-
What’s driving trade tensions between the U.S. and China
There is a lot of concern over the possibility of a trade war between China and the US. In early April President Trump announced that his administration was considering levying $100 billion of additional tariffs on Chinese exports, after the Chinese government responded to a previously proposed U.S. tariff hike on Chinese goods of $50 billion by announcing its own equivalent tariff hikes on U.S. exports. And the Chinese government has made clear it will again respond in kind if these new tariffs are actually imposed.
-
The United States is an oligarchy, not a democracy
In the U.S., any policy change with little support from the upper class has about a one in five chance of becoming law, while those backed by the elites triumph in about half of occasions, even when they go against majority opinion.
-
Willetts the conqueror (part 5): knowledge exchange
In addition to subsumption of teaching and research, the third mission of neoliberal marketisation has been termed, “knowledge exchange.” The introduction of this mission represents not only a fundamental attack on the academic profession, but also a desperate attempt to marshal the knowledge-producing powers of universities to kick-start a stagnating post-crisis global economy.
-
Ten years after crash
The economic crises that came to a head in 2008 and the massive response—by the U.S. government and corporations themselves—reshaped the world we live in.* Although sectors of the U.S. economy are still in one of their longest expansions, most people recognize that the recovery has been profoundly uneven and the economic gains have not been fairly distributed.
-
The imperial intentions of Trump’s trade war babble
In defence of his trade war with China, Trump claims that ‘when you’re $500bn down you can’t lose.’ The problem with this stance is that persistent U.S. trade deficits with China are arguably a sign of U.S. strength or even imperial privilege, not weakness. However, on this issue, he has much of conventional economics wisdom supporting him in his delusions that the U.S. is being treated unfairly or is ‘behind’ based on these deficits.
-
Aijaz Ahmad on Syria, U.S. and Palestine
A rational solution is possible for Syria, if the US wants to be rational. But with Kushner in the White House Palestine faces a grim future.
-
China’s rise threatens U.S. imperialism, not American people
That China and the U.S. are moving in opposite directions is not a new trend, but it has been brought into sharper focus in the Trump era. Growing anxious about its diminishing international authority, the U.S. demonstrates increasing hostility towards China.
-
We struggle against illegitimate public and private debt which are at the core of the capitalist system
What we are fighting is a capitalist system that destroys nature.
-
Is France heading for another May ’68?
Just fifty years ago on March 22nd we saw the beginning of the events in France which terrified the ruling class, led to one of the biggest general strikes ever, along with a wave of factory occupations, and could only be calmed by important concessions from the bosses (minimum wage raised by 35% and new workplace organising rights guaranteed for trade unions). For the first time for decades, the spectre of revolution in the West seemed real.
-
Basic income: progressive cloak & neoliberal dagger
For almost three decades, the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) has been fighting against neoliberal austerity, especially that aspect of it that has involved systematically degrading systems of income support. The underlying motive in this attack has been to render benefit provision as inadequate and precarious as possible so as to create the desperation that can drive people into the expanding low wage sector.
-
Banking reforms in the context of subordinate financialization
It is both an honor and a pleasure to be here at the event of marking the 75th Anniversary of the Ceylon Bank Employees Union. First, let me offer my heartfelt greetings to CBEU, its office bearers and membership. CBEU has had a proud and celebrated history of struggles that helped immensely to record so many victories to improve the conditions of the working class in general and the bank employees in particular.
-
Calculating surplus value to facilitate workplace organizing
Using Marx’s critique of political economy, it’s possible for workers employed in a variety of industries to calculate the value of their work and how this value is divided between employer and employee. It becomes possible to calculate the socially necessary labor time and surplus labor time, worker wages and employer profits in their particular workplace.
-
Commoditisation and the public sphere
The commoditisation of education which makes it completely incapable of providing students with the wherewithal to engage in any active and worthwhile public discourse, has proceeded apace under the neo-liberal regime.
-
Jeremy Corbyn has a long and honorable record of opposing fascism, racism and anti-semitism
The Labour leader played an active part in organising against and resisting the National Front in the late ’70s.
-
Interview with Joseph Halevi
Joseph Halevi was born in 1946 in Haifa, which then was part of British Palestine but since 1948 in Israel. Most of his earlier life was spent in Rome, where he graduated in Philosophy and Political Economy. He has been Professor of Economics at the Interna-ional University College Turin, Italy, since 2010.
-
Technology and capitalism 150 years after Das Kapital
Today, one hundred and fifty years after the publication of the first volume of Capital, Marx remains our contemporary.
-
University strikes: where do we go from here?
On February 22nd the University and College Union (UCU) called for the beginning of a nation wide strike in response to Universities UK’s (UUK) attempt to shift of the Universities Superannuation Scheme from a defined benefit pension to a defined contribution pension.
-
Under the cover of philanthropy: a monopoly machine at work
The long-term costs of allowing a handful of corporations to take over healthcare and agriculture in developing countries, in exchange for vaccinations and hybrid seeds sold at discounted price, will be paid by populations in the Global South once the process of monopolization is complete.
-
The vision of the new society in Marx’s Capital
Marx’s Capital has been heralded for many things, but providing an exhaustive account of a future socialist society isn’t one of them.
-
Working Document 1: In the ruins of the present
Raoul Peck, the Haitian lmmaker, opens his film—Der Junge Karl Marx (2017)—in the forests of Prussia. Peasants gather fallen wood. They look cold and hungry.… Some of the peasants die. Even fallen wood is not allowed to them.