longshoremen in Charleston, South Carolina, who successfully confronted […]

  On Sunday, May 4, 2008, I joined two dozen progressive activists marching in a circle in front of the Bolivian embassy.  Thanks to our spirited presence, 150 or so right-wing Bolivians from the province of Santa Cruz were unable to get in front of the embassy to demonstrate in favor of the autonomy referendum […]

As a red Toyota pickup made its daily delivery, masses of people gathered outside the brand-new blue and white subsidized bread kiosk near my building.  A rusty and dented Fiat also delivered unsubsidized bread to the small grocery store across the street at the same time.  Last Thursday, Egypt’s Central Agency for Public Mobilization and […]