Subjects Archives: Political Economy

  CP: After twenty-five years of sporadic growth and extreme polarization of income and life conditions around the world, actually existing neoliberalism seems to be on the verge of collapse.  Where do you situate the current crisis in the history of the development of global capitalism? JBF: Neoliberalism has clearly collapsed.  But as Fred Magdoff […]

The other day I noted some of Obama’s ideas that point to his role within a system that is the negation of every just principle.

  In 1997, the AFL-CIO established the American Center for International Labor Solidarity by merging its four regional institutions that had operated around the world.  Solidarity Center stated its mission: “to help build a global labor movement by strengthening the economic and political power of workers around the world through effective, independent and democratic unions.” […]

This is the story of a Canadian woman who started to explore economic issues.  The difficulties she encountered along the way led her to the conclusion that there are certain questions that can’t be answered theoretically but only practically, by people like herself.  The same discovery could have been made by someone, male or female, […]

I have a six-year-old son.  His name is Jin-Gyu.  He lives off me, yet he is quite capable of making a living.  I pay for his lodging, food, education, and health care.  But millions of children of his age already have jobs.  Daniel Defoe figured out in the 18th century that children are able to […]

Last Tuesday, the 20th of January of 2009, Barack Obama assumed the leadership of the empire as the 11th president of the United States since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in January of 1959.

  Peter Linebaugh and Fabian Tompsett guided a tour around the City on 12 November 2008, taking in landmarks of capitalist crisis past and present. Mute is an online magazine dedicated to exploring culture and politics after the net.

Most US economists are professors in colleges and universities.  Their academic positions enable research and teaching that is supposed to be independent of corporate interests.  They could, at least hypothetically, provide the critical insights into economic problems needed for their solution.  Economists might help to propose, evaluate, and debate the wide range of possible solutions […]

  Analytical Monthly Review, published in Kharagpur, West Bengal, India, is a sister edition of Monthly Review.  Its January 2009 issue features the following editorial. — Ed. Another spectacular hole in the torn fabric of the “success story” of the neoliberal “reform” has opened in recent days.  Though but a week has passed from the […]

  WIN: According to a quotation by Jim Reid that you and Fred Magdoff included in your article entitled “Financial Implosion and Stagnation” (Monthly Review, December 2008), the U.S. financial sector has made around 1.2 Trillion ($1,200) of “excess” profits in the last decade relative to nominal GDP.  How has the structure of the capital […]

István Mészáros won the 1971 Deutscher Prize for his book Marx’s Theory of Alienation and has written on Marxism ever since.  He talks to Judith Orr and Patrick Ward about the current economic crisis. The ruling class are always surprised by new economic crises and talk about them as aberrations.  Why do you believe they […]

The current crisis of the capitalist world is commonly explained as resulting from “a lack of government regulation of the financial sector”, “insufficient supervision allowing reckless lending by financial institutions”, “the unbridled greed of the financiers”, in short a series of mistakes and aberrations.  These have contributed to a “systems failure” in the words of […]

We the undersigned are all of Jewish origin.  When we see the dead and bloodied bodies of young children, the cutting off of water, electricity and food, we are reminded of the siege of the Warsaw Ghetto.  When Dov Weisglass, an adviser to the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, talked of putting Gazans “on a […]

“Our community is expanding: MRZine viewers have increased in number, as have the readers of our editions published outside the United States and in languages other than English.  We sense a sharp increase in interest in our perspective and its history.   Many in our community have made use of the MR archive we put […]

“Our community is expanding: MRZine viewers have increased in number, as have the readers of our editions published outside the United States and in languages other than English.  We sense a sharp increase in interest in our perspective and its history.   Many in our community have made use of the MR archive we put […]

“Our community is expanding: MRZine viewers have increased in number, as have the readers of our editions published outside the United States and in languages other than English.  We sense a sharp increase in interest in our perspective and its history.   Many in our community have made use of the MR archive we put […]

“Our community is expanding: MRZine viewers have increased in number, as have the readers of our editions published outside the United States and in languages other than English.  We sense a sharp increase in interest in our perspective and its history.   Many in our community have made use of the MR archive we put […]

“Our community is expanding: MRZine viewers have increased in number, as have the readers of our editions published outside the United States and in languages other than English.  We sense a sharp increase in interest in our perspective and its history.   Many in our community have made use of the MR archive we put […]

  “Our community is expanding: MRZine viewers have increased in number, as have the readers of our editions published outside the United States and in languages other than English.  We sense a sharp increase in interest in our perspective and its history.   Many in our community have made use of the MR archive we […]

  “Our community is expanding: MRZine viewers have increased in number, as have the readers of our editions published outside the United States and in languages other than English.  We sense a sharp increase in interest in our perspective and its history.   Many in our community have made use of the MR archive we […]