The Phenomenal Drain of Profits Beginning in the 1970s, Puerto Rico’s economy began to suffer a drain of profits, to the point where the measure of total income produced in the island, the Gross Domestic Product, began to separate dramatically from the measure of income that residents own, the Gross National Product or GNP. […]
Subjects Archives: Political Economy
The Liberals and Inequality, Then and Now
Articles on income equality sometimes note that the U.S. economy hasn’t faced the current level of disparity since 1928, on the eve of the Great Depression. There has been much less discussion of the responses to the issue back then, even though income inequality was a major concern for policymakers as the Depression deepened and […]
What Would the KKE Do If It Were in SYRIZA’s Place?
We often hear the following, well-intentioned question: “What would you have done if you had been in the place of the SYRIZA government?” The question is not illogical. But we must put it in the right perspective. If we, the KKE, were in the “place” of SYRIZA, meaning the place of bourgeois management, the place […]
Why Greece Doesn’t Matter
We have to stop talking about Greece. What must emerge from the calamity of SYRIZA-ANEL is a renewed call for democracy. There is a scene in the 1972 political satire The Candidate where Robert Redford looks at the camera and quietly says, “Politicians don’t talk, they make sounds.” For the past five years Greece […]
With Capitulation in Greece, the Front Moves Outward
Since at least the beginning of this year, the project of achieving a decent, reasonable Europe had set its eyes on Greece. I say nothing of radically transforming Europe into something just and fair and ecologically sound — that prospect is far beyond the present horizon — but hopes that Europe could slowly turn […]
The Spectre of the Thirties
The Reserve Bank of India, as is to be expected, has been denying that its governor Raghuram Rajan had ever suggested that the world was facing the possibility of a 1930s-type Great Depression. Members of the “global financial community” are not supposed to say such things; so even if Dr Rajan did, a denial was […]
Lessons from a defeat in Europe
The Troika are celebrating the end of negotiations with Greece, proclaiming that thanks to their tireless efforts the Eurozone remains whole. And why wouldn’t they celebrate? They have demonstrated their power to crush, at least for now, the Greek effort to end austerity and its associated devastating social consequences. Tragically, Syriza has not only surrendered, […]
Glory to the Lucid Courage of the Greek People, Facing the European Crisis
The Greek People are an example to Europe and the world. With courage and lucidity the Greek people have rejected the ignoble diktat of European and international finance. They have won a first victory by affirming that democracy cannot exist unless it knows how to put itself at the service of social progress. They have […]
“Universal Health Care” in Free Market Paradise
Analytical Monthly Review, published in Kharagpur, West Bengal, India, is a sister edition of Monthly Review. Below is the editorial in its June 2015 issue. — Ed. The essence of “free market” ideology is exposed clearly when the health of the human body is at issue. When outcomes are determined on the basis of […]
Unending Hard Times: Whose Is the Toil and Whose Is the Wealth?
John Bellamy Foster and Robert W McChesney. The Endless Crisis: How Monopoly-Finance Capital Produces Stagnation and Upheaval from the USA to China. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2012; Kharagpur, India: Cornerstone Publications, 2013. pp x + 227. Rs 150. The secular decline of decadal average annual real gross domestic product (GDP) growth rates of the […]
Marta Harnecker on New Paths Toward 21st Century Socialism
Introduction by Richard Fidler Among the many panels and plenaries at the Conference of the Society for Socialist Studies, which met in Ottawa June 2-5, was a Book Launch for Marta Harnecker’s latest English-language book, A World to Build: New Paths toward Twenty-First Century Socialism (translated by Federico Fuentes), Monthly Review Press. The featured speaker […]
Marxism, Ecological Civilization, and China
China’s leadership has called in recent years for the creation of a new “ecological civilization.” Some have viewed this as a departure from Marxism and a concession to Western-style “ecological modernization.” However, embedded in classical Marxism, as represented by the work of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, was a powerful ecological critique. Marx explicitly defined […]
Mészáros and the Emancipatory Transition: Beyond Capital in the Twenty-First Century
Part One In his work Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Belknap Press, 2014), Thomas Piketty contributes much to understanding the inequalities of income, inheritance, capital, and wealth generated by the capital system. We are not likely to disagree with many of his insights based on his study of capital and wealth distribution. Among these […]
It’s Capitalism, Stupid!
Global capitalism is the 800-pound gorilla. The twin ecological and economic crises, militarism, the rise of the surveillance state, and a dysfunctional political system can all be traced to its normal operations. We need a transformative politics from below that can challenge the fundamentals of capitalism instead of today’s politics that is content to treat […]
Dissecting the Failure of Soviet “Socialism”
Michael A. Lebowitz. The Contradictions of “Real Socialism”: The Conductor and the Conducted. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2012. 222 p. In current discussions of twenty-first century socialism, the work of Michael Lebowitz has a unique merit: it is rooted in the experience of Cuba and Venezuela, where efforts in recent decades to move toward […]
A Dictionary of American Free Enterprise
Arms Sales A government jobs program (the lone acceptable government jobs program) working to deliver all the latest in U.S. defense industry hardware to all the international “good guys.” Associate A low-wage worker. Bubble (Financial) The artificial inflation of asset prices, which, although appearing to many of the “smartest people in the room” as if […]
The Mad Activist Comes in from the Cold
You want to know why I’m nuts, Doctor? I’m part of the lunatic left, that’s why. My delusions of intellectual grandeur are great enough to make me believe that I can actually comprehend the bombings, the embargoes, the torture — all wrought by the good old US of A — while everybody else goes shopping. […]
The European Union’s Anti-People Strategy, with a Special Focus on Greece
. . . So, our party [Communist Party of Greece, KKE] was very clear — for many years now — that the European Union is a union of capital and an anti-people hornet’s nest. The parties of the plutocracy in Greece as well as other countries lied to the peoples, fostered illusions that they […]
The Importance of the “Economic”
The world today is witnessing a rather novel phenomenon, namely a pervasive tendency towards political uprisings by the urban middle class. Not just the leaders, but even the bulk of the participants in such uprisings are educated, are reasonably well-off, and make extensive use of social media channels for keeping in touch with one another. […]
The Immediate Demands of the Greek Working Class
Throughout the previous period, PAME, the class-conscious movement, was at the forefront of the struggle against capital’s attack on labor and popular rights. We will continue in the same direction, because the problems and factors that led the vast majority of the people to poverty, misery, and the loss of rights and conquests are still […]
