Bundestag Speech, 29 June 2012 Mr. President! Dear colleagues! “Billions in taxes have been squandered. Those who bear responsibility revealed themselves to be marionettes. The part of the puppet master was performed by just the type of managers recently spoken of in loftier terms: investment bankers.” What the Handelsblatt wrote about the nationalization of the […]
Subjects Archives: Political Economy
Interview with Ammar Waqqaf Regarding the Crisis in Syria
Ammar Waqqaf is an independent Syrian political analyst based in England. Q: Why do you think the western powers are so keen to see regime change in Syria? A: Western powers would be fools not to exploit such an opportunity to turn a key regional player from an opposing side into an allied one. Achieving […]
The World Seen from the South: Interview with Samir Amin
I would like to focus this interview on three distinct but related questions: your vision of the world and the possibilities of changing it; your conceptual and political proposal on the implosion of capitalism and delinking from it; your analysis of the global context, seen especially from Africa and the Middle East. What is your […]
“SYRIZA Is Acting Responsibly”: Interview with Yanis Varoufakis
The German taxpayers should be happy to have SYRIZA in Greece, says economist Yanis Varoufakis in an interview. Greece is not unwilling to reform. ZEIT ONLINE: Mr. Varoufakis, the Greeks say they want to keep the euro but vote for SYRIZA and its leader Alexis Tsipras, whose plan could lead to an exit from the […]
“Authoritarian Populism” and the Wisconsin Recall
On June 5th, roughly 1,334,450 people voted in favor of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and his program of union busting, austerity, corporate tax-cuts, and property-tax freezes. 1,162,785, voted to recall the governor midway through his term. Walker’s victory will be seized on by the Right as they drum up support for copycat union-busting bills […]
Euro Exit? Interview with Economist Alberto Montero Soler
Alberto Montero Soler: First of all, I have to say that those effects would only manifest themselves in the medium term. To propose an exit from the euro as an immediate solution to the deterioration of living conditions of people would mean to deceive them. We are at a crossroads where peripheral economies can only […]
Greece at a Crossroads: Crisis and Radicalization in the Southern European Semi-periphery
Introduction The Greek crisis represents the deepening of a long systemic contradiction whose origins lie in the 1960s, in the stagnation of monopoly capitalism and the emergence of the South. The industrial centers of the world economy were struck by a crisis of profitability, which was displaced outward in space and forward in time by […]
Impoverishing Europe
The crisis is not relinquishing its grip on Europe. From autumn 2008 to early 2009 the world market experienced the deepest slump in economic output since the Second World War. This is a global crisis. Even in emerging economies like China, Brazil, or India economic growth declined and could not compensate for the recession […]
Self-Defense for Workers, Against Market Tyranny: An Interview with Michael Perelman
Carlo Fanelli (CF): Your early work pays a great deal of attention to the classical political economists (e.g. Ricardo, Smith, J.B. Say, J.S. Mill, Marx, etc.), with later writings engaging with economic luminaries such as Alfred Marshal and John Maynard Keynes. Could you briefly discuss how this research has influenced your thinking about economics? And […]
“Fail Again and Fail Better”: Matan Kaminer on J14 Protests in Israel
I met Matan Kaminer in Tel Aviv in January 2012, and we agreed to do an extended interview about the state of the left in Israeli society after the controversial J14 social justice protests. Can you tell us a little about yourself and your background? How did you get involved in political activity? I was […]
“It’s Time to Invent”: Economist Prabhat Patnaik on the Global Crisis
After an engaging half-hour interview with India’s pre-eminent Marxist economist during a conference at New York University, I told a friend about my one-on-one time with Prabhat Patnaik. “There are Marxists in India?” came the bemused response. “I thought India was the heart of the new capitalism.” Indeed, we hear about India mostly as a […]
What Capitalism Delivers
Most Presidents preside over one or more capitalist downturns (recessions, depressions, crises, etc.). Every President since at least FDR generated a “program” to respond to the downturn — as demanded by citizens and businesses. FDR and every later President promised that his program would “not only extricate the US from the present economic troubles but […]
Democracy Instead of the Fiscal Treaty! We Need a Different Approach to Tackle the Crisis, and a Different Europe
Spring 2012. Merkel and Sarkozy rush from summit meeting to summit meeting, in order to save the euro. The yellow press smears the people of Greece. The struggle over a solution to the crisis is intensifying dramatically: by early 2013, an authoritarian-neoliberal alliance of business lobby groups, the financial industry, the EU Commission, the […]
Colombia: Struggle for Peace, Struggle over Land
Terror, political persecution, arbitrary detention, and militarization have long dominated Colombia. State-mediated killings now run into the tens of thousands. More than four million rural inhabitants have been displaced from sustenance-providing land. In the face of seemingly endless suffering, however, there is now a better chance for peace in Colombia. Having recently announced that its […]
Capitalism
Eneko Las Heras, born in Caracas in 1963, is a cartoonist based in Spain. | Print
Germany: Presidents Come and Presidents Go
Berlin and its surroundings have had plenty to keep it occupied: an airline strike, a short strike of the bus, streetcar, and subway lines, the euro crisis, and price increases. Or, on the happier side, warmer weather and the film Berlinale, with visits by many stars and an interesting, international mix of films often by […]
Wall Street, Small Business, and the Limits of Corporate Personhood: An Interview with Doug Henwood
Sasha Lilley: Protests against Wall Street have inspired many people to move their money from big banks to smaller banks and credit unions and encourage others to do the same. Why might you be skeptical of this effort? Doug Henwood: There are several reasons. First of all, I think a lot of the big banks […]
Social Democracy’s Great Error: Similarities Between the Schröder and Zapatero Administrations
In circles close to the former Zapatero administration, attempts have been made to represent former Prime Minister Zapatero as the politician who “sacrificed himself to save Spain,” comparing him to former German Chancellor Schröder who, though aware that he would antagonize his electoral base with his clearly neoliberal policies, went ahead with them, for he […]
Class, Psychology, and Capitalism
A young veteran was just arrested for murdering homeless people in Los Angeles. Regardless whether he is actually guilty, a large number of terrible acts have been committed by returning veterans traumatized from the war. None of the studies of which I’m aware accounts for such costs (including the cost of imprisoning them) in the […]
“Share Our Wealth” and the 99% vs. the 1%
The Great Depression of the 1930s saw the outbreak of a multitude of radical social movements on the Left and on the Right — or ones that were simply sui generis like the “Share Our Wealth” campaign launched by the fiery Louisiana populist politician Huey P. Long, Jr. Long came from a poor pinewoods parish […]
