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A Monthly Review project providing daily news and analysis of capitalism, imperialism and inequality rooted in Marxian political economy
In his book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty has gathered his data meticulously and provided a useful analysis of the unequal distribution of wealth and income, yet some of his definitions are somewhat confusing and even questionable.
The shell of the old Burmese society is cracking under the nationwide street protests against the military dictatorship, sparked by the small group of Mandalay protesters on February 6, 2021.
Developing country governments are being wrongly advised to use their modest fiscal resources to pay down accumulated debt instead of strengthening pandemic relief and recovery. Thus, debt phobia risks deepening and extending COVID-19 recessions by prioritizing buybacks.
![“In the sixteenth and partly still in the seventeenth, the sudden expansion of trade and the creation of a new world market had an overwhelming influence on the defeat of the old mode of production and the rise of the capitalist mode.” — Karl Marx[1]](https://mronline.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/boat-200x200.png "Intensive fishing and the birth of capitalism, Part 2")
While treasure fleets carried silver to Spain, far more ships were carrying men, fish and whale oil across the North Atlantic.
Vaccine grabs, the refusal to relax patents to enable mass production, and the use of vaccines for diplomacy run the risk that poorer nations may not be protected against Covid-19 quickly enough. This will prolong the pandemic, even for the richer nations.
American “Big Tech” corporations are gaining massive profits through their control over business, labor, social media and entertainment in the Global South.
Parliament’s Legislative Administration Council (CAL) reported that the project had 14 unconstitutional aspects. The bill presented 84 reforms to the Organic Monetary and Financial Code that would allow a $400 million loan from the International Monetary Fund.
The contemporary political economy of the People’s Republic of China, the nature of the Chinese system, has been the subject of much discussion and debate in mainstream academic, media, and political circles, as well as on the left. Yet one can only make sense of contemporary China with a clear understanding of the country’s economic […]
As China is poised to become the world’s largest creditor, concerns about debt sustainability have grown. Yet considerable confusion exists over what is likely to happen when a government runs into trouble repaying its Chinese loans.
Money on the Left is joined by Dr. Lua Kamal Yuille to discuss heterodox economics, property law & the politics of vulnerability. We chat with Yuille about her path from law to heterodox economics, and, more specifically, about how Modern Monetary Theory has variously shaped and affirmed her critical perspective toward property law.
Every day, entrepreneurs in Brazil cut down more of the Amazon to produce cheap soybeans for animals in Europe and America. Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia tear up their forests to produce cheap coffee and palm oil for the world.
Social media has been ablaze with this question recently. We know we face a crisis of mass poverty: the global economy is organized in such a way that nearly 60% of humanity is left unable to meet basic needs. But the question at stake this time is different.
The Economist (2/15/20) ran a brief article last year with a startling headline: “Immigration to America Is Down. Wages Are Up. Are the Two Related?” Maybe, the article’s anonymous author answered, at least for the short term.
Vaccine developers’ refusal to share publicly funded vaccine research findings is stalling broader, affordable vaccinations which would more rapidly contain COVID-19 contagion. The pandemic had infected at least 109 million people worldwide, causing over 2.4 million deaths as of mid-February.
In the 1960s, the main forms of the Chinese assistance offered to Cuba were preferential trade and interest-free loans. From 1961 to 1965, China gave Cuba an interest-free loan of 60 million U.S. dollars.
Recent cases of U.S. imperialism in Latin America, such as what happened in Bolivia, can serve as a striking example. International trade and financial institutions such as the Unholy Trinity (largely controlled by the North) also still play a major role in perpetuating imperialist relations between the South and the North.
Texas’s electricity market “reforms” made the current crisis inevitable.
I will not spend much time on this topic because it is so ridiculous. But the notion that the UK can become a ‘Singapore-on-Thames’ seems to underlie some Brexit fantasies. Do these have any foundation? – Tony Norfield
A new IPS briefing paper highlights the unique role of tax policy in wealth concentration.
Before the pandemic, private equity had amassed $2.5 trillion–more than the GDP of Italy–in ‘dry powder,’ waiting for distressed assets to plunder. Covid-19 provided them with the perfect opportunity.
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