On 8 and 9 January, over 160 million workers went on strike in India from a broad range of sectors, from industrial workers to health care workers. This has been one of the largest general strikes in the world.
Subjects Archives: Political Economy
Are we at a tipping point?
“Liberal democracy is crumbling.” A Harvard Law Professor opened a recent talk with this matter-of-fact statement and the audience readily murmured its assent.
“Activists shall not fear, we are fighting for justice” – MST’s Stedile
Landless leader told Brasil de Fato that, despite threats, MST will not back off from social struggle.
The roots of Karl Marx’s anti-Colonialism
Through his relationship with the Chartist radical and labor poet Ernest Jones, Karl Marx came to realize the necessity of opposing slavery and colonialism in ending capitalism.
How to get Venezuela’s economy going again
In this interview with Venezuelanalysis, an independent researcher speaks frankly about the roots of the country’s economic crisis and outlines a series of policies to revert it.
Mind the gap
We’re all done singing to “days gone by” (even though no one really knows the lyrics). But, unless we change our tune and resolve to fundamentally alter the way the economy is organized, we’re going to have to face up to the problem that’s been haunting the United States for decades now: growing inequality.
Brazil’s road to neo-fascism
Pedro Rocha de Oliveira considers the context of Jair Bolsonaro’s rise to power in Brazil.
When “green” doesn’t “grow”
The onslaught of extreme weather and the increasingly stark scientific assessment leave no doubt that we face an ecological and civilizational emergency. But in the year since COP23 in Bonn, Germany, a constant stream of headlines and reports have confirmed that governments are not on track to meet their climate commitments.
Living amidst the catastrophes of “the Living Contradiction”
“By its nature,” Marx writes in the climactic passage of a magnificent but very dense section of the Grundrisse, capital “posits a barrier to labor and value-creation in contradiction to its tendency to expand them boundlessly. And in as much as it both posits a barrier specific to itself, and on the other side equally […]
Millennials: hit hard and fighting back
A lot has been written and said critical of millennials. The business press has been tough on their spending habits.
The political roots of falling wage growth
It’s now official: workers around the world are falling behind. The International Labor Organization’s (ILO) latest Global Wage Report finds that, excluding China, real (inflation-adjusted) wages grew at an annual rate of just 1.1% in 2017, down from 1.8% in 2016. That is the slowest pace since 2008.
The butcher washes his hands before weighing the meat
It has been almost a year since we got off the ground. Our offices across the world humming with activity. You have received forty-four newsletters from us, eleven dossiers and one notebook and one working document. More is on the way as we enter our second calendar year.
Yellow vest movement is not just about fuel tax hike, it is a crystallization of a deep social discontent and distress
Since November 17, France has been witnessing the massive Gilets jaunes or ‘Yellow Vests’ protests against the anti-working class policies of the Emmanuel Macron government. The protests against the rising economic burden on the people are also spreading to many other European countries.
Down with neoliberalism . . . as a concept
I think the left should stop talking about ‘neoliberalism’, as I argue in a recent journal article published in Capital & Class.
Measure for measure
No matter how we measure it, most Americans are falling further and further behind the tiny group at the top.
