Subjects Archives: Political Economy

Workers in the United States are in the midst of a punishing COVID-19 economic crisis.

U.S. billionaires have recouped all of their wealth—and more—during the Pandemic Depression. Meanwhile, since May, the number of poor Americans has grown by about 8 million.

Marxian economists have been quite critical of contemporary mainstream economics. As we saw in Chapter 1, and will continue to explore in the remainder of this book, Marxian economists have challenged the general approach as well as all of the major conclusions of both neoclassical and Keynesian economics.

The dramatic expansion of intellectual property rights represents a new stage in commodification that threatens to make virtually everything bad about capitalism even worse.

On October 5, 2020, the England and Wales Court of Appeal overturned a lower court decision from July that denied the Venezuelan government access to 31 metric tons of its gold stored in the Bank of London.

KEN LIVINGSTONE looks in-depth at the story of U.S. sanctions on Venezuela.

Keynes’s criticisms of neoclassical economics set off a wide-ranging debate that came to define the terms of—and, ultimately, the limits of debate within—mainstream economics.

Billionaires are “smart” enough. Their wealth now, in this pandemic, tops trillions of dollars.

The NSSO’s time use survey reveals striking facts about how men and women in India spend their time very differently, with women hugely burdened by unpaid work

Ashley Bohrer has provided this important piece of scholarship with her new book, Marxism and Intersectionality: Race, Gender, Class and Sexuality under Contemporary Capitalism.

Once it was created as a new theory of capitalism, neoclassical economics expanded its influence—in its original countries as well as elsewhere.

The relation between economic theories and economic systems is even more dynamic. The various economic theories of capitalism are not just different ways of making sense of that particular economic system. They emerge, develop, and change over time as capitalism itself changes—and, in turn, they have effects back on capitalism.

The United States government was furious about the ‘irresponsible extravagances’ in Nkrumah’s book and decided to punish him by refusing to allow $300 million in short-term aid to cover the costs of importing food.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was in Japan today to attend a high-profile summit of top diplomats from the countries involved in the “Indo-Pacific Quad.”

U.S. President Donald Trump—supported by most of the U.S. establishment—deepened the U.S. government’s assault on the Chinese economy.

Readers today will be more familiar with contemporary mainstream economics than with the mainstream economics of Marx’s day. So, let’s start there.

In 2020, the World Bank (WB) and the IMF are 76 years old. These two international financial institutions (IFI), founded in 1944, are dominated by the USA and a few major allied powers who work to generalize policies that run counter the interests of the world’s populations.

In the previous chapter, we saw that Marxian economics represents a two-fold critique: a critique of mainstream economic theory and a critique of capitalism, the economic and social system celebrated by mainstream economists.

In this episode, Money on the Left hosts speak with Rebecca Marchiel, Assistant Professor of History at University of Mississippi, about her important new book, After Redlining: The Urban Reinvestment Movement in the Era of Financial Deregulation (University of Chicago Press, 2020). After Redlining tells the story of the anti-racist urban reinvestment movement in early […]

For 52 years—from 1936 to 1988—the Democratic Party pledged support for the achievement of full or maximum employment.