There are, of course, other ways to “support and stimulate” the declining US economy: those that congressional debaters, presidential advisors, and the dutiful media never discuss. All the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury ever do is justify their functions as lenders and spenders “of last resort” (when the private sector will not). Neither ever […]
Subjects Archives: Political Economy
Finland: Students Defend Universities from Capitalism
Over 1,500 students demonstrated in Helsinki on 19 February 2009 against the proposed reform of higher education. After the demonstration, the students proceeded to occupy the administration building of the University of Helsinki. Students in Tampere, Turku, Joensuu, Rovaniemi, and Oulu also organized walkouts. The new Universities Act proposed by the Finnish government, if enacted, […]
The Global Collapse: a Non-orthodox View
This is the longer version of an essay by the author released by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) on 6 February 2009. Week after week, we see the global economy contracting at a pace worse than predicted by the gloomiest analysts. We are now, it is clear, in no ordinary recession but are headed for […]
Che Guevara: The Economics of Revolution
‘I didn’t know Che had any economic ideas’ has been a frequent reply I’ve received when telling people about the topic of my research and my book Che Guevara: The Economics of Revolution. It reflects the caricature of Guevara as a romantic guerrilla fighter with idealist notions of how human beings are motivated […]
The Financial Crisis and the Real Economy: Beyond the Keynesian Fix
The end of eight years of neoconservative belligerence in the White House came with a financial crisis exacerbated by decades of neoliberal economic policies. As a result of this coincidence, the ideological winds in the United States are blowing powerfully to the left. The possibility of another great depression looming over the economy,1 left-wing and […]
The State of Japanese Capitalism
Japan’s economy shrank at an annual rate of 12.7 percent last quarter, the worst decline since 1974. It is estimated that 125,000-400,000 more workers will be jobless by the end of March. Japanese capitalism is visibly incapacitated, and so is its finance minister. Minister Nakagawa at a Post-G7 Press Conference Rome, 14 February 2009 […]
Socialism and the Peasantry
One of the greatest insights of Karl Marx was his perception of the capitalist system as a self-acting, self-driven and “spontaneous” order. Far from being a malleable system, where intervention by the State could be used for bringing about basic changes in the mode of its functioning, in which case of course the need to […]
Zimbabwe Ten Years On: Results and Prospects
Sam Moyo and Paris Yeros
After a decade of political polarization and international standoff, the debate on Zimbabwe has finally been opened up to a wider reading public, thanks to Mahmood Mamdani’s “Lessons of Zimbabwe,” appearing in the London Review of Books (04/12/2008). Renowned scholars, within and without Africa, have broken their silence and have taken public positions. The […]
The Crisis of Global Capitalism and the Environment: Interview with John Bellamy Foster, Editor of Monthly Review and Professor of Sociology, University of Oregon, for Eleftherotypia (Greece)
CP: After twenty-five years of sporadic growth and extreme polarization of income and life conditions around the world, actually existing neoliberalism seems to be on the verge of collapse. Where do you situate the current crisis in the history of the development of global capitalism? JBF: Neoliberalism has clearly collapsed. But as Fred Magdoff […]
What Did the Bush Administration Receive for Financing AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center?
In 1997, the AFL-CIO established the American Center for International Labor Solidarity by merging its four regional institutions that had operated around the world. Solidarity Center stated its mission: “to help build a global labor movement by strengthening the economic and political power of workers around the world through effective, independent and democratic unions.” […]
My Six-year-old Son Should Get a Job: What Is Wrong with the Present Global Economic Order?
I have a six-year-old son. His name is Jin-Gyu. He lives off me, yet he is quite capable of making a living. I pay for his lodging, food, education, and health care. But millions of children of his age already have jobs. Daniel Defoe figured out in the 18th century that children are able to […]
Getting the Questions Right
This is the story of a Canadian woman who started to explore economic issues. The difficulties she encountered along the way led her to the conclusion that there are certain questions that can’t be answered theoretically but only practically, by people like herself. The same discovery could have been made by someone, male or female, […]
Forever Blowing Bubbles: A Walking Tour with Peter Linebaugh and Fabian Tompsett
Peter Linebaugh and Fabian Tompsett guided a tour around the City on 12 November 2008, taking in landmarks of capitalist crisis past and present. Mute is an online magazine dedicated to exploring culture and politics after the net.
Satyam and Capitalism
Analytical Monthly Review, published in Kharagpur, West Bengal, India, is a sister edition of Monthly Review. Its January 2009 issue features the following editorial. — Ed. Another spectacular hole in the torn fabric of the “success story” of the neoliberal “reform” has opened in recent days. Though but a week has passed from the […]
Flip-flops of Economics
Most US economists are professors in colleges and universities. Their academic positions enable research and teaching that is supposed to be independent of corporate interests. They could, at least hypothetically, provide the critical insights into economic problems needed for their solution. Economists might help to propose, evaluate, and debate the wide range of possible solutions […]
Capitalism’s Burning House: Interview with John Bellamy Foster
WIN: According to a quotation by Jim Reid that you and Fred Magdoff included in your article entitled “Financial Implosion and Stagnation” (Monthly Review, December 2008), the U.S. financial sector has made around 1.2 Trillion ($1,200) of “excess” profits in the last decade relative to nominal GDP. How has the structure of the capital […]
A Structural Crisis of the System: Interview with István Mészáros
István Mészáros won the 1971 Deutscher Prize for his book Marx’s Theory of Alienation and has written on Marxism ever since. He talks to Judith Orr and Patrick Ward about the current economic crisis. The ruling class are always surprised by new economic crises and talk about them as aberrations. Why do you believe they […]
British Jews Call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israel
We the undersigned are all of Jewish origin. When we see the dead and bloodied bodies of young children, the cutting off of water, electricity and food, we are reminded of the siege of the Warsaw Ghetto. When Dov Weisglass, an adviser to the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, talked of putting Gazans “on a […]
The Crisis of the Capitalist World
The current crisis of the capitalist world is commonly explained as resulting from “a lack of government regulation of the financial sector”, “insufficient supervision allowing reckless lending by financial institutions”, “the unbridled greed of the financiers”, in short a series of mistakes and aberrations. These have contributed to a “systems failure” in the words of […]
Actually, “It’s the System, Stupid”
“Our community is expanding: MRZine viewers have increased in number, as have the readers of our editions published outside the United States and in languages other than English. We sense a sharp increase in interest in our perspective and its history. Many in our community have made use of the MR archive we put […]
