All told, 54.1 million American workers have filed initial unemployment claims during the past nineteen weeks.
Subjects Archives: Political Economy
How Imperialism foments people to rise up in arms against U.S.-Duterte’s Terror Law
Fueled by foreign capital, the new Philippines legislation intends to the revolt of dissenters at bay. But the need to hold power to account is growing.
Solar geoengineering is incompatible with a (radical) Green New Deal
Recent activity around solar geoengineering is sparking debate over its role in climate policy. Backed by billionaires, and with connections to the U.S. military, solar geoengineering offers nothing but an Earth engineered to fit the needs of capital. It is antithetical to a radical climate movement.
Has anything changed since 1840? Trade, imperialism, Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta megacity
In modern times, China has been the ultimate challenge for imperialists: it’s independence being an enigma to Europeans and Americans. From Marco Polo to Mike Pompeo, China has been a mystery to Christian crusaders.
On robots and sheep
A short introduction to historical materialism and its significance for the understanding of contemporary capitalism.
An ultra-parasitical global financial system that enjoys unwavering protection
During the evolution of the pandemic in Europe, the financial system has received little attention in the media. It was only at the end of February/beginning of March that a very sharp fall in the stock markets made the front page of newspapers and television broadcasts.
White House brands teachers “essential workers” to force reopening of schools
The comparison between teachers and meatpacking workers is highly significant and must be taken as a sharp warning by teachers and all education workers.
An inside look at Nicaragua’s Sandinista Revolution on its 41st anniversary
The Grayzone reports from inside Nicaragua’s capital on the 41st anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution, covering a speech by President Daniel Ortega, showing how the leftist government has responded to the coronavirus pandemic, and surveying the rising tide of U.S. and corporate media disinformation.
Leftist leaders call for cancellation of debts owed by developing countries
A statement signed by former Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff and Indian Kerala State’s finance minister Thomas Isaac, among others, highlights the inadequacy of the measures announced recently by the G20 and IMF to postpone debt repayment.
Some are in super-yachts and others are clinging to drifting debris
COVID-19 has exposed the lie that free markets can deliver healthcare for all, the fiction that unpaid care work isn’t work, the delusion that we live in a post-racist world. We are all floating on the same sea, but some are in super-yachts and others clinging to drifting debris.
Decline in global poverty is a farce perpetuated by World Bank’s poverty line
The real problem with the World Bank’s poverty estimates, is that its International Poverty Line is set at an impossibly low level, which greatly underestimates world poverty.
As Trump threatens secret police deployment nationwide, Democrats debate expanding surveillance powers and new money for DHS
The rogue deployment of secret federal police forces in Portland, Oregon, has added a new complication to negotiations over reauthorizing the Trump administration’s vast surveillance powers and appropriating new money for the Department of Homeland Security.
Freedom Rider: Media silent as Trump declares wars
Donald Trump’s attacks on Venezuela, Syria and Iran are criminal, but Joe Biden vows to be even worse.
Divergent recoveries—pandemic edition
The existing alphabet soup of possible recoveries—V, U, W, and so on (which I discussed back in April)—is clearly inadequate to describe what has been taking place in the United States in recent months.
Colleges layoff underpaid adjuncts then challenge their unemployment claims
Unemployment insurance laws were developed prior to the widespread use of contingent faculty, and were designed to prevent K-12 teachers and full-time college professors from collecting unemployment during scheduled term breaks and summer vacations when they weren’t teaching. In nearly all states, these laws are being used to prevent adjuncts, who have since become the […]
Defunding police and challenging militarism, a necessary response to their “battle space”
The excessive use of force and killings of unarmed Black Americans by police has fueled a popular movement for slashing police budgets, reimagining policing, and directing freed funds to community-based programs that provide medical and mental health care, housing, and employment support to those in need. This is a long overdue development.
Emancipation and science: Ernest Mandel 25 years later
This year marks 25 years since Ernest Mandel died. Mandel (5 April 1923–20 July 1995) was one of the most significant Marxist economists of the second half of the twentieth century. In 1982, he was central to founding our Institute. A prolific scholar and activist until the end of his life, Mandel wrote dozens of […]
‘Fascism and Big Business’ – Review
Radical Reviewer reviews Daniel Guerin’s Fascism and Big Business.
Fascism: The decay of capitalism
Talk about the decaying global capitalist system, the fascist aesthetic, the construction of “the other” and where we might be headed if we don’t do something quick.
1978: Ernest Mandel – Rosa Luxemburg and political economy
The Accumulation of Capital was published in 1913, and it was probably only after completing her magnum opus that Luxemburg resumed writing her Introduction to Political Economy. Interrupted once again, now by the outbreak of war, she continued to work on the Introduction during her stay in prison in Wronke, in the German province of […]
