Subjects Archives: Political Economy

On Thursday the 4th of June, at the Islamic University of Al-Azhar in Cairo, Obama gave a speech of special interest to those of us who are closely following his political actions given the enormous might of the superpower he leads. I cite his very own words to indicate what I think are the basic ideas he expressed, thus summarizing his speech to save time. Not only do we have to know that he spoke but also what he said.

Jeff Madrick.  The Case for Big Government.   Princeton University Press, 2009.  205 pp.  ISBN 978-0-691-12331-8 (Hardcover). In The Political Economy of Growth, Paul Baran argued that the increased role of the US government in post-New Deal America did not solve the contradictions of monopoly capitalism but merely “removed the onus for the malfunctioning of […]

Yesterday on May 31st, an AFP dispatch read: “Cuba has accepted to reopen negotiations with the United States about migration and direct mail service, a new signal of the thaw that is happening just before an Organization of American States (OAS) Summit where the Cuban situation will dominate conversations.

Part 1 Part 2 Minqi Li is Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Utah and the author of The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World Economy among other publications.  This lecture was delivered at the Marxist School of Sacramento on 21 May 2009. 

Chavez is an indefatigable educator. He does not hesitate in describing what capitalism means. One by one he takes apart all its lies. He is relentless.

JOHANNESBURG, 26 May 2009 (IRIN) — Food prices will rise again by 2015, when economies are expected to have recovered from the global recession, pushing up demand once more, says a recent UN report. 2008 is seen as the year of food crises, prompted in part by high fuel prices, but these started declining as […]

C. Wright Mills created the concept of a “power elite;” he imported the term “New Left” from Europe to the United States, and he was among the first to catch the phrases “paradigm” and “postmodern.”  A global thinker in a square era, he was everything postwar America was not: radical, original, and hip.  His work […]

Five days ago I read a press report stating that Ban Ki-moon would appoint Bill Clinton as his special envoy for Haiti.

This much is clear: not in a long time has capitalism been so critically questioned in the US and “socialism” so widely debated as a social alternative.  The left can and should seize this moment.  One part of doing that is to formulate a new program — including a new definition of socialism — that […]

One of the central paradoxes in economic theory relates to the hostility that financial interests in a modern capitalist economy systematically display towards any policy of enlarged State expenditure financed by borrowing, even though such expenditure increases capitalists’ profits and wealth. Let us suppose that the government undertakes a larger borrowing-financed public expenditure programme, and […]

The keynote address at the “Climate Change, Social Change” conference (organized by Green Left Weekly), Sydney, Australia, 12 April 2008. This address became the basis for John Bellamy Foster, “Ecology and the Transition from Capitalism to Socialism” (Monthly Review, November 2008), which in turn became the last chapter of The Ecological Revolution: Making Peace with […]

In the recently concluded 2009 general elections to the lower house of the parliament, the Social Democratic Left (SDL henceforth) In India, composed of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM), the Communist Party of India (CPI), and a bunch of smaller left-wing parties, has witnessed the severest electoral drubbing in a long time.  This year, […]

On May 16th, some 60 percent of India’s 714 million-strong electorate delivered a definitive victory to the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA), giving it a commanding 262 seats in India’s 543-member parliament.  The UPA’s principal opponent, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), led by the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), took a severe beating, dropping down […]

The battle over “intellectual property rights” is likely to be one of the most important of this century.  It has enormous economic, social, and political implications in a wide range of areas, from medicine to the arts and culture — anything where the public interest in the widespread dissemination of knowledge runs up against those […]

There are not two different opinions on the issue of A H1N1.

  The past decade has witnessed a renewed interest in social policies, and some governments have increased social spending to soften the impacts of economic reform.  These changes have come in the wake of widespread realization of the failure of the neoliberal economic model to generate economic growth and dynamism and to reduce poverty.  Meanwhile, […]

  John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff, The Great Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences, New York: Monthly Review Press/Kharagpur, India: Cornerstone Publications, 2009, pp 160, US$12.95/Rs 100. Beginning with the failure of two Bear Stearns hedge funds and the consequent freezing of the high-risk collateralised debt obligations market in June 2007, the financial crisis deepened […]

Al Jazeera: Earlier, I spoke with progressive American economist James Galbraith, and I asked him to explain why some banks still need more capital after receiving billions in government bailouts. James Galbraith: I think this is expected.  If the test did not show that they needed capital, nobody would believe them.  At the same time, […]

Our world is not only threatened by the cyclical economic crises which are ever more serious and frequent. Unemployment, bankruptcy, and the huge losses in goods and wealth are inseparable companions of the blind market laws which govern the world economy today. Neo-liberalism proscribes any interference by the State, considering it a disturbing element for the economy, as if the domestic order, the army, health, education, culture, science, the courts, the judges, and many other activities could exist without the State and its laws.

Antonio Giustozzi, a researcher at the London School of Economics and Political Science, is one of the internationally recognized specialists on the Taliban.  Author of Koran, Kalashnikov, and Laptop: The Neo-Taliban Insurgency in Afghanistan (Columbia University Press, 2008) among other books, this academic divides his time between London and Afghanistan.  Talking to Le Monde in […]