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Marx in the Museum
One of Marx’s brightest concepts, perhaps his profoundest dialectical construct in Capital, is the “fetishism of commodities.” It emphasizes something very important about the foggy world of appearances and how can forget what lies within, behind what is immediately apparent. We can read it as a parable in which Marx tries to bring to life (and light) the “secret” of the ostensibly trivial commodity, the genie that exists within the magic bottle.
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Late stage U.S. capitalism fosters death and despair, but can it foster class unity?
Self-determination is still an unknown concept to many despite the efforts of the movement for Black lives and related organizations.
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Capitalism and climate change
The week from September 20 till September 27 has been designated as the week of the ‘Climate Strike’. It is an unprecedented event in its ambition to disrupt business as usual.
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Venezuela oil production continues decline as China cancels more shipments
Russian oil giant Rosneft blasted threats of U.S. sanctions as “unfair competition.”
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‘Value and Crisis’ by Alfredo Saad-Filho reviewed
It is very common for leftist commentators to use the term ‘neoliberalism’ in their analysis of a political situation or social struggle. The term is frequently used in socialist political economy, cultural studies, and even mainstream liberal newspapers.
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Climate change affects the German economy
In 2018, one of the longest dry spells on record left part of the Rhine in Germany at record low levels for months, forcing freighters to reduce their cargo or stop using the river altogether.
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Russia has ‘oligarchs,’ the U.S. has ‘businessmen’
In 150 NYT, CNN and Fox articles, ‘oligarch’ seems reserved for Slavic billionaires
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Money Politics before the New Deal with Jakob Feinig
Jakob Feinig, assistant professor of human development at Binghamton University, joins Money on the Left to discuss the history of political organizing and activism around money in the United States, from the pre-Revolutionary period to the New Deal era. Characterized alternately by periods of widespread “silencing” and mass mobilization, the history of money politics that […]
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A response to Noah Smith about global poverty
During the debate about the global poverty numbers that unfolded earlier this year, the Bloomberg opinion columnist Noah Smith wrote a piece discussing some of my claims. In the months since a number of people have asked me to respond.
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Green-smearing from Nicaragua to Bolivia
On one level the intensifying deceit of Western media foreign affairs coverage corresponds to the increasing desperation of Western elites confronting their failing global power and influence.
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The workplace democracy plan, explained (Part 1)
Under the Sanders plan, federal contracts could be revoked or denied to low-wage employers, union busters, and companies that engage in offshoring (read: most American companies). Making federal funds contingent on “good behavior” is a powerful means of leverage.
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Max Blumenthal: Nicaragua beat U.S. regime change, but sanctions and sabotage continue
The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal explains how Nicaragua celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution just one year after defeating a U.S.-backed coup effort — and how U.S. sabotage efforts continue today.
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Marx on taxation
“Marx on tax” is seen as an “empty box” by David Harvey in his latest book on Capital, but Marx and Engels had plenty to say about tax. Their tax theorizing is no anachronistic curiosity but perfectly applicable to the income and wealth inequalities of our own era.
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Degrowth: a theory of radical abundance
Degrowth seeks to invert the Lauderdale Paradox. By calling for a fairer distribution of existing resources and the expansion of public goods, degrowth demands not scarcity but ratherabundance (see Sahlins, 1976; Galbraith, 1998; Latouche, 2014; D’Alisa et al., 2014).
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A rate cut that failed to please
On 31 July, the United States Federal Reserve System (U.S. Fed) announced its decision to cut its benchmark short-term interest rate by one quarter of a percentage point to a target range between 2% and 2.25%. It also announced that it would put an end to its policy of selling chunks of its holdings of securities, so as to unwind its bloated balance sheet.
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The systemic crisis of world capitalism
THE hallmark of a systemic, as distinct from a cyclical or sporadic, crisis of capitalism is that every effort to resolve the crisis within the broad confines of the system, defined in terms of its prevailing class configuration, only worsens the crisis.
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Review of Money and Totality by Fred Moseley
Today, as the global economy flounders from crisis to crisis, Marx’s analysis of capitalism is the essential basis for a correct understanding of what is going on. Moseley’s book reaffirms key elements of this analysis.
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Top 1% up $21 Trillion. Bottom 50% down $900 Billion.
The insights of this new data series are many, but for this post here I want to highlight a single eye-popping statistic. Between 1989 and 2018, the top 1 percent increased its total net worth by $21 trillion. The bottom 50 percent actually saw its net worth decrease by $900 billion over the same period.
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What did Engels say about revolution?
Engels was a revolutionary democrat and a revolutionary realist, argues Dragan Plavšić
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Outsourcing exploitation: global labor-value chains
Through their control over supply chains, multinationals based in the global north exploit workers in the global south.