Subjects Archives: Political Economy

Marx’s theory that capitalism created a “metabolic rift” between human society and nature has re-emerged as an indispensable tool for understanding the climate crisis we face today.

THE hegemony of imperialism is invariably associated with an agrarian crisis in countries of the global south; in fact agrarian crisis is just the other side of the ascendancy of imperialism. This is evident from the case of Indian agriculture.

Kyiv has announced the addition of a fifth corporate logo to the Ukrainian flag following news that BlackRock will be playing a crucial role in the reconstruction of the nation. The world’s largest investment management firm will join Raytheon Technologies, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and McDonald’s upon the now-omnipresent blue and yellow flag.

As we enter into a new year and a new era of fighting Covid-19—while anticipating the new viruses that will inevitably emerge—the hope is that the world can learn from these hard-earned lessons, act and cooperate using science, not rumors, and embody a spirit of international solidarity, not stigma.

This month Money on the Left is joined by the folks behind the MUSICat project, an online music streaming service for public libraries designed to share heterogenous local music with local community members. We speak with Preston Austin and Kelly Hiser from Rabble, the company behind MUSICat, as well as with Racquel (“Rocky”) Mann, who coordinates the MUSICat service with Edmontonians as Digital Initiatives Librarian for Edmonton Public Library. 

Timor-Leste was proclaimed by the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor (FRETILIN) as a sovereign state on November 28, 1975.

Germany is fearing its own demise at its own hands as the measures it takes to combat the ongoing energy crisis are causing its reserves to falter.

The International Labour Organisation’s Global Wage Report 2022–23 tracks the horrendous collapse of real wages for billions of people around the planet.

On December 13, the House Financial Services Committee held a long-awaited hearing into the collapse of the FTX crypto empire.

South Africa is sitting on a tinderbox, says Irvin Jim, General Secretary of the country’s largest trade union NUMSA. The solution is to foster a spirit of solidarity which will have to come from people’s struggles and movements.

The study looks at the impact of 125 of the richest billionaires globally, whose carbon emissions equal those of France, or 67 million people, and shows that just the richest 10 of those individuals own more wealth than the poorest 40% of humanity. The average billionaire in the study is responsible for carbon emissions over one million times higher than the average person in the bottom 90% of humanity.

Art costs money. Creativity takes time. The combination of time and money is in short supply within capitalist democracy.

U.S. politicians and corporate media often promote the narrative that China lures developing countries into predatory, high-interest loans to build infrastructure projects as part of its Belt and Road Initiative.

A series of measures in Congress’ annual omnibus spending bill show that Democrats have given up their fight to end the dark money era.

“In fact, Zelenskiy is far closer to Lenin than to George Washington. He is a dictator. He is a dangerous authoritarian who has used $100 billion in U.S. tax dollars to erect a one-party police state in Ukraine.” Who wrote this?  It is the opinion posted on Twitter by Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of the Russia Today TV network (since 2005) and the Sputnik news agency (since 2014).

In 2013, Edward Snowden’s leak of documents pertaining to the inner workings of National Security Agency (NSA) sparked international revelations about the reach and unaccountability of Washington’s international surveillance apparatus. One series of documents that remain understudied, however, concern similar activities orchestrated by the Canadian government.

In today’s political climate, the word racism has become taboo.

If “what should I buy?” springs from the consumption portion of income, then “how should I give?” pertains to the portion not dedicated to current or future consumption. The first question would be asked by a citizen of the 99%, the second by a one-percenter.

THE fact that income and wealth inequalities have increased quite dramatically under the neo-liberal regime is beyond dispute. The empirical work by Piketty’s team bears out the increase in income inequality. They use income tax data to infer about the share of the top 1 per cent of the population of a country in its national income.

Readers of the first volume of Capital sometimes mistakenly conceptualize capitalism in terms of a relationship between workers and a single capitalist. In doing so they fail to notice that for Marx capitalist society is not one big capitalist enterprise.