Subjects Archives: Political Economy

Marx and Engels incorporated in their writings a critique of the way that capitalism destroys the environment but it is only in the last half century that environmental concerns have become an integral part of the fight for socialism, writes the Marx Memorial Library and Workers’ School.

Anybody who’s ever leafed through Finnegans Wake will quickly recognize that we’re not dealing here with a standard novel, just as anybody leafing through Marx’s Capital will know we’re not dealing with standard economics.

A new rule change will allow the government to count having a place to sleep as income, and deduct it from SSI payments.

Trump is using a classic negotiating tactic to pave the way for historically high military spending.

The government may appease speculators by offering some blandishments in the form of a higher interest rate (may be on some specific government bonds), or some tax concessions, as an earlier government had done in 2013 when there had been a similar speculative attack on the rupee; but it will have an immediate adverse effect on the working people by cutting them out from fiscal resources or subjecting them to the recessionary effects of an interest rate hike.

In May 2018, the Argentine government received the largest loan in IMF history: $57 billion.

Metabolic Rifts: Capitalism’s Assault on the Earth System.

Neoclassical economics had cast Marxist dependency theory (and other heterodox schools of thought) as a relic—a Latin American intellectual curiosity from the Cold War era, now superseded by globalisation, global value chains (GVCs), and the triumph of market-led development.

“Integrating earth sciences and life sciences is not an external addition to Marxism, but rather a deepening of its own materialist method.”

Peripheral Bourgeoisies and the Politics of Disinvestment.

Rob Larson’s Mastering the Universe: The Obscene Wealth of the Ruling Class, What They Do With Their Money, And Why You Should Hate Them Even More is a fiercely pleasurable polemic.

The Warao people have faced brutal missionary campaigns, ecological destruction, capitalist penetration, state neglect, racism, disease, forced migration, and now the effects of one of the most aggressive sanctions regimes imposed on any country in the world.

In previous writings, we advanced an inventive new model for municipal finance: what we call the Seattle Loop. By establishing a city-owned public bank, we propose, Seattle can not only expand public investment through municipal lending and provide residents with low-cost financial services; it can also purchase its own bonds and “loop” the interest back to the […]

Michael Hudson: My view is probably in agreement with what the military is said to have discussed with Donald Trump last night and for the last few days. They’ve all told him that the invasion cannot work without an enormous sacrifice, and the United States ever since the Vietnam War, that led to the ending of the draft, no longer has a landed army.

A palpable, but indecisive enthusiasm permeated a recent Seattle arts forum, revealing a city desperate for a future that no one quite knows how to build, let alone finance. Despite the proliferation of sticky notes with compelling schemes, as Amanda Manitach describes in The Stranger, the arts roundtable lacked a cohesive strategy for gathering its aspirational potpourri […]

I do not know if the numbers on the Forbes char are correct but it is quite obvious that Trump and his family are using their positions to enrich themselves.

Why Imperialism Is the Greatest Threat to Humanity.

Since capital is globalized under neo-liberalism while labour remains confined to specific countries, a higher rate of accumulation is supposed to require the creation of a more attractive environment for capital compared to other countries; and lower wages constitute one major component of this more attractive environment.

You ever wonder why people who make AI talk about how AI might destroy humanity—but still keep making AI?

The contrast between the Manmohan Singh government’s management of India-Iran relations under U.S. pressure and the Modi government’s abject capitulation is the clearest possible illustration of what strategic autonomy means in practice, as opposed to in rhetoric.